WD Easystore 8TB drive - $179.99

[Docjon]

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-easysto ... Id=5792401

This is supposed to have a WD Red drive, which are very good drives and cost like $100+ more when purchased as internal component drives.

I'm thinking about picking it up. I only wanted 6TB, but this is a good price and a good drive. I'll "shuck" the external housing and mount it internally. Ppl are doing this a lot, using it for NAS. It runs a lot cooler if you take it out of the casing, too. If it goes bad, you can put it back into the external housing and return it, there's no tamper-proof stickers.

[Prophet]

Not a bad deal. Too bad rebuilds take so long on drives that size. Pretty sure I will limit myself to 3TB drives, for the file server at least. Faster rebuilds when they fail.

[Docjon]

Yeah, this is just for multimedia. No rebuilds. Build once, hope it doesn't fail before I move on to new storage

[Paladin]

I wouldn't remove it from the case. It is USB 3. That is really fast. Just use it as is.

I personally would not get that though.

I would get an external toaster style "enclosure" and grab a 4 GB drive. Then you can buy other drives later as you go and just plug them in. I have a 4 slot toaster enclosure on my main PC. I have four 1 slot toaster enclosures on my HTPC that I swap drives in and out as needed.

[Docjon]

I wouldn't remove it from the case. It is USB 3. That is really fast. Just use it as is.

I personally would not get that though.

I would get an external toaster style "enclosure" and grab a 4 GB drive. Then you can buy other drives later as you go and just plug them in. I have a 4 slot toaster enclosure on my main PC. I have four 1 slot toaster enclosures on my HTPC that I swap drives in and out as needed.

I have a case that can hold 16 HDD & SSD, and it's been 7 years since I got my last HDD. I LOVE the idea of swappable USB enclosures, but I don't think I'm one to get a lot of use out of it. Besides, the stock enclosures trap the heat, and they get twice as hot as they do in a case.

I remembered I was driving past the local Best Buy today on the way to get my infusion in Nashville, so before I ran out the door this morning, I printed out the serial # prefixes people have verified that the 256mb Reds come with, and I stopped by on my travels. It's not normally near anything else I visit, so the timing was perfect for my treatment. When I got there, I found a couple that were known good, and at least one that was a mystery. I didn't look further than that, and bought the drive.

256MB Cache, WD Red NAS HDD. I have regular WD drives that have been running for 7+ years. Hell, one of them might be 10 years old. Hoping this one gives me similarly long service.

IT'S. SO. BIG!*

I transferred my SONARR directory over with all my TV shows, and I've used a tenth of a terabyte. I peeled off a terabyte for other use. I wanted to move my Documents, my graphics work and my music off of the old drive before it died.

As always, though, I had to FUCK something up.

When I put the drive in, Windows did not recognize it in the normal My Computer window, and Disk Management was a no-go as well. There WAS a mystery drive up at top of the list of drives. I got carried away and formatted it. I was kind of disturbed that it wasn't showing up, and I was afraid I was going to have YET ANOTHER bad time with my computer this year, so I just did SOMETHING instead of trying to do something smart. It was my TrueCrypt partition with my porno.



Oh well, I have an old backup, I think. Shame. I found a few more I liked over the past couple years, and I don't know if I could remember what they were enough to find 'em again. I'm cursed. Zathras cannot have nice things.

As for getting Windows to recognize the drive: I rebooted a couple times, no go. I got panicky and thought I'd fucked up, that my computer was too old to handle an 8TB drive, but I was unable to find ANY info on HDD limitations for my mobo. I just dug into BIOS. MSI has kind of a shitty, cartoony Bios that didn't seem as comprehensive as my old board was. I futzed around but didn't change anything - didn't really find much relating to the SATA or HDD's at all, just boot order. I got out and rebooted, and the drive is there now. I partitioned it: over 6TB for my multimedia, the rest for all the stuff you usually put in user folders, but I never do because I don't want to crud up my C: drive. Also set aside another partition for my next Truecrypt stash, may this one not meet such an sad end.

Hey Prophet: The screw holes were different in my new drive. My case has HDD caddies with rubber feet the drive sits on, and four screws go up through them into the bottom of the drive. The Red was set up so that I could only use two screws at a time, all four did not match. My old WD Blacks worked fine, and the SSD did as well (but it had a different setup in the caddy). Is the different mounting arrangement a NAS thing, you think, or is this the new standard for all HD's, and my caddies are gonna have issues with all HDD's going forward?

