It looks nice enough. I'd buy it.

USB 3.0 is indeed specced for 5Gbps raw transfers. This translates to 625 megabyte/s of raw data transfers, including protocol overheads.

HDDs however will be limited to how fast they can read/write data from/to their platters, which may be around 150 MB/s for performance HDDs. SATA 6.0 Gbps SSDs will be able to more fully utilise the USB 3.0's bandwidth.

I'm not sure what is going on. It could be a faulty HDD enclosure.

Try putting your HDD back into your laptop and see if it will boot or not. It is possible to remove most virus infections, although it is still recommended to reformat the HDD, in case it left behind a rootkit or opened security holes. If your HDD works when back in the laptop, I'd suggest trying to use a desktop instead, just be careful in ensuring your infected HDD does not boot so it doesn't infect any other storage device in the desktop.

If you are lucky, it will be temporary. But it seems more probable that you are not. You should make preparations, backing up important data and budgeting for replacement hardware.

This post has been edited by everling: Feb 26 2012, 02:34 PM

Compressed air is the standard recommendation.

Personally, I use a brush and then take my time reassembling my desktop. I do not know how risky is this, but it seems to have worked out well enough for me.

Most of their money comes from selling to manufacturers like Dell, HP, Apple, etc. The retail market isn't necessary for their survival or profit.

Seagate bought Samsung's HDD division a while back, so Samsung HDDs are now handled by Seagate. From the other's RMA experience with Samsung hardware recently, Seagate will return you a Seagate HDD.

Seagate probably now owns the Samsung factories which produces the Samsung HDDs. I do not know how Seagate is handling their ex-Samsung properties or their future plans. Although we could guess from how Seagate handled their previous acquisitions, like Maxtor.

It shouldn't be abnormally long. I suggest that you follow up with your seller, Samsung and Seagate to make sure that your HDD wasn't lost in a SNAFU. Please don't be surprised if Samsung simply redirects you to Seagate, as the buck should stop there.

It is probably because your operating system decided to turn off unused HDDs to save power. This happens if your Power Options (in the advanced configuration) is told that it may turn off your HDDs if they were idle for X amount of time. You can 'fix' this by increasing the amount of idle time or tell your power configuration to never turn off your HDDs. This feature can actually be useful if you have a lot of HDDs and you rarely use some of them.

From what I had read, Samsung service centres now don't entertain Samsung HDD RMAs. Was this information false?

Looks like the HDD manufacturers have finally settled on Western Digital, Seagate and Toshiba. Hopefully it will remain positively stable.

Western Digital To Sell Hitachi's 3.5” Hard Drive Business To Toshiba, Complete Hitachi Buyout

If you're asking about reliability, I doubt that this event will significantly change it. And on the small chance that it does, we're not likely to see any changes for a couple of months at the least. Assuming that there is valuable technology to assimilate, it will take WD time to integrate Hitachi's technology.

With this exchange, all three will be somewhat equal in the HDD business. Toshