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  • jabber - Thursday, October 3, 2019 - link

    Yeah just hope the USB bridge doesn't fail as it's built into the HDD so you cant just remove the HDD and put it in another caddy.

    Hence why I don't buy WD Passport types.
  • rrinker - Thursday, October 3, 2019 - link

    Yeah, that got me years ago. I had a small drive in my laptop, wanted a bigger one, and the external drive was much cheaper than the same size bar internal drive (still a mystery, how a drive + interface+enclosure+cable can be sold for less than just the drive but I guess that's why I'm an engineer and not an accountant). Once I got it open though, instead of the expected laptop style IDE drive plugged in to a USB interface, it was an integrated board on the drive. Oh well. I still have it, stuffed in a drawer somewhere. For the capacity, it's too slow (USB 2.0. 3.0 wasn't out yet) to use for large file transfers, plus that laptop is long gone, my current one has 1TB of SSD in it and I no longer have a space problem
  • Samus - Thursday, October 3, 2019 - link

    I've repaired many Passport USB-B 3.0 connectors over the years. One the connector from the cable completely snapped inside the receptacle. And yeah, it's unfortunately not as simple as just swapping the case, the USB controller is embedded on the IO board.

    Really terrible design choice (and a lame attempt to prevent shucking) for otherwise excellent drives.
  • eek2121 - Saturday, October 5, 2019 - link

    I have the Seagate drives that are similar to these. I shucked 8 of them and with a bit of custom engineering put them in a MiniITX system. Sits cool and quiet on my bookshelf. Runs Arch Linux, zfs, Plex, streams 4k h.264, h.265 is too much for the system because the machine is 8 years old. Nothing like ZFS over 40TB of drives in such a small area. There is space for more to fit. I was worried about vibrations, but I use foam insulation between the drives.

    Anyway, what I am getting at is you may void your warranty, but these drives are excellent for shucking. It is hard to find internal 2.5" drives at this capacity and they are more expensive. If you have the right mini ITX case you could fit dozens of you aren't afraid to be a handyman.
  • jabber - Saturday, October 5, 2019 - link

    The Seagates or the WDs? The WDs will be terrible for shucking.
  • s.yu - Thursday, October 3, 2019 - link

    ...Why do these still come with B ports?
  • s.yu - Thursday, October 3, 2019 - link

    ...Micro B though, still.
  • jabber - Thursday, October 3, 2019 - link

    First time I saw those Micro B ports, I thought "Why?"
  • GreenReaper - Monday, October 7, 2019 - link

    Presumably so you can plug them into a USB 2.0 port with a USB 2.0 A/B cable if you need to. Plenty of old devices out there that don't have USB 3.0, or a free port for it.
  • PeachNCream - Thursday, October 3, 2019 - link

    I heard getting these is bad for you so I wouldn't recommend it. It might be best to seek medical attention if you find yourself with shingles.
  • close - Thursday, October 3, 2019 - link

    Heard from a friend of a friend right? :)
  • PeachNCream - Thursday, October 3, 2019 - link

    Yes...uh...a friend! That's right!
  • not_anton - Thursday, October 3, 2019 - link

    I once tried to use similar drive for data-intensive computations (5TB LaCie IIRC).
    It has 20GB normal HDD cache, the rest is shingle storage. Still remember these 3 IOPS after I run out of cache in a few minutes (yes, THREE operations per second).

    Great for storing large files, but they will never replace normal HDDs.
  • Rookierookie - Thursday, October 3, 2019 - link

    Isn't the WD Elements line a better comparison for the Backup Plus?
  • ballsystemlord - Thursday, October 3, 2019 - link

    Guys the "print this article" function is not working correctly. A bunch of the content is being lost. Please contact IT to fix this. Thanks!
  • TheUnhandledException - Thursday, October 3, 2019 - link

    How about use usb-c and include both a usb-c to usb-c cable and a usb-c to usb-a cable? Micro-usb 3 is dead. Let it rest in peace.
  • JuliaJVargas - Friday, October 4, 2019 - link

    sheraz
  • oRAirwolf - Saturday, October 5, 2019 - link

    I am a semi fan of the Seagate Expansion portable 4TB 2.5" drives. They are CMR drives and use a removable USB 3.0 bridge. I shuck them and use them for mass storage in a couple of Dell R620 1U rack servers. Their reliability is absolute dogshit, but for $90-100 a pop, you won't find denser 2.5" storage for the money. I would avoid these 5TB SMR soldered USB bridge drives unless that extra terabyte is non-negotiable. You are giving up too much.
  • Notmyusualid - Sunday, October 6, 2019 - link

    Absolute dogshit. I've had two of those Seagate 4TB 2.5" drives fail in a year. Never, ever, again.
  • ams_tschoening - Thursday, September 2, 2021 - link

    Is there any proof that those Samsung really are CMR HDDs? I couldn't find any, instead, from my experience everything at least larger than 3 TIB is SMR. Looking at some benchmarks for the mentioned Seagate, they don't seem much faster or to behave different than the SMR models. I would love to by 4 TiB CMR if possible, 4 TiB SMR is performing pretty worse with Windows WBADMIN.
  • MDD1963 - Sunday, October 6, 2019 - link

    Don't mind that insignificant 57.8% price difference!
  • zamroni - Tuesday, October 8, 2019 - link

    i prefer standalone case rather than built-in disk+case. it's more durable than built-in case+disk products.
    i had broken toshiba external disk which the pcb dead. i couldn't reuse any of it because the usb port is soldered into disk's pcb
  • Chloiber - Thursday, October 10, 2019 - link

    We're calling external harddisks 'DAS' now?
  • danwat1234 - Friday, May 21, 2021 - link

    It's too bad you did not measure the power consumption at idle! Going to be used a Western Digital passport for a Chia farming in which it will be almost the time..
  • danwat1234 - Friday, May 21, 2021 - link

    * idle most of the time

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