Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsDon't buy anything under 8TB!
Reviewed in Canada on April 29, 2021
Note: This is about the drive inside the enclosure, the enclosure is terrible on its own with any drive as it does nothing to keep the drive cool. So don't leave it on longer than 1 hour inside the enclosure unless you have external cooling like a fan pointed towards it. (applies to all WD 3.5" external models, 2.5" ones seem decent but still can run hot)
If you buy anything under 8TB in ANY WD 3.5" external storage you'll get a WD Blue inside, I bought it on December 27, 2017 wanting a white label drive, and it's officially dead today yet worked 2-3 days ago with no warning signs from HD Sentinel or awkward noises on last use. Upon power it seems to work fine for about 15-30 seconds then makes a loud squeak noise, then try's again about 30 seconds later with the same result, the platter is still spinning so it is likely the head that has failed in some way, and upon powering off you can hear a mild squealing sound as (I'm guessing) the head goes back to its park position. It's always been on a surge protector/UPS, I removed it from its enclosure so the heat factor from the lack of airflow in the case isn't the reason either (the cases are really bad for heat removal), it was never dropped, nor shaken or anything that could have caused internal damage while on.
You might be thinking what is wrong with WD Blues, well I will tell you what's wrong with them. Head parking, anything after 1TB up to 6TB (or any future drives exceeding 6TB likely for the Blue family) have very aggressive head parking measures similar to their old Green models (about 5 seconds then it parks, to "save energy"), it's why many call the WD Blues 1TB+ WD Green rebranded. In the image I provided is a WD Green from 2012/2013(top) that I use for files I don't care about and usually idles a lot but on 24/7, vs a Toshiba drive from 2012/2013(middle) with about equal usage and on 24/7 (no forced parking via firmware) vs the 6TB unit(bottom) which was used fairly frequently but was not on 24/7. Last data point for the 6TB was on the 18th of April, however was on till around the end of the weekend.
I also have a 8TB drive from either Passport or MyBook with almost 19,000 hours with fewer than 2000 parks, yet weirdly another one (ending with EMAZ) has 24,000 parks with almost 4,000 hours which I think is an error however I'll be keeping an eye on it to prevent further potential data loss. The lost data on this drive is not worth recovery/repair costs(it's either reobtain able or I have backups), so I won't be doing that, instead it gets to be put on the shelf of shame with its useless siblings (2 WD greens, one with only a few hundred hours that's not dead but removed when the other failed), and all the technically speaking dead drives most of which outlasted it.
Storage Capacity 0/5 It's dead.
Value for Money 0/5 It's dead.
Noise level 5/5 It's dead quite, because it's dead, unless I try turning it on then it's 0/5 because of the squeak.
SEARIOUSLY DON'T BUY BLUE HDDs! (or anything that ships with them) You will regret it.
If you buy a head parking drive (from any company, they usually promote them as green or energy saving) remember this the drive that died consumes about 0.6A*5V or about 3-4 watts, and head parking doesn't mean you're saving energy as I've noticed the drive usually keeps spinning for fast read right response for a minute at least. Lets assume 90% of the on time will be idle and it used 0 energy at 19,000 hours thats 68 KwH saved, or about $17 at 25 cents a KwH over the 3.5 years I had it. However let's be realistic here, that likely WASN'T the case, was it worth the savings? No, no it is not, considering data recovery costs are in the hundreds to thousands, and remember I HAD NO WARNNING!