* That's what SHE said!

[Paladin]

First I would avoid using truecrypt at all. It has been cracked so is useless for what you want it for.

Second I would not truecrypt a partition/volume. You are better off creating a file and mounting it when you want to. Advantage is you can move it, archive it or whatever. you are not stuck to having to have a partition reserved.
You can also create more as needed. Also less chance of issues.

Third use veracrypt instead. https://veracrypt.codeplex.com/
It is a fork project built off of truecrypt.

It also has a cool Hidden feature that I use. You can create a large file that contains some top level files you mount/unlock. If someone had your password they would see those files.
But it also can be mounted with another password that gives you access to hidden files.
The cool thing is even if someone got your main password they could only unlock the hidden giles.
The REALLY cool thing is there is no way for them to even know you have a hidden section at all since it is just filled with random, encrypted, data.
So it is extra cool that way. Even you got arrested and was prompted by the court to give up your password you just give them the normal one.
Jut store some innocent stuff in it like tax forms etc... stuff you want to encrypt but is not anything you would really care if others see.

I don't do use it but if I did that is how I would keep stuff like my one legal Traci lords movie. Which I don't have because I don't have any. But if i did that is where i would store it. i i

[Lexx]

I would never buy a 8g drive, way too hard to rebuild if it fails, even multi media. Afraid to go much past 2T personally, and like I said before if its a USB 3 drive stay away from it, its hard soldered so you cannot just swap the drives in the external case. IF you do buy a hardwired USB drive just stop it everytime before removing it, I think that's why my 1T WD crapped out on me, I was having probs with it being recognized by Reflect on a server restore and I yanked the cable while it was read/writing/deciding wtf it wanted to do ;p

[Paladin]

I would never buy a 8g drive, way too hard to rebuild if it fails, even multi media. Afraid to go much past 2T personally, and like I said before if its a USB 3 drive stay away from it, its hard soldered so you cannot just swap the drives in the external case. IF you do buy a hardwired USB drive just stop it everytime before removing it, I think that's why my 1T WD crapped out on me, I was having probs with it being recognized by Reflect on a server restore and I yanked the cable while it was read/writing/deciding wtf it wanted to do ;p

Not true Lexx, not all USB enclosures are soldered. It honestly simply has to do with price. The China/cheap ones can be but not all are and it has nothing to do with USB 3 etc...that is just the most recent interface,
Nothing wrong with soldering them BTW. they are not intended to be separated anyway. if you want to remove a drive etc.. then don't buy one in an enclosure.

Also if you read his post, he already bought one. i i

[Docjon]

I would never buy a 8g drive, way too hard to rebuild if it fails, even multi media. Afraid to go much past 2T personally, and like I said before if its a USB 3 drive stay away from it, its hard soldered so you cannot just swap the drives in the external case. IF you do buy a hardwired USB drive just stop it everytime before removing it, I think that's why my 1T WD crapped out on me, I was having probs with it being recognized by Reflect on a server restore and I yanked the cable while it was read/writing/deciding wtf it wanted to do ;p

Not true Lexx, not all USB enclosures are soldered. It honestly simply has to do with price. The China/cheap ones can be but not all are and it has nothing to do with USB 3 etc...that is just the most recent interface,
Nothing wrong with soldering them BTW. they are not intended to be separated anyway. if you want to remove a drive etc.. then don't buy one in an enclosure.

Also if you read his post, he already bought one. i i

Yeah, I didn't just roll up and buy el-cheapo used crap on a whim from a Chinese storefront (this time ), this is something that's getting a lot of love on the 'net. Things have to be pretty easy for me to attempt now, and the more money at risk, the easier, and the more sure of a good outcome it needs to be.

I used to be a lot better at this stuff. I could read a little bit in the forums and take it from there, but as I got sick, and older, and admittedly, out of the tech game due to sickness and lack of money, it seems like I have to lean on others more than before, and things get fucked up anyway. Not having money hurts in a lot of ways. I had a cell-phone in 1999, then when I left the bank, I didn't get another until 2014. Never had more than one computer, so I didn't (and still don't ) know dick about networking, never messed with Bluetooth wireless stuff. Hell, my main monitor was a CRT 4:3 until BF 2010, and our main TV was a 4:3 CRT with coax and component in connectors until 2013. I still have a 4:3 LCD monitor as a second monitor. When my sister's employer upgraded their computers and she got one for free (she uses laptops and tablets), she gave it to me. You don't have money, you can get left behind.

