10TB WD Black: Fast Hard Drive Upgrade

[@u1f98a]

3:59: I think you have red and blue mixed up on the disk speed. WD Blue drives are 7200rpm and WD Red drives are 5400 rpm.

[@ExplainingComputers]

My bad with the data in the table, only Red Pro drives are 7200rpm, with standard Red drives being 5400rpm as you say. I checked all of the spec sheets last week, but was clearly caught in "large drive thinking" mode! Oh well. On the same basis I also clearly missed in my reading that there are some Blue drives of 2TB capacity or less that are 7200rpm also as you say. However, all Blue drives over 2TB are 5400rpm or 5640 (which is why it says "c.5400" in the table). The Blue spec sheet is here: documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library/en_us/assets/public/western-digital/product/internal-drives/wd-blue-hdd/product-brief-western-digital-wd-blue-pc-hdd.pdf

[@PatrikKron]

Worth noting also is that WD sometimes says drives are "5400 rpm class", that sometimes means 7200 rpm. That's the case with some external harddrives and probably also some internal ones.

[@EldaLuna]

there is 5400 rpm blue drives though i have 3 of them. the 4tb 64mb ones are 5400rpm but there is some what older or scarce models that are 7200rpm like i got in another system.

[@rollover36]

Theere are 7200rpm RED Drives, the pro ones

[@ExplainingComputers]

@@EldaLuna Yes, as I noted above, only the smaller Blue drives are 7200rpm.

[@tonma]

I'd never seen a retail packaged HDD, this was actually an interesting unboxing

My first hd in 1990 = Box, manual printed in high quality, disquetes, iDE cables, and... 20 megas

[@louistournas120]

@ Coleco Nintendo? I have a Coleco Gemini.

[@joesmith1810]

yes, very interesting. Whenever I get a drive from my local computer store, it always just comes in the antistatic bag without a box or anything.

[@louistournas120]

@@joesmith1810 Those are called OEM drives, which means that they are for PC assemblers like Dell and so on. No need for a box or manual and they are a few bucks cheaper. But anyone is allowed to buy them and the warranty is respected by the HDD maker.

[@tranquilitybase8100]

I didn't even know retail boxes for an internal HDD's where a thing ether. 😳

[@rickybryan7158]

It doesn't matter how old or Professional you are, opening up a shiny new HDD/ SSD/ SSHD the feeling is always the same as your first purchase. You can hear the excitement in his voice. So genuine!

[@phodder]

NVMe on the other hand are pretty tame to open.

[@zboy303]

I've had many Seagate drives fail on me over the last roughly 10 years, but the Toshiba and WD drives are all still going strong.

[@guillaumegaudin694]

I had an 80GB Toshiba SATA drive way back in around 2005, it failed, was sent back, the new one also failed, was sent back and I immediately sold the third one as soon as I got it.

[@Josh-b3c]

Personally for me Seagate have not been the most reliable

[@Dragonheng]

Have 2 15 year old HDD´s from Samsung and Western Digitel

[@dant5464]

I've had two WD Blue 2.5" disks die. Not gradually, they just stopped. One was in use when the heads decided to stick to the platters! [Edit] I also have a 320GB WD Black 2.5" from 2009 which is still working great - originally in a now-dead laptop which went to university with me, so it was moved around constantly.

[@CarolHaynesJ]

Had numerous disasters with Seagate and now only use WD Black

[@hans-joachimschroder5469]

It´s not for the topic, it´s for the person. Explanations in such a fine mannor, both competent and full of humour. You really light up my day. Nice!

[@ExplainingComputers]

Thanks! 😃

[@dreammfyre]

PC components in nice boxes still kinda excites me lol. Even if it’s just a hard drive.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Me also!

[@slimplynth]

Imagine rummaging around Chis' IT equipment drawers, ideally as part of a lucky dip scenario.. I bet he's collected some awesome stuff over the years 😁

[@Sc0pee]

And it makes me sad since its just a unnecessary waste of natural resources.

[@rm71991]

Your pathetic if you get excited over a box

[@slimplynth]

@@rm71991 calm yourselves, packaging has quickly become carbon zero over the past couple of years.. as for insults, if nobody is listening, does anyone care (about your spelling/grammar)?

[@wasitacatisaw83]

6:28 The question on everyone's lips: "Is Stanley ok?" Brilliant video as ever Chris. I've always been a fan of WD drives. I've got 4x 3TB WD Red drives in my NAS running in RAID-5 and they've not missed a beat in about 5 years.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Stanley survived!

[@paulstubbs7678]

Or did key leave any cutting remarks afterwards

[@greaser5691]

My thought was that Stanley was so giddy with success he fell down... :)

[@onepalproductions]

@@greaser5691 Nah, Stanley like to drink in the afternoon.

[@reggiep75]

Where's Martin the screwdriver tho? Everyone else appeared, but no Martin 😶..... 😂

[@RedLine_Renesis]

The way you label things. I used to be like that but then I grew out of it. My gramps was truly an advocate of labeling. He'd go as far as labeling a fridge as such.

[@chrismorgan441]

Nooo! Stanley fell on the floor! I loathe those seals that wrap over the tabs and slots of the box. I understand having a degree of security, but I just want to get to the hardware that I purchased without destroying the packaging or losing portions of my anatomy. Good Lord, we nearly lost Stanley this week... Be safe, Chris. Thanks for the videos.

[@Supernaut2000]

So glad to see Stanley and Mr. Scissors team back at work! I hope Stanley recovers from his fall off the desk, poor guy. It is good to know your team are unaffected by Covid! No masking required!

[@djzio]

Professor Barnatt, I wanted to tell you I totally enjoy EC, and that yours is one of *the* best out there, bar none. EC was a saving grace while I was laid up in hospital after having a major surgery, and helped me get through it. Thank you!

[@ExplainingComputers]

Thanks for this, very nice to hear. Hopefully you are healing well now. Take care.

[@Waifu4Life]

Large HDDs are so underrated in a world of SSDs. While yes, main OS and main files are on a SSD, but I've backed-up all of my DVD and Blu-Ray movies, TV series and Anime in lossless MKVs on External HDDs and one of them is a 12TB.

[@jasonmonk7336]

Its also nice to have something with some physical heft to it too. SSDs can be blown away like a feather 🤣

[@abzhuofficial]

@@jasonmonk7336 They didn't original call HDDs "mass storage devices" for no reason you know. 😜 Stewart Chiefet from The Computer Chronicles talks about HDDs, but that's from the 1980s, back when megabytes dropped jaws faster than apples from a tree

[@scowell]

Flash memory is a wear item... my philosophy is to use SSD for OS and HD for everything else. Harder to zap a HD... and physical recovery can be attempted! On Backblaze at work of course.

[@abzhuofficial]

@@scowell That's the view I take as well, as HDDs are more storage-focused anyway, and are obviously cheaper per byte than SSDs.

[@feynstein1004]

I see you're a man of culture as well

[@DiscoverSRQ]

This guy is still living in the 80's with that desk setup. I love it!

[@Bobcat665]

I've had my 6TB WD Black for a few years and it's truly the best piece of mass storage I've ever had.

[@fotografm]

Great video, Chris. I love the honest direct communication and lack of clickbait and flashy distracting music and video effects. Please also provide a link to the Icy Box enclosure.

[@MonsterConrad]

I don't understand how I've gone from high octane nitro levels of content to being genuinely interested in everything he says. Probably because it's about computers, but still. This is really cool. Thank you for the information!!! This is a massive help

[@sprint955st]

Just watched a bloke do something I’ve done myself maybe 20 times before, but still enjoyed every minute. ‘Yep he’ll do this now…mhmm yep now that…yep good.’ Nice one Chris.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Thanks 👍

[@grotekleum]

Ah, a new drive. Takes me back to when PC World was a geeks cavern of treasures, when you had to know what a port, interrupt and device number was, and how to set jumpers and all sorts of other 'black arts' ... sigh. Thanks for sharing.

[@k.b.tidwell]

Setting DIP switches...tiny little clicks you felt more than heard, but soon the fun would begin.

[@ndupontnet]

The 1TB WD green from my older NAS has literally spinned 24/7 from Nov'2010 until last week-end when I finally decided to upgrade to a 2x14TB WD EX2 ultra (which uses red drives). Pretty reliable hardware indeed.

[@ndupontnet]

But not to worry, it was seconded by offline storage and a 4TB WD Mirror NAS

[@greghilton7797]

I am also a video editor with loads of archived files. I went for 2 x 18 TB WD Gold HDDs, which after formatting, both drives came down to 16TB. The reason why I chose the Gold series enterprise drives is the 5year warranty, 512 MB cache and the fact that I never turn my computer off. I didn't mind that it took ages to transfer the files across from a stack of external WD drives that vary in age up to about 10 years old, the job is done and everything is now at my finger tips.

[@mattclarenzmendoza7127]

I love the fact that you still use squared monitors and old pc case on your rig.

[@TranceTrousers]

I find it absolutely staggering how far computer hard disk capacity has come over the years, from a few tens of megabytes back in the 1980s to several terabytes today!

[@ExplainingComputers]

Agreed!

[@Tony-Stockport]

I remember drooling over an ad in Computer Shopper in the 90's for a 9GB hard drive for £3,000. I wish I'd cut out and kept that ad. The kids today don't know they're born!

[@parkerbohnn]

What are ya!!??

[@Iamkitkatbar]

my first PC had a 64mb GPU in 2003 now im at a 16GB Radeon 6800 xt.

[@jec_ecart]

But data is growing faster than storage!

[@Musha-Fyre]

I hope that large SSD/NVME drives would be very affordable some day. For huge files SSD/NVME drives are beasts. In addition they'd outlast mechanical drives.

[@monchiabbad]

It's a very good enclosure indeed. Fully metal it conducts all the potential heat away from the drive. You can even attach a heat sink to it to keep it cool under the filming lights or during hot summer days.

[@fazleemonty9126]

Your work desk is a hybrid of modern and classic computer parts. So awesome!

[@saintuk70]

Aside from the costs you mention, I've always found WD to build reliable and robust HDs - compared to my Seagate experiences, which I've had many since the late '90's , they've been really troublesome. (I realise people will have differing experienced). Just as an example, I've actually got a WD 120gb HD from the 2000's that works still.

[@darthwiizius]

Working in the consumer electronics industry I found that in consumer recording devices when hard drives failed they tended to be either WD blue drives or other brands. By switching them to WD black drives we never saw them come back through the door so I set a policy that we fitted Black drives as standard, one of my better decisions.

[@johnm2012]

@@darthwiizius A couple of disadvantages of using WD Blacks in that application are that they run hotter and make more acoustic noise, while the extra performance is not needed. The actuators can make quite a rattly sound when they're doing a lot of seeking, such as when recording one programme while playing another.

[@darthwiizius]

@@johnm2012 Of course everything depends on use case scenario. Where I was buying the drives that really wasn't an issue. I have noticed the 8 year old 3.5 legacy one in my PC can start getting a bit noisy when it's at 90% capacity but I don't really mind too much.

[@geraldmcmullon2465]

I have 2000 Seagate SCSI drives still running, although that PC is not heavily used (old XP to use old SCSI film scanners) that can't move files to any Windows 10 PC but one Windows 10 laptop. Seagate hard drives - SATA 1.5 and 2Tb ones got half replaced under warranty. Quarter failed after warranty ran out. The WD Red 2Tb have done a little better but then die after testing for corrupt files and outside warranty. I then got Toshiba P300. Less corrupted files reported needing recovery from backup. When failing they like to do so when doing a back up and so master and copy both get broken files.

[@georgesmith3022]

at work we still have 160gb WD blue drives and still work. But the new drives fail more frequently. Like in everything quality has brought down

[@artysanmobile]

The WD Black 3.5” drives have been, for me, 100%. I have twelve of them, used for primary recording from my Pro Tools HD systems. I have used them really hard, filled and wiped, over and over probably in the hundreds of times for television series work, 24 hours a day 7 days a week for months on end. I use them in a 4 slot rack mounted eSATA dock and I don’t know when they fail because I have never had one fail in years. Not even a peep of a problem. Just years of perfection. I’ve never seen any other brand/model work so reliably.

[@5argetech56]

Stanley the Knife has been around for many years.... He can take an occasional drop on the floor and still be able to make the cut! 😁

[@ExplainingComputers]

He can indeed!

[@heedmywarning2792]

But does he maintain his edge against the competition?

[@jimlynch9390]

@@heedmywarning2792 He is renewable!

[@jonorgames9880]

Seriously sharp comment there!

[@jackgerberuae]

If Stanley fell on his toe, it would have elicited more than an “O dear” 🥩

[@TruthLivesNow]

Christopher, when you started I looked at that older looking computer, even with a floppy drive, and you said, "6 TB," and I thought, "Christopher is using the same size Hard Drive that is in my older computer." Then, wait a minute, that is a 6.4 GB Hard Drive I have in that thing. A 1996 Sony Vaio Pentium II 300 MHz, upgraded to 190 MB RAM, and a 6.4 GB original Hard Drive, and it is a Western Digital. That hard drive my wife used for her business is 25 years old and is working perfect...LOL! Now, my newer Laptop and Computer both have 250 GB SSD, just to let everybody know I am not stuck in the dark ages. Thank you for explaining how to initialize the Drive in Windows 10!

[@nonoyorbusness]

10 terrabytes in a standard hard drive size, I remember when 10 megabytes was the same size and shape as a fridge, and sat proudly in the middle of the office!

[@ExplainingComputers]

Those were the days! :)

[@souravas]

I didn't knew I had to uncheck quick format for first time use. Thanks for your informative video.

[@SJM2]

I had a SanDisk SSD fail outside of warranty and WD replaced it FOC with a higher spec larger capacity SSD - paid postage both ways and even emailed me the shipping labels. Best customer service experience ever...

[@mrkitty777]

I had a Kingston USB drive locked in read only mode with all my financials on it. It was brand new and very expensive then. Kingston said they would swap drive if I would send it to them. Now which sane person gives Kingston all financials documents just to swap a usb drive? So I didn't use Kingston warranty because I find it dumb to give Kingston my financials and insurance documents. They make good memory modules though. And yes I tried everything to study how to unlock a read only usb drive. Including studying the chipset and the flash chips. With different operating systems.

[@CompleteAnimation]

I like how in your videos you qualify your decisions by saying you know that there are other options, but you like things a certain way and are willing to pay to have it just the way you like.

[@saturno_tv]

Here I am, back again. First for the 30th time. Good stuff as always. 10TB Hard Drive. Here I got my NAS built over an Odroid XU-4 thanks to those many reviews Mr Barnatt has showed us. Here we have another good option. Nice sunday.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Greetings -- another gold medal! Good to hear about the XU4 NAS. A great looking SBC! :)

[@ericinla65]

PURCHASED Two 14TB Western Digital drives for $199 each on sale. Work great

[@TheBlueThird]

I must be the lucky one here; I've never had a drive fail. I've got a 80GB Toshiba from 2005 still running. I only replaced it with WD black for more storage. WD drives are reliable and made very well.

[@DJPenguino51]

I have had used Western Digital since the year 2000 and have had good luck with all of the drives since then.

[@vincei4252]

I bought a WD 10TB drive on Amazon last week. It arrived the next day in a static bag inside a plastic bag. Yes, that's it. It wasn't even boxed, just inside two flimsy plastic pouches with no shock protection at all. I put it in a box and initiated an immediate return. Unbelievable, it's as though the world gets dumber by the day.

[@ExplainingComputers]

I have had a similar experience a few years ago purchasing drives from Amazon.

[@jamesvelvet3612]

You most likely purchased an OEM drive, not a retail version. OEM drives are shipped 20 pcs to a carton and are bare drives. Retail versions are boxed individually. Many Newegg and Amazon resellers do this since the drives are cheaper. If you contact WD make sure it has an warranty (give them your S/N).

[@dant5464]

I had four Toshiba 3TB disks from Amazon in one order, each were in an anti static bag, in a padded cardboard box, and those four boxes in an outer box with more padding. This was just over 8 years ago and they're still working fine.

[@caturdaynite7217]

Careful buying these on amazon, if you buy an OEM drive you may not get the warranty you think you are getting. I buy direct from WD and get the full warranty.

[@ronniemcguire]

I had a WD drive for years and never had a problem, then loaded the WD software and had problems from day 1, from errors to installing a virtual cd drive on my computer which you cannot get rid of even by uninstalling the software, I no longer use WD crap

[@raintownarcher68]

When I see EC's freshly uploaded video, I know it's going to be a good time

[@Phil-Sands]

Great video as always Christopher, I always buy WD drives as I have had trouble before with Toshiba and Seagate failing after 1 year, I've just bought an 18TB WD Elements external drive for £259.99 to back up my Plex server which has 7 WD Red 3TB drives, all of which are second hand from eBay and are dated 2013 and are still running perfectly without any errors.

[@Godflakes]

your aesthetic reminds me of the BBC tapes my dad had in his VHS library, i love it

[@DreQueary]

A data hoarder's dream. I only have 4 TB WD Reds on my NAS and filled up 40% in the past 4 years. And much of that is just snapshots. I guess if you're doing video work, 10TB might not seem like a lot. Time for the 4 petabytes WDs 😁 Anyway, great video as always.

[@ohasis8331]

Lol and I thought I was hot shlt getting my first 1TB drive recently :)

[@mrkitty777]

My hamster hoards too a lot.

[@Juan_deep]

Usually dont watch long videos but you did such a great job really like the 80s theme

[@adelphus515]

Fun fact, the WD Black drives share some internal components with the WD Red drives... Better heat dissipation and vibration resistance... Those puppies can be stacked together without issues on the long run however, they are not built to sustain 24/7 read/write workloads like the Red and Purple are... They run quite a bit hotter as well... The Black Nvme drives are speed demons... 3.5GB/sec read and 3GB/sec write in PCIe 3.0... Haven't seen a loading screen in anything in years... Major Windows Updates takes less than a minute to complete as well...

[@volvo09]

I have an older 80gb black drive, I kept it because it was unique... 3.5" 10k rpm data drive, with very loud thumpy seeks (my favorite). It's in a factory aluminum 5.25 heatsink adapter tray.

[@FlyboyHelosim]

OK but there's so many more factors to take into consideration when talking about Windows updates, not least internet speed. And haven't seen a loading screen in years? That's a pretty bold claim seeing as many games' loading screens are not actually indicative of how fast a game takes to load. Some are hard-baked durations of time for the sake of showing game art or tips, etc.

[@adelphus515]

@@volvo09 At 10 000Rpm, that's a Velociraptor drive, not a black... WD Black never went past 7200rpm... The 'Raptors were never part of the Black family... The heatsink is called "ice pack" for some reasons, even if it was hot like hell 🤣 Those 80Gb were Dell/HP exclusives back then, consumer market raptors were all 74Gb.

[@HardHeadMilitary]

I only have nvme in my current build. Id like a fast HDD with larger storage, but currently i have a 970 evo nvme 1TB and and the Black nvme by WD I would like to upgrade to a 2TB, like you I have not seen any load screens

[@volvo09]

@@adelphus515 you are right! Velociraptor... Guess I need to pull it out again and refresh my memory. It did come from an HP. DC7800 or 7900 slim desktop.. I took a bunch of those heatsinks to use as adapters, that was when I did desktop support.

[@dezmondwhitney1208]

This is technology explained clearly, so that I , amongst many others I believe, can navigate upgrades safely and optimally using quality parts too. Thank You.

[@FlyboyHelosim]

On the subject of why to buy an internal drive and manually put it inside an external enclosure, internal drives are normally considerably less cost than a dedicated external hard drive. It also means, as Chris has done here, you can easily upgrade the drive as a separate enclosure is designed to be taken apart where a complete one isn't.

[@Slada1]

Before chia, it was actually cheaper to buy external drive and shuck it to get internal drive. But you need to avoid SHR drives.

[@FlyboyHelosim]

@@Slada1 Yeah shucking was a thing at one point in order to get cheaper drives, still is in some cases. What's chia?

[@Slada1]

@@FlyboyHelosim chia is crypto that uses proof of space (HDD, SSD) instead proof of work (graphics card). It inflated HDD prices so much :(

[@FlyboyHelosim]

@@Slada1 Oh right, I've never heard of that before. Thanks.

[@Graham_Rule]

I'm most impressed by your workspace. I couldn't see any obvious passwords on any of those post-it notes. :D I look forward to watching many more years of your videos.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Thanks Graham -- and no passwords written down anywhere!

[@allluckyseven]

Poor Stanley, I hope he's alright!

[@RyanStone143]

Seeing the Cinefex magazines on your shelf always makes me smile.

[@piwex69]

This reminds me my first hard drive ever, a 10 MB (decimal mega-bytes) 5,1/4 half height that came with the IBM XT clone, a drive from Cogito Systems, some obscure provider, while in fact it was the Seagate unit. What a time we live through - a milion times more capacity at hand!

[@ryanmalin]

My first was a 20mb with a 286 8/16mhz

[@ExplainingComputers]

The progress in storage is indeed amazing. I remember my first HDD being 20MB . . .

[@dougcox835]

And people of the time were marveling at how much data 10MB was and how it was such impressive technology as well. It becomes really apparent with more recent technology. It wasn't so long ago that a 1TB drive was amazing (and expensive).

[@altosack]

I still remember agonizing over the ~$275 my first hard drive cost, a 20MB WD drive in an 8MHz 8088 in 1985. That lasted me all the way through college and beyond, even after I upgraded it to a 40 MHz 386SX. I really don’t recall when I replaced it or with what.

[@okaro6595]

@@ExplainingComputers The speed has increased much slower so a full format takes now some 100 times longer than in the 80s.

[@Kyle1444]

Thank you Chris. I didnt know full format also scanned for bad sectors. That's a very good advice for a new drive, if it needs to be sent back for replacement, before taking into use.

[@rjblitz5871]

A small thing I thought was worth pointing out is that when you use crystaldiskmark for such large drives, you should change the test file size to 8gb and the number of runs to at least 3. That gives you a more accurate representation of the performance of the disk.

[@andic6676]

I do remember the first video..."6 Terra Byte Hard Drive!" you cried many times Chris! Glad you went for WD as I have had nothing but trouble with Seagates.

[@billythekido1414]

I do not know why but i still find HDDs exciting :)

[@rogerjewell4390]

Thanks

[@ExplainingComputers]

Thanks for your support Roger, most appreciated.

[@dr_ned_flanders]

Stanley the knife and Mr Scissors in one episode. Yeah!

[@nonoyorbusness]

It's a blockbuster!

[@Tabbie2408]

Not a fancy rig not a RGB fans, but you made it really abstractive content! Thanks you sir!

[@BatemanPsycho]

I appreciate that you explained the naming schemes for WD, as I didn't know the difference. Thinking of retiring one of my drives soon. Cheers!

[@filker0]

As far as the speed variation when you first copied files while the drive was directly connected to the test PC, it is probably due to the cache on the drive. The transfer over SATA is faster than the drive can handle, and along with the OS reading back info while writing, it causes the OS to have to wait for allocation and directory between some writes. Once the last file is scheduled, the read-back required decreases, and there is an increase in transfer rate.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Yes, it has to be a caching issue -- maybe the Windows cache too, as it occured well after the drive cache would have been full. And this does not explain the return to the higher speed later. I am wondering if Windows was getting on with something in the background in the middle of the copy.

[@pheelix-]

@@ExplainingComputers Can always increase file size in crystaldiskmark as well. or Use large storage compressed zipped files.

[@linuxrobotgeek]

About time you upgraded your storage after six years. It's pretty good it lasted that long before you had to upgrade it. I did the same for my external hard drive.

[@tech_jims]

Another great video Chris very informative as ever 🙂

[@ExplainingComputers]

Thanks 👍

[@supremelawfirm]

Another super clear presentation, Chris. GOOD ON YOU! We've had plenty of good luck with StarTech's external 3.5" enclosure: it's tool-less, so there is no need to fuss with screws or a screwdriver. It supports 2 interfaces: eSATA-III and USB 3.0 The latter is an important factor, if speed is a major concern. Even older USB 3.0 PCIe 1.0 adapters that have x1 edge connectors have a raw upstream data rate of 2.5GHz / 10 bits per byte = 250 MB/second MAX HEADROOM. PCIe 2.0 adapters double that to 5.0GHz / 10 bits per byte = 500 MB/second MAX HEADROOM, which far exceeds the current maximum data transfer rates of high-performance HDDs. So, the slightly lower speed with a USB 3.0 interface will be hardly noticeable, in practice. Alternatively, StarTech's enclosure also has an eSATA interface capable of 6.0GHz (SATA-III), or 600 MB/second with the 8b/10b "legacy frame" (one start bit + 8 data bits + one stop bit). As such, MAX HEADROOM will be limited by the HDD's raw speed when wired to a 6G interface. Same is true of newer USB standards e.g. 10.0GHz raw data rate and the 128b/132b jumbo frame. The controlling factor is the sheer rate at which raw data passes directly between a HDD's READ/WRITE recording heads and the spinning platter surfaces. Another good practice is to power all such external AC adapters ("power bricks") with a good UPS / battery backup unit. Otherwise, an external HDD will be at the mercy of the electric power utility. We like having the option to power an external enclosure OFF, and only switch it ON to do routine backups. This should greatly prolong the useful life of a high-performance HDD housed in such an external enclosure.

[@dant5464]

Regarding the "pre-made" WD external disks... the position of the rubber feet on them expects you to have them standing up on one end. Good for desk space, but terrible for accidentally knocking a spinning hard disk over! I added extra feet to the side of mine so I could lie it down.

[@brentsummers7377]

Especially if you have a cat that likes to jump up on the desk.

[@philb1466]

"I now have enough space for many more years of explaining computers videos" ... Music to my ears! 😁

[@briianhebert]

"Oh dear, Stanley's fallen on the floor.." Funny stuff right there! Haha! Anyway, thanks for the video! I too think you made a good choice going with the WD drive, I've had great luck with them over the years.

[@captainkeyboard1007]

This show is making me feel satisfied to hold on to my desktop Dell computer. I call it my "keyboard" because it is my powerful typewriter. I have been thinking about letting Dell change my hard disk drive with a solid-state drive. Before I had my Dell Keyboard, I had a Cybernet "Zero-Footprint" Windows microcomputer from 2002 until 2017. It had Western Digital hard disks, until 2017, because the motherboard died. Western Digital disk drives are fairly good. The last hard disk was a Seagate, model Barracuda. In my Dell Inspiron, the hard disk has lasted five years for me. Whenever I am finished using my keyboard for each evening, I shut it off by selecting "Shut Down" in Microsoft Windows 10 Pro. It gets the job done.

[@PenryMMJ]

Thanks for another informative and entertaining video. I understand that it is customary within the comments section to tell you that you purchased the wrong brand, or the wrong model, or that you are using the wrong operating system, or that you should have installed the drive differently, or that you should have made a video on a completely different subject instead. I'm going to do none of those things.

[@ExplainingComputers]

:)

[@ExplainingComputers]

:)

[@ChrisTech-Games]

What is unique is, WD Black drives above 4TB are all relabeled Hitachi Deskstars from them phasing out the brand in 2018. Pretty neat.

[@relaxingnature2617]

Hard drive and ssd videos are very interesting

[@RobertBoerner]

Excellent video as always. Stanley the knives and Mr. Scissors are always a welcome sight. I wonder if the unnamed screwdriver is jealous of the attention the other tools get...

[@kjrchannel1480]

In comparison I still have a few 3.5 IDE 1GB Quantum Fireballs in use . I compare them to my average sized MicroSD card at 16GB and I feel a bit cheated, but obviously they didn't exist back in the day. It makes one wonder how a person could manage the many 2GB partitions to use your drive fully under Fat16. It would have been nice to have MBR BIOSes patched to handle such large drives.

[@Sebastian-gs8cc]

After I did a full format I did format it again but using the fast format and it showed the local disk as yours I gave it a try right now and it worked.now I can I see my hdd.thank you anyway

[@Ancientreapers]

12:40 "Icy Box" I keep meaning to get a normal enclosure like that for my swap drives. The only enclosure I've picked up so far is an Rosewill RX304 which has a side cooling fan and front panel display for drive rpm, fan speed and temperature. I use that as my media drive storage which is used to play movies from the PC and Blu Ray. Not only functional but looks cool too :)

[@pheelix-]

That 12 year old enclosure is going to turn into a "Hot Box" with that new drive, Double (W) and (A) along with the rpm increase.

[@jasonmonk7336]

The Icy Box is a very nice enclosure 👍🏻

[@pheelix-]

@@jasonmonk7336 ya for low power/rpm drives that will sit idle for most of its life. Enclosures were built differently 12 years ago and enclosure cooling wasn't really on the mind. It will be fine if it is only being used for storage and has a power-off when idle option.

[@digitalizeddeath]

Nobody Explains Computers like you Chris Your the best my friend Absolutely love this channel

[@ExplainingComputers]

Thanks for your kind comments. :)

[@dizzydaisy909]

For anyone wondering why the final capacity of the hard drive is smaller in Windows than what it says on the box, it's because of a difference in how the capacity is counted. A 0 or 1 is a bit, and 8 bits is a byte, but for kilobytes and upwards, different operating systems count them differently. In Unix, Linux, and Mac OS, 1000 bytes is a kilobyte, whereas in Windows, it's 1024 bytes. That repeats for megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes, and so on. It's weird, but that's how it is.

[@MarkWhich]

Not just smaller here, so much is gone after a full-format. 9.09TB is more 9TB than 10TB.

[@dizzydaisy909]

@@MarkWhich That doesn't mean it's not there though, it's just counted weird. Here's the Wikipedia page on it: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#Multiple-byte_units y

[@NeonGenesisPlatinum]

Another fantastic video. Thanks again from Sydney Australia. I hope you have an excellent Christmas and 2022 is your best yet. Being a 70's kid and loving computers since I can remember, my first being a VIC20 and then an XT pro PC after that I just love the depth of your Videos. All the best mate

[@leightaylor8069]

Very impressive speeds and I'm really pleased you mentioned cooling. This looks like a good solution for your needs and the video was very informative and well laid out as always.

[@anocco]

Please WD, keep your quality high, that's why we love your product

[@Patrick_AUBRY]

I think you miss the seemly weird point that the disk perform better in real life situation with the USB contrôler, regardless of theorycal Cristal disk test and obvious presumptions. I think it's due to the fact that you didn't use the same s-ata controller for both disks. That way you didn't emptyout the disk's cache because of bottlenecking with two drive on the same SATA lane, one Reding and the other one writing. In short, going one controller (s-ata) to an other (USB 3.0) went overall better regardless of a worst top speed. PS, I use two sata controller for that exact reason in my EDIT workstation. It's faster to render or make large files on one drive FROM an other drive ON an other controller.

[@tcdwww]

I always like your video. For this one, not only you showed the performance of the hard drive, but also very informative about every details.

[@ta-fr9ov]

hi Chris, great info as always, i nag my staff to always put the date on HDD s when we put them into service so we can rotate them out of service after a specified amount of time...never thought of doing the same for my home gear. I'm not sure if if you have covered Shingled HDD technology, but maybe you could explain why they are NOT a good idea in a NAS. I mistakenly had purchased one or two for a NAS and it was a disaster. the same drive seems to be ok as a stand alone backup or cold storage drive. great show as always!!!

[@michaelholub5027]

I wish I had queued onto your content earlier. My first truly great laptop had a WD Black drive, that shrugged off a water intrusion whilst powered like it was nothing. That very HDD was a WD black. It spun up immediately upon being attached to a USB adapter and is probably still good. Naturally, I scrapped it soon after just to be safe, but I'm sure that it could have carried the data for my daily driver for years afterwards. Good stuff is harder to find than good staff, and often lasts longer in your organization.

[@sbrazenor2]

What's weird is that the WD Gold 10TB drive is actually cheaper than the WD Black 10TB drive from WD in the USA. Even though the gold is supposed to be their top-end offering, somehow price-wise they are selling them for less at the moment. 🤔 I would also think that you might also use something like M-Discs for archival 'cold storage'. Which makes sense. It allows you to keep a copy that wouldn't be impacted by a mechanical or electrical failure potential. Worst case, if all of the drives that you have fail and you have those, you can still recover the archive.

[@ExplainingComputers]

I do indeed use M-Disc -- I tested one out in a block of ice here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/ppbOmKWGYttohZI

[@arx117]

Black is for games while gold has better thermal

[@XLessThanZ]

You remind me of Mr. Rogers, but for the older generation and from the UK. Stanley the knife, Mr. Scissors and many others throughout your video series. 👍

[@brucefay5126]

My first HDD was a “Sider” for my Apple //e. 10 MB, $800 (US). It was the size of a modern UPS unit. A year after I bought it, they came out with a 20 MB version for the same price. No way I could afford to upgrade. I still have this system. Never filled up the HDD, it was just such massive storage for the time.

[@VulpisFoxfire]

Heh. I remember my first HDD, a 60MB one in my old Amiga 2k. Always nicknamed the thing the 'brick', because it was a 5.25" form-factor...

[@Diggerless]

This is by far the most exciting Unboxing video of the year for me ;)

[@ExplainingComputers]

Glad to hear it!

[@id104335409]

I have a problem with drives. It's not that they are failing. It's that fail at their purpose to store the information reliably. A perfectly normal drive can lose all the data inside at any time when you are writing information on it. It's been boggling my mind for a while. A drive that can store your data for year and years to come can just lock up on you because of some power flicker, bad cable or some software hickup. And it's not just the data that you have been copying, all your data is now "gone". And not just HDD, these cases apply for SSDs as well. So the bigger the drive - the bigger the damage. Keeping all your eggs in one basket kind of thing. So now you need to restore it on another drive as big as the one that is not recognised anymore. I asked around on forums, but the only solution everyone knows about is backup. Just keep all your data on at least 2 places. I find this to be quite strange. That we don't have mechanisms in place that protect data from stuff like that happening in the first place. Something that oversees the data writing and keeps it safe untill the process is over instead of risking everything on a HDD even if you are moving a single jpeg. Also, the data table is supposed to be written on 2 places in case one of them gets corrupted, but that doesn't seem to work at all.

[@mikefromwa]

This is why we make backups.

[@rgbii2]

Multiple backups, most off line, some off site.

[@VulpisFoxfire]

Hmmm. I wonder if anyone has considered building a drive that is in itself an error-correcting RAID package, perhaps with modules that can be swapped out if they fail. Expensive as all get out, of course, but I could see it selling to those who need the reliability.

[@itspurecomedy9523]

Very thorough review. Mines coming on Friday!

[@dfs-comedy]

I've always had good luck with WD drives. I have an embarrassingly large number of them.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Hi Dianne -- and me too! :) I dare not count.

[@lucasn0tch]

As for the label not looking like the publicity photo, I think it's standard procedure to list several very important characteristics of a hard drive, such as capacity, voltage, serial number, model number, place of manufacture, warranty, etc. Seagate and Toshiba do the same thing too.

[@sunilkulkarni4426]

Hi Christopher, Is it worth getting a 10TB harddrive, since they last for only 3-4 years(as you said in you previous harddrive video)

[@ExplainingComputers]

All hardware fails -- data wrangling is all about keeping ahead! This drive will serve my purposes for another c.3 years I hope, by which time it will be full. A drive like this, powered off most of the time, should last more than the average (and the guarantee is also five years on a WD Black). But failure before that is certainly possible.

[@Yoshi-sp]

I have some external USB drives that still work from about 8~9 years. Obviously they're not powered on all the time, just when I need to use the info... and I carry them in hard cases for extra protection.

[@id104335409]

I think if you only need 10TB you should get 3 by 4TB and you will be safer. You need big capacities like this if you have big storage needs. Like if you have a NAS with 5 bays - you should buy 5 by 12TB, because you obviously need storage and 2 or 4 TB disks can't help you. They will only serve you untill you fill them up like a year later and then you would still have to buy the bigger capacities.

[@kyoudaiken]

Just recently bought the 16TB model for my backups in an external USB 3.0 enclosure. :)

[@kevinshumaker3753]

I avoid the WD drives that have the built in encryption like the plague. When the drive decides to lock you out, that's the end. Not even the HD data companies nor WD themselves can recover the data. Both at the personal level, and Enterprise level, I won't ever trust any drive with built in encryption ever again.

[@alanthornton3530]

A ready built external 10 TB WD hard drive costs about £159.00 from WD in the UK, the downside is the limited 2 year warranty not good. I switched to WD having had several failures with Seagate drives and yes all out of Warranty! I love the 'Oh deary me' & Stanley takes a dive, in comes Mr scissors to the rescue :) Another interesting video from Chris @ EC

[@arch1107]

while the warranty does matter, one thing i learned is that toshiba lasts years if not decades, seagate barely last months, i always avoid seagate, i want my pc parts to last, the warranty tells me nothing about seagate

[@Plasros]

Really interesting video Chris, always look forward to Sundays for the notification from your channel!

[@CesareVesdani]

The biggest hard drives to date are 18TB in capacity. A 20TB version is expected to be released very soon. Maybe the coming year or the next.

[@danmanx2]

I own at least 4 external and 6 internal WD drives. Since at least 2010, I have had not even one of them fail. I think their quality speaks for itself!

[@r100curtaincall]

Agree. I've never had a problem with WD. Seagate seems to be hit or miss depending on the model. I use a pair of 8TB Gold Helium drives for my backups and raw storage in a mirror and they are both fast and cool, and fairly quiet. I also don't have to worry about dust and they draw less power than traditional ones. They're great stuff.

[@sodiumvapor13]

Excellent vid! Surprising performance from a disk drive!

[@SchoolforHackers]

It’s great to get a glimpse into your workflow, Chris. Thanks -