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Western Digital WD Elements 3TB Portable Hard Drive $99 Delivered @ Centrecom

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Western Digital WD Elements 3TB Portable Hard Drive $99 Delivered @ Centrecom

ends 11pm 15/9

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  • Good price for portable but you can get additional 1TB if not bothered: https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/482919

  • 2.5" 3TB is not shuckable right?

    • +1

      Correct.

    • +1

      Yes, 3T 4T all can't be at the moment.

    • +2

      It is not shuckable because it WD. Seagate 2.5" 3TB are shuckable

  • Better this or the Officeworks Seagate 3tb at $99?

    • +1

      The Seagate 3TB is shuckable, this WD is not.

      • Can you confirm the hdd model inside?

        • Seagate 4tb is a barracuda green ST 4000DM004

  • I bought 3 of this WD 3TB 2.5inch portable drives from Amazon AU 3 months ago.

    One just died after I wrote 2TB to it, after 3 days from the box.
    Completely can't be recognized by computer.
    No drop. No abuse. No power cut or surge. (Connected to laptop).

    Contacted Amazon to return the dead one, and sold the rest on gumtree.

    I'd like to recommend the Seagate ones instead of WD.

    • +7

      You're about as likely to get a dud with any of these brands. Everyone has an anecdote and swears never to buy a brand again.

      I replaced all my WD drives with Hitachi a few years before realizing this. Now I just buy whatever.

      • Yes you are right. But I have used about 120 Seagate 2TB 2.5inch portable into production this year, and some 3TB 4TB , desktop 6TB 8TB 10TB , none has failed me.

        • +1

          Well that's just luck. They'll all fail. Eventually.

      • Yeah it happens with every brand. The first ever hardrive I bought was a WD and it died within a couple of weeks and when I sent it off to be replaced it died about a week later.. meanwhile the Seagate that had been in constant use in my pc for over 6 years is still chugging along just fine so I guess it's just the luck of the draw whether you get a bad hardrive or not.

    • My 4 dead seagate and 6 alive WD hard drives beg to differ.

      • +1

        The ones with porn have more access and maybe die earlier…

    • I really don’t get people negging others recently without a reason. Smells like trolls on ozb.

  • -4

    To be totally honest, I only need less than 1TB for my drive. Never even reach 20% of the capacity from the past years .

    • +5

      Really useful to know your experience and usage ….

      • +2

        Not to mention his total honesty

    • Name doesn't check out

  • +1

    Seagate vs WD…tbh, they're as good as each other. None of them are 100% reliable so I dunno why pplz wax lyrical for one or the other. Ultimately it's personal preference (mind set, maybe) at the end of the day.

    • Agreed. I have many Seagate, WD and Samsung drives and luckily none of them failed on me. Really can't say one's better than the other.

  • -2
    • Different purpose.

    • +3

      Portable vs Desktop.
      Deja vu 😂

  • I didn't notice brand…original comment removed lol.
    Anyone know if the seagate 3tb is shuckable for use in og xbox with sata adapter?

    • just use a 3.5" with sata adapter but afaik 2tb is the limit

  • Geez that was a painful process buying through centercom's website and paypal combo. Got sent back and forth to paypal 3 times. I hope I've only been charged once. Will be checking my paypal acct.

  • amazing price!

  • I wouldn't touch any external hard drive with a 10ft pole, unless it's solid-state.
    Disk based hard drives are inherently fragile objects and require extreme precision and accuracy to operate, so making them portable is a recipe for disaster.
    My WD external HDD died recently, and no matter what I try, nothing will read the drive, so I can't get the data off it using any file recovery tools.
    In addition, WD is so thoughtful in their design and don't use a standard SATA plug, so you can't take them out and plug them into a PC SATA port.

    • I've had a WD portable fail on me but the only way I could get the data off was to use a USB 2.0 port so it would read. Also use crystal disk for software. Took about 2 days for 2tb to transfer. Maybe try that?

      • It's coming up in disk utility, however, it makes a click sound when being read and won't initialise or anything (windows says there is a hardware failure), so nothing can read from it.

        • It's likely a head failure. The hard drive head needs to be replaced. Unfortunately, recovery company will charge you a fair amount for that type of repair. A donor drive is required and they need to operate in a dust free environment (to swap the head). My mate recently had a similar issue for his old hard drive, had to get it recovered by a professional - every file was recovered but it was pricey.

        • Yeah had a similar issue with my drive clicking and not responding. Maybe one in five times it would show up in Explorer but couldn't transfer anything and it would disappear straight away. If you know a bit about PC's it worth a try to get the data. Install crystal disk (its free open source software) and plug the drive into a usb 2 port only on the PC. For whatever reason it seems to be able to get the details from legacy ports. In crystal disk find the drive and select where you want to copy it to. It runs through DOS. Pretty sure there's a few how to guides for using the software online. If that doesn't work then only way to do it is to pull it apart and try salvage the data.

    • Solid sate drives aren't necessary better, especially when it comes to data recovery. In fact, all 4 SSD failures I experienced were complete sudden death. I couldn't read any of them even using native SATA connections. 3 of them had Samsung NAND based flash (though only 1 is Samsung brand SSD - that one lasted only 11 months with very little use). In fact, some cheapo SSDs are quite bad as a cold storage solution (i.e. store data, then don't use that SSD for months).

      Hard drive failures - 3.5 inch drives tend to be slightly more recoverable. 2.5 inch drives do have a higher chance to suffer board failure - which requires a donor board + BIOS flash chip transplant. Yes, you do need to handle hard drives more carefully, and WD 2.5 inch portable HDDs do have soldered USB, rather than SATA to USB bridge. However, professional recovery company can still do recovery on those.

      It's basically determine whether it is board failure or head/cylinder failure. If board, you need a donor board (doesn't matter whether it is SATA or USB, you still need one). Head/cylinder failure - get Pros to recover if you must have the data back.

      Regular backups of important files is needed regardless of the storage you use. You just need to experience 1 SSD failure and you will realise SSD failure is just as bad.

      • Of course, it's just a case that traditional hard disks are fragile by nature, so making them 'portable' is just asking for something terrible to happen.

        • +1

          We had laptops running traditional hard drives for years. Most consoles still use hard drives. SSDs are better for recent, in progress project files. For medium to long term storage, SSDs are not cost effective. Two of my broken SSDs both refuse to work after being offline for 1-2 months (good luck trying to hear anything from an SSD to figure out what's going on).

          The danger of relying on SSDs for portable storage is that cheaper SSDs use lower grade flash chips. Some of them have poor sustained write speed. Also, flash has limited write cycles.

          I have an old SSD in which the SMART health rating rates the SSD quality at 60% based on wear level, write cycles, power on hours. Would you really trust such SSD for important files? Also had an SSD setup to do dual boot, one day, with slightly unstable voltage, it lost all data. Lucky it was a system drive so no important data lost, but still a pain. My colleague had a similar issue with his MBP, he had to restore his most recent backup from Mac TimeMachine, but still lost a fair amount of files.

          True, HDDs can also suffer from sudden deaths, though sometimes there are some prior warning signs. My mate's HDD had minor hickups a few times before the head completely went bad, but he ignored those warning signs… so he had to get a pro to recovery the data.

          • @netsurfer: That is more likely to be the case with older (>5 year old) SSDs. SSDs used to have poor longevity, however, for most reputable brands, that (shouldn't) be the case anymore, this is also the case for write cycles. I would say this is not the case for USB drives, as these still often have low-quality flash memory inside.

            Consoles only use HDDs due to them being cheaper (particularly when the current generation launched), I'll be surprised if the next generation don't use SSDs.

            I think the issue with portable hard drives is they are easier to throw around due to their size (versus a laptop computer), making them more susceptible to accidental damage. I don't refute that for long term storage/archiving, a hard drive in a safe environment is a good option, however, I wouldn't use a 2.5" portable HDD for this (for the same reason I wouldn't use a USB drive).

            It sucks to hear the issues you've had with SSDs, it honestly sounds like you have similar bad experiences to me, just with the other technology!

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