Looking to buy a WD Elements Ex HDD and looking for comments on it.

Looking to buy a external HDD after a lot of self thinking and looking around I figured the WD Elements HDD would do what I need done (create and store disk images and clones) my only concern now is I was wondering is it as much of a heat trap as everyone on Newegg is saying? Or are they doing something wrong with it like leaving it on top of a radiator?

 

If you want to avoid the heat trap, the best choice is to make your own external drive using a 3.5" drive and a fan-cooled external enclosure. If you must have a USB powered 2.5", you can do the same thing with an aluminum case which will still dissipate heat better than WD's plastic enclosures.

Get a WD Black Series internal drive for this. Although they cost a few more bucks, they come with a five year warranty and seem to be the most reliable.

For a 3.5" setup:

http://www.directron.com/wd1002faex.html

http://www.directron.com/uhb302ups.html

For a 2.5" setup:

http://www.directron.com/wd7500bpkt.html

http://www.directron.com/ims25satab.html

Hope this helps.

 

Caviar Black doesn't seem to have a 3TB drive which is what I need. Though Caviar Green does. How much of a quality difference is there between the two lines?

 

Stay away from the Caviar Green - they are the worst of the WD drives.

Check the reviews on 3TB drives on Newegg.com:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...9&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&Order=RATING&PageSize=20

When purchasing an enclosure, be sure it will handle a 3TB drive.

Not trying to muddy the water; however it might be better to look at a network attached storage (NAS) system set up with RAID 5.

A RAID 5 setup stores data in a way that - if one of the three or four drives installed fails - you can replace the one drive without losing any data.

Granted, this would be somewhat more expensive than a single 3TB drive. You'll have to weigh the cost of a RAID 5 setup against the value of the data if a single drive crashes without a backup.

 

I use a Toshiba Canvio 1TB with a Cirago NUS2000 Network USB storage adapter. The unit will shut down the USB pocket drive after a period of non-use, so that it goes into a sleep mode.

Best money I ever spent, to put the pocket drive, which was always stuck in a end-table drawer all of the time, and only got used, when we needed to pull photos off it, or update music on iTunes.

Now I have it available 24/7 for all users on our network with the Cirago, and can go up to 8TB on that unit, if need be.

The problem with most consumer NAS units, is that they use slow CPU's and low amount of RAM, so they cannot handle large amounts of data being transferred across a network, or when directly hooked up to a computer, through eSATA or USB.

If you are going to be doing what I do with our pocket drive, which is just casual use, not a lot of heavy transfer between multiple computers and the unit, then yes that low end WD drive will work, but I have found that most that I have demoed and put through the paces, end up showing their shortcomings very quickly.