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^ It would be more for when the drives are moved around outside of their shipping packaging (e.g., stacked on a shelf at Microcenter) or during system assembly. Should still protect the PCB fairly well even if heavily vented/slotted.

Waco wrote:

The Egg wrote:

No data loss or errors in either case, though I haven't checked the SMART stats on the current drive. I'll give that a look, as well as getting some actual performance numbers once I'm back home.

I would imagine they're remapping sectors, retrying reads/writes, etc.
A quick fix for some of that is to read the entire drive end to end a few times. It'll suss out all of the weak sectors and force them to be rewritten.

There turned out to be no mention of anything meaningful in the SMART stats, just a very gradual loss of transfer speed over time. I ended up retiring the drive to external use for a friend, but it's not the first time this has happened with a WD Black.

The Egg wrote:

^ It would be more for when the drives are moved around outside of their shipping packaging (e.g., stacked on a shelf at Microcenter) or during system assembly. Should still protect the PCB fairly well even if heavily vented/slotted.

If Microcenter or the system assembler is handling the drive roughly enough that physical protection of the PCB is required, you're screwed regardless; mechanical HDDs do not like rough handling. And if the cover is heavily vented/slotted it will not provide much in the way of ESD protection either.

just brew it! wrote:

The Egg wrote:

^ It would be more for when the drives are moved around outside of their shipping packaging (e.g., stacked on a shelf at Microcenter) or during system assembly. Should still protect the PCB fairly well even if heavily vented/slotted.

If Microcenter or the system assembler is handling the drive roughly enough that physical protection of the PCB is required, you're screwed regardless; mechanical HDDs do not like rough handling. And if the cover is heavily vented/slotted it will not provide much in the way of ESD protection either.

I suppose. Out of habit, whenever I'm working with drives outside their packaging, I always set them down with the PCB facing up. It's not a big deal, I just always found it odd that they couldn't add 2¢ of plastic to the bottom of what is often a several hundred dollar item (or more, historically).

As long as you're setting them down on a clean, flat surface nothing is going to touch the PCB or components. So don't set the drive down on top of the drive mounting screws you just removed when you unmounted the drive, or that half-eaten sandwich left over from lunch, and you should be fine.

TBH, laying it PCB-side down probably affords some additional ESD protection for the electronics, since all exposed conductors and components except for the power and data connectors are covered by the metal frame that way.

Well guys, I kind of put off purchasing a 4TB drive at the moment due not needing the extra storage space just yet among other concerns. On top of this, I also like having the near silent operation of my system due to having SSDs as well. But thanks for the commits and help. I may however buy a x300 4TB later on this year.

A big 4TB in a SATA/USB3.x sled (and a clamshell storage caddy) makes for a lovely backup device.

Are you guys happy with Toshiba external HDD's? I am planning to buy 2-4TB external HDD soon and I am thinking about WD Passport and Toshiba. Not sure which one to choose, opinions over the internet are very different

Johanexpu wrote:

Are you guys happy with Toshiba external HDD's? I am planning to buy 2-4TB external HDD soon and I am thinking about WD Passport and Toshiba. Not sure which one to choose, opinions over the internet are very different

What's your use case? Periodic backup then powered-off, or full-time attached and on-line?

Captain Ned wrote:

Johanexpu wrote:

Are you guys happy with Toshiba external HDD's? I am planning to buy 2-4TB external HDD soon and I am thinking about WD Passport and Toshiba. Not sure which one to choose, opinions over the internet are very different

What's your use case? Periodic backup then powered-off, or full-time attached and on-line?

Beyond that, I'd strongly recommend buying a cheap USB enclosure and putting a drive in yourself. There seems to be a massive upcharge for "external" drives - they're just internal drives in an overpriced box.

I've discovered just the opposite, Waco.

In many cases, a removable drive will sell for less than the cost of a bare drive and a decent ($20+) enclosure combined. There's a cottage industry of people buying on-sale/refurbished external drives and pulling them for internal or RAID use, in fact.

EDIT: Just spot checked. Refurb 3TB bare drives and refurbished 3TB USB external drives cost exactly the same. So you'd be getting the enclosure for nothing.

I've frequently seen external drives priced below the cost of a bare drive + enclosure. Sometimes they're even less than the cost of just the bare drive (go figure).

moshpit wrote:

techguy wrote:

I have 9 (yes 9) of these in my media server.  The 4TB 7200RPM X300, that is.  No failures yet, system is on 24x7 and has been since January of this year.  Drives are fast, reliable, and cheap.  That pretty much shouldn't exist...

I just wanna say this made me feel a LOT better about my incoming 6Tb X300. You are correct, in the hard drive world fast, reliable, and cheap never ALL go together at once, or at least, usually don't.

Hey Mosh, it's Shaidar I actually have 11 of these now and still zero issues! Fan-freaking-tastic drives.

techguy wrote:

moshpit wrote:

techguy wrote:

I have 9 (yes 9) of these in my media server.  The 4TB 7200RPM X300, that is.  No failures yet, system is on 24x7 and has been since January of this year.  Drives are fast, reliable, and cheap.  That pretty much shouldn't exist...

I just wanna say this made me feel a LOT better about my incoming 6Tb X300. You are correct, in the hard drive world fast, reliable, and cheap never ALL go together at once, or at least, usually don't.

Hey Mosh, it's Shaidar I actually have 11 of these now and still zero issues! Fan-freaking-tastic drives.

OH! LOL! Heya bro! Yup, yer the one who suggested this beasty to me to begin with, and I LOVE it! Hell, under 200 bucks for high performance 6Tb? KILLER deal!

moshpit wrote:

techguy wrote:

moshpit wrote:

I just wanna say this made me feel a LOT better about my incoming 6Tb X300. You are correct, in the hard drive world fast, reliable, and cheap never ALL go together at once, or at least, usually don't.

Hey Mosh, it's Shaidar I actually have 11 of these now and still zero issues! Fan-freaking-tastic drives.

OH! LOL! Heya bro! Yup, yer the one who suggested this beasty to me to begin with, and I LOVE it! Hell, under 200 bucks for high performance 6Tb? KILLER deal!

Haha, I had a good laugh when I saw your response to me here. Always nice to see a friendly face. I've had anywhere from 8-11 of these in operation 24x7 since January last year with maybe 3 weeks total downtime for hardware changes during that period. So they've basically been on for 15+ months now with no inkling of failure. Cannot recommend these drives enough.

I have only the one so far, but it's been stellar. Quite pleased with it. I'm still bouncing back and forth between it and my new 960 Pro. They both blow my mind for different reasons. The X300 because... 6Tb! And the 960 Pro because sustained 3GB/s read speeds should never be sneezed at

It pretty good for me. I had one before and it worked fine until I was able to resell it.

Puolitwer wrote:

It pretty good for me. I had one before and it worked fine until I was able to resell it.

If it was so good then why resold it?

I started this thread almost a year ago and folks are still posting to it. This must be a popular model.

whm1974 wrote:

I started this thread almost a year ago and folks are still posting to it. This must be a popular model.

Because Newegg pretty much has a sale rotation on the different capacities, making them very attractive. Warranty is more than 1 year, decent performance, perhaps at a bit of a noise disadvantage, but not all will be bothered by it.