Back to TrueCrypt. All I really need from my drive encryption is to keep my bible-belt relatives from accidentally stumbling into it when I'm in the hospital for a month, or when I die. When they run into the encryption, they'll probably think it's a bad partition. Even if my computer expert nephew that ran IT for the local hospital saw it, he'll just say, "Nah, we should probably leave that alone." And if he didn't, less-than-incredible encryption doesn't mean it's easy to get into. He doesn't have access to the NSA backdoors that the developers were probably warning of when they ceased development and told ppl to use something else.

Also, there's no Swordfish-like movie scenario where someone's gonna point a gun at me and want my porn, and the cops are gonna be sorely disappointed if they ever demand to see it. I don't generally go for the 'barely legal" set, and I have certain actresses that I like that have been around enough that they are well-known and in no way under-age. Finally, whole partition encryption is easier. There are other considerations that have been lost to me in time, but I don't know now. I know I looked at the file vs partition and had little hesitation at the partition. I don't need the plausible deniability of multi-level, Inception-like encryption. I have very simple needs - keep out accidental/casual spying, and work fast and reliably.

Last I read, Veracrypt is very, very secure - and had zero options to make it less so, so it's also considerably slower than truecrypt. Since I'm rebuilding my encrypted partition though, I'll give it and other things a look. Truecrypt isn't updated anymore, and while that wasn't a big deal at first, it's probably gonna break when microsoft releases an update one day. Time is marching forward, and it has been out of development for a few years now. I really should find something that's being kept up-to-date.

[Lexx]

Well at least you have a hell of long of room for Sync and Mega to play with, won't feel guilty putting up something bluray.

[Prophet]

As far as I know, all HDD use the same four side and bottom holes. I have not seen anything change. SAS and SATA both use the same holes. So, not sure what is going on.

[Lexx]

New USB 3.0 external drives are not Sata where you can remove from the case and put anywhere else, the USB is hard wired to the circuit board, so if the board goes bad the drive does too along with it. Must be cheap to manufacture it that way.

Should of read it better, a drive this big and not 2.5" couldn't be USB surface mounted.

[Paladin]

I would never buy a 8g drive, way too hard to rebuild if it fails, even multi media. Afraid to go much past 2T personally, and like I said before if its a USB 3 drive stay away from it, its hard soldered so you cannot just swap the drives in the external case. IF you do buy a hardwired USB drive just stop it everytime before removing it, I think that's why my 1T WD crapped out on me, I was having probs with it being recognized by Reflect on a server restore and I yanked the cable while it was read/writing/deciding wtf it wanted to do ;p

Not true Lexx, not all USB enclosures are soldered. It honestly simply has to do with price. The China/cheap ones can be but not all are and it has nothing to do with USB 3 etc...that is just the most recent interface,
Nothing wrong with soldering them BTW. they are not intended to be separated anyway. if you want to remove a drive etc.. then don't buy one in an enclosure.

Also if you read his post, he already bought one. i i

Yeah, I didn't just roll up and buy el-cheapo used crap on a whim from a Chinese storefront (this time ), this is something that's getting a lot of love on the 'net. Things have to be pretty easy for me to attempt now, and the more money at risk, the easier, and the more sure of a good outcome it needs to be.

I used to be a lot better at this stuff. I could read a little bit in the forums and take it from there, but as I got sick, and older, and admittedly, out of the tech game due to sickness and lack of money, it seems like I have to lean on others more than before, and things get fucked up anyway. Not having money hurts in a lot of ways. I had a cell-phone in 1999, then when I left the bank, I didn't get another until 2014. Never had more than one computer, so I didn't (and still don't ) know dick about networking, never messed with Bluetooth wireless stuff. Hell, my main monitor was a CRT 4:3 until BF 2010, and our main TV was a 4:3 CRT with coax and component in connectors until 2013. I still have a 4:3 LCD monitor as a second monitor. When my sister's employer upgraded their computers and she got one for free (she uses laptops and tablets), she gave it to me. You don't have money, you can get left behind.

Back to TrueCrypt. All I really need from my drive encryption is to keep my bible-belt relatives from accidentally stumbling into it when I'm in the hospital for a month, or when I die. When they run into the encryption, they'll probably think it's a bad partition. Even if my computer expert nephew that ran IT for the local hospital saw it, he'll just say, "Nah, we should probably leave that alone." And if he didn't, less-than-incredible encryption doesn't mean it's easy to get into. He doesn't have access to the NSA backdoors that the developers were probably warning of when they ceased development and told ppl to use something else.

Also, there's no Swordfish-like movie scenario where someone's gonna point a gun at me and want my porn, and the cops are gonna be sorely disappointed if they ever demand to see it. I don't generally go for the 'barely legal" set, and I have certain actresses that I like that have been around enough that they are well-known and in no way under-age. Finally, whole partition encryption is easier. There are other considerations that have been lost to me in time, but I don't know now. I know I looked at the file vs partition and had little hesitation at the partition. I don't need the plausible deniability of multi-level, Inception-like encryption. I have very simple needs - keep out accidental/casual spying, and work fast and reliably.

Last I read, Veracrypt is very, very secure - and had zero options to make it less so, so it's also considerably slower than truecrypt. Since I'm rebuilding my encrypted partition though, I'll give it and other things a look. Truecrypt isn't updated anymore, and while that wasn't a big deal at first, it's probably gonna break when microsoft releases an update one day. Time is marching forward, and it has been out of development for a few years now. I really should find something that's being kept up-to-date.

Veeacryot is not any slower than truecrypt at all. Encryption is encryption. The main program has little to do with the speed.

It will be faster or slower depending on what kind of encryption you use as well as some settings with that.

[Docjon]

Veeacryot is not any slower than truecrypt at all. Encryption is encryption. The main program has little to do with the speed.

It will be faster or slower depending on what kind of encryption you use as well as some settings with that.

The answer to WHY Veracrypt was slower than Truecrypt is right there in those three sentences you just typed. Veracrypt is VERY secure, as I said above. One reason why, is that it would not let you use less secure, but quicker, algorithms, as Truecrypt did. They had a real hard-on for MAXIMUM SECURITY, and it was markedly slower in all the tests. Now, the last time I looked at it was like 18 months ago at least, so I don't really know anything about what's going on currently with the veracrypt/truecrypt line, and their competitors. I'll have to read up a bit.

And of course, you HAD to know I wouldn't be done with this yet. I shut down my computer, and it took 5 minutes to do so. NOT normal for me. I booted it back up, and 10-15 minutes after the BIOS flash screen, it still hadn't booted. I powered it off in back (BTW, that's a pill with the power supply on the bottom now) and removed my big new HDD. I put it back in the enclosure (only took about 20 minutes, counting the time I spent petting the dog, since I had to get on the floor to get the drive) and now it's sitting on my computer, on top of about a DOZEN FRIGGIN' EMPTY 3.5" SLOTS IN A BIG-ASS CASE, and the computer booted up in a normal time. The partitions I've created on it are there, and the files and directories appear to be there as well.

KEE-RIST, this build is cursed. A bad video card, bad motherboard, bad case, replaced power supply, and now I cannot negotiate the simple task of putting a friggin' HDD in my computer, something I've been doing since my Amiga 500 days - and the Amiga 500 wasn't even DESIGNED to have a HDD in it!

Really wanted to build a whole new machine, but that seems to be off-the-table. Figured boosting the storage and replacing the 1280 x 1024 secondary monitor would at least make things easier and more pleasant. Now I'm scared to even think about a monitor.

Didn't want to use this enclosure. PPL have posted temps, they're literally twice what they are then when they are in a properly cooled computer case. Plus, now it's sitting out and taking up one of my USB 3.0 ports, and requires wall power as well. Bah.

[Docjon]

OK Prophet, I took a pic of the Red drive while I was putting it back in the enclosure, and I managed to dig up a pic of my 7-year-old (ack!) WD Caviar Black HDD. The way things are going, I wasn't going to pull it for a picture, as it might never work again!

Here's the RED.



And the BLACK.



Notice how far apart the RED's screwholes are in comparison to the BLACK drive?