Brilliant - USB 3 self powered 4TB passport HDD's

Hi there

Really recommend these WD 4TB self powered USB 3 drives

Fast, small, very portable and so far seem very reliable - have tested 2 of them running for around 2 months 24/7 -- no issues whatsoever so I'm satisfied that the reliability is fine.

Tested running 2 of these on a NAS server running software RAID 1 array of 2 X 4TB USB 3 HDD's to create a RAID 1 mirrored array of 4TB. Used mdadm - the Linux RAID program -- so these HDD's were running at max performance and load.

I like also the colours you can chose -- comes with the same colour of USB 3 cable so it's easy to decide what you want on them if you buy more than 1

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Passpor.../dp/B01LQQH86A

Around 120 USD for the black one

If you pay a bit more the Ultra version has built in encryption which is good these days where you might have to leave computers etc in the hold of a plane so if it "goes missing" people can't get at your data.

Note though - always have backup of important data - if you lose 4TB of important data -- it could be worth a lot more than the cost of the drive - even if it is re-retriveable in part --imagine re-ripping several hundred CD's and DVD's, re-tagging etc etc.

Cheers
jimbo

CWGilley said:

Glad you posted this. I went with the WD Elements 2 TB Ext HDD. Strongly considered the Passport and have wondered since which was really the right one to go with. Mine's been nearly trouble free. Only issue is if I burn a CD/DVD, Windows thinks something's wrong with the Elements and disables it. Go through the ritual of re-enable/re-install has been my only fix. Otherwise, I really like this thing.

Hmmm? Maybe the Passport would have avoided this little "feature".

Hi there

What's a DVD / CD !!!!! Not sure I'd burn these any more

On the rare occasion I get a DVD or CD I simply RIP them.

Did you know that if you simply rip a DVD to .iso you can play it from the HDD image - menus and all -- in Kodi -- great if you install Kodi on an amazon fire TV or other android small box device - simply browse to the iso on your server and hit play. You can use an android phone or the box controller to select the menus just like a DVD player --no server software needs to be installed either.

Downloads | Kodi | Open Source Home Theater Software

Kodi can aso be installed of course on a computer - and again it can play .iso's directly as will VLC but for viewing on a remote smart TV it's not necessary if you have the amazon fire TV box or equivalent. The google gizmo though doesn't have a means of installing kodi so avoid that one.

@CountMike -- it's not a question of all eggs in one basket -- ensure you have backup -- same is true whether it was an old 20GB HDD (which we thought were HUGE back then) or the first 1PB (petabyte) drives which will appear soon.

In any case with the RAID 1 configuration - the chances of BOTH HDD's going AWOL at the same time is almost mathematically not significant - if one breaks the array can be recovered quite easily -- that's the purpose of the RAID 1 array.

As an aside often the older smaller capacity HDD's are slower and not as reliable either - although over the years I've had almost zero HDD's ever break on me.

Cheers
jimbo