I was able to shuck the drive from the enclosure and find a White label WD80EMAZ drive which is nearly identical to the RED labeled drive that is sought after. Performance is great. I already own 3 WD 8TB red drives and 2 WD 8TB white drives.
There is a possibility you could get a WD RED drive. If you get a white label drive and if you shuck the drive and put it into your computer and it detects inside the enclosure but not inside the computer, lookup the WD white label 3.3 pin mod. You’ll have a few options to get the drive to stop power cycling. Solid drive and you won’t regret it.
You can either purchase this drive or the WD easystore drive for the same type. I believe the WD Mybook has the same as well.
When it comes to Western Digital, they make excellent external storage solutions. I first bought an Elements drive back in 2010 (640GB), then another one in 2013 (2TB), and now once again at the end of 2017. None failed on me yet. I've used this drive for a couple weeks now and copied about 1TB of files via USB3. I use a Windows 10 Home machine and transfer speeds range from 40-170MB/s depending on the files. My last two Elements drive were USB2 and they max out around 35MB/s, so this is a welcome improvement.
If you are suffering from low transfer rates, here's some advice: Try to defrag your source disk (or trim it if it's an SSD). I tried this method and having each file in one piece of the disk can help access times to be much quicker.
For those who want to know which HDD is inside my Elements, it's a WD Blue 4TB drive (I checked the model number as WD40EZRZ). So if anything happens, it could be just the SATA-USB bridge connector and not the drive itself.
I got this to replace a different Western Digital external HDD model . The old one was a hermetically sealed plastic brick. Plastic doesn't conduct heat very well, so I guess the previous drive died from excessive heat. Its twin is still going strong. Its pretty bad when your backup dies, so you need to have a couple of backups, just in case.
This drive holds the platters vertically, which I would think is better than horizontally like the previous drive. It also has vents, to let the hot air escape out the top, and cooling air enter at the bottom.
Set up was a snap. It was plug and play with Windows 7. I deleted the software that came on the drive. I use SyncToy (from Micro$oft) to backup my data.
I don't do a lot of accessing of this drive, so data transfer rate isn't a big deal. I seem to see about 18 MBytes/Sec using USB 2.0 My laptop doesn't do USB 3.0)
It spins down after some length of idle time, but wakes up pretty quickly. The computer sleeps every night, but I don't have to do anything special to wake it up.
Needed another back up for my husbands new computer and I've had one for myself for about 5 years. Works great, but if you have Macs like us, you need to format it and that's easy to do. There is an online page that walks you through it. So, it's not plug and play for Mac users.
I just bought two of these, with the idea of using one as a plex media storage server, and the other as a backup drive where i can mirror other computers. Inside, (as of december/january 2019 at least) is a WD white label drive, model WD80EMAZ-00WJTA0. According to the web, this is either a WD Red drive re-label, or possibly an HGST Ultrastar, which is also owned by WD. I have not shucked these myself yet, but there model numbers are clear in crystal disk info. I probably will shuck them in the future and put them in a NAS. Right now i have them connected to a high end router for network shares. If you are thinking about doing this, with this enclosure and you get these drives, here are some pros and cons:
Pro:
- Large capacity, 8tb!
- awesome price, $150 for a wd red of this size is comically cheap
- good performance, near to 200 mb a second on crystal disk mark
- enclosure is quiet and not obtrusive
CON:
- these drives have a sloooow spin up time. from sleep, expect a solid 20 seconds (or near to) before they are fully awake.
- the drives are kind of loud. the enclosures are quiet, but they are on the noisier side of drives, compared to my previous seagates.
- 5400 rpm, with a 256 mb cache. 5400rpm is not 7200 rpm, but again, performance is still good.
Overall, i am very happy so far, a great value for the dollar. i also ran very long full surface scans of these drives, no errors, and these were 14 hour long tests per drive. So far so good, i hope they last!
Feature Product
- Fast data transfers
- High-capacity add-on storage
- Plug-and-play ready for Windows PCs
- WD quality inside and out
- 2-year manufacturer's limited warranty
Description
WD Elements desktop storage with USB 3.0 offers reliable, high-capacity, add-on storage, fast data transfer rates and universal connectivity with USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 devices. The sleek design features up to 10TB capacity plus WD quality and reliability. Compatible with: PC
If you have a PC this is truly a plug and play. Instantly ready to receive downloads. It is just as easy as transferring files to a folder. Just put an icon for this unit on your desktop and you are ready. It is well made and has enough weight to not fall over easily. I like it as a desktop device so I can just leave it hooked up at all times. If you have a Mac, you will need to reformat it to make it work. Please check the instructions before using it on your Apple/Mac. Also, the shipping was extremely fast!! The packaging was great and secure. Great job, Amazon!
Ran a 14 hour continuous test on 2 of these 8tb drives in their factory Elements case. Crystal disk reported 45C degrees on both sitting on my desk while testing and 30C while not in use.
Drive details:
WD80EMAZ-00WJTA0 white label Drive inside
5400 RPM
256mb Cache
WD site reports 2 year warranty on the drives themselves.
These drive might "fall" into my NAS. Will update if any failures or issues over the years.
I've used WD external drives for eons. They used to last 4 yrs, now about 2-4. So I don't know how long this will last. But so far, it is perfect! I want another one or two! I have several externals, all WD. This is largest.
I've love 8 TB, but reviews were so bad. This time, got 6 TB. Needed more storage than my 3 and 4 TB for a busy photographer who also creates vids for teaching online.
Been a great brand for me, so far.
Got the 6tb version to expand my PS4 memory. All you have to do is turn on the PS4, plug in the harddrive and the playstation prompts you to reformat it to us as extra memory and that is it. Done easy. Now i can have all my games downloaded without having to keep deleting them.
So far, I bought two of those. The first one was for my husband but, being the family geek, I tested it. I copied a bunch of files (I think 150GB) and the copy was very, very, fast. Afterwards I run a check, verifying the files and everything worked perfectly. I was so impressed by the performance that I ordered the second one. Not that I really needed it but it is a great backup for Office 365 Home OneDrives, 6TBs fit perfectly and there's still space for my laptops backups. Now that I think of it, probably I "need" (Ok, want) another to backup my desktops :)
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