is this to be relied on. have just lost 1 Tb on omega drive
1362909
I own several Buffalo mini hard drives. All have never let me down. I have one 6 years old with no problems. Highly recommended.
1362910
I have had no problems, not close to max storage. I have one for each of my computers, a PC & a laptop.Not sure this helps but it's all I know to say
1362911
I would not recommend this product as I had a bad experience with it. Contacted the seller they never responded. If you want to buy this product I guess you can buy it at your own risk as your experience might be a better one than mines. Good Luck !
1362912
I'm not certain this answers your question...but I've had the ministation for ~1 yr. I copied all my files from my old computer onto it and now have it plugged into the new computer so I can access those files easily. So far, it's worked perfectly.
926434
Although I don't own this particular drive, I am here as I am looking to buy this one also to add to my two other Seagate 500gb Freeagents that I already have that have been working flawlessly for me for over 12 months now. I honestly think that your experience was most likely caused by a faulty unit. Without knowing your computer configuration (windows, mac or linux) it's hard to say if any extra steps would need to be taken to set it up, but for a windows or linux based pc it should be simply plug and play in my experience. As you see on this site, there is only one bad review of the product. If you think about how many of these must get sold every year, one bad review is pretty good as almost everybody will take the time to complain, but very few will come back to write a positive review as a working product is what most people expect. So I guess the short answer from me is yes, I would give this drive a second chance, but then again, i may be biased by my great experience. I hope that this is of some help to you..
1600661
I have had the drive as my main operating system, as well as mass storage drive for almost a year, and so far, it has been reliable, fast, and quiet. However, as the previous person responded, I am using Linux, which does put less stress on the drive and the file system is a bit better at file allocation, ETC...My experience is very positive in this environment. (Using the 3TB version partitioned into three sections)
96349
Dr. Bozarth, I take all reviews with a grain of salt of course. I also noticed the disparity in the ratings between the two sites. I usually frequent thehomeservershow.com. Many of the forum members are I.T. Professionals, or like myself, a medical professional with a keen interest in technology. The Western Digital Green Drives were the go to drives in the past, but were not ideal for NAS/RAID situations. Many of the members have had good luck with the RED drives, but still recommend a program such as SpinRite or HD Tune Pro to evaluate the drive before putting it into service. I can only recall one situation where a member reported a DOA Red Drive, and many more situations where the Green drives presented problems. The recommended drives for your scenario would be the WD Red drives or the Seagate NAS drives. RAID-1 would be a good solution, and a cloud backup such as CrashPlan on top of that. I have personally purchased two 3TB Red drives and have had no problems with them in the 6-12 months I have owned them. Hope this helps.
860400
I concur with Robin V on this one - I suggest replacing any failed drives with a WD RED drive. They are built to work in NAS boxes under constant use while other drives are not built for this kind of use and abuse.
382736
No the hard drive doesn't work anymore and it's less than a years time. Also wd would not rma the product for me.
1085868
It all depends whether you need a drive that will last well with repeated use - from my experience, the SATA card which links the hard drive to the power/data transfer port that your USB lead plugs into is poor quality and too flimsy, meaning that it fails reasonably quickly if you're using it on a daily basis like myself. The unit looks great and the case is very robust, but functionality-wise, and as recommended earlier, I'd go for the Buffalo Mini Station Extreme which is proving far more reliable for regular use.
600011
WD Support Site says GREEN is THREE Years. Caviar Black is FIVE years. You might be able to update to the FIVE YEAR Warrantee for a fee...? Usually I've found that bad drives fail early. BUT they ALL fail eventually...:( If you don't do back ups, you WILL cry! Esp.@ 1 TB!
1120024
I have a "very old" External Hard drive...not this make/model...I turn it on once/quarter to backup recent files...it's probably over 3 years old. Recently, I bought one of these WD Elite 500GB models...my plan is to backup on two externals...in case one fails. I know this seems lame, but it is the only way to ensure everything sticks around. Seems like its worth the extra $100.
364524
If your drive has an mSATA, then it's OK. You can also get a SATA to USB adapter to get the data out.
928100
I used 4TB Drives from WDC and Seagate, they work fine. I don't know if 5TB drive would work or not.
1819658
I have two, one for the laptop and one for the desktop. I've had both for about 8 months, and not a single problem. These things can take more of a beating than regular HDDs (not like you should be beating them:( )but alas, as with all technology, some do fail. I'm good so far though! Not packing them full of files helps.
106284
Not exactly sure about your question.EVERY drive will need both a power cable and a data cable.
513138
I would use nothing BUT these drives in anything I built or upgraded. They're a bit pricier, and no one ever thinks about it, but the warranty on THESE hard drives, the WD Black series, is a full 5Y. VERY few other mfrs even offer a 5y warranty. And WD drives earn that warranty reputation, I haven't had a WD drive fail, EVER. In each case -- over a dozen -- they've become useless through increasing capacity, never mechanical/electronic failure. That is, I probably have an 80gig WD drive that's still functioning. It's just not worth plugging in and taking up a SATA channel when I can get that capacity on a freaking flash drive nowadays... Yes, they're that good. You can "save money" by buying something cheaper. But you'll pay in the long run with headaches from lost data, or time spent rebuilding your windows/software/os and tweaking it back to the way you had it. The HD is the soul of your machine. Everything else fails, you can practically swap a part back in and you're up and running. But the HD fails and you've got a multiday to longer term headache to get things back to "normal". And, for general purposes, they're among the best drives in performance terms, too. Tom's Hardware may rate something else marginally faster, but not by much. And not by enough to drag you away from WD Black. As the old saw goes, once you go Black, you'll never go back. :-D
1327928
From past experiences with WD I stopped using them several years ago. Seagate or Hitachi would be a better choice in my opinion.
1983640
You should never feel safe without at least two copies of everything that's important to you. This is the best flash drive I have ever owned but as an It professional I would still not trust it to be the only copy of data I'm worried about losing. I hope this answer helps. :-)
1433004
As far as I can tell you would need a power adapter. You can go to Seagate's web site and ask them. Keep in mind that there is little security on this drive so I wouldn't use it for critical data storage. A small business NAS has security built in and is a safer option. Seagate has those as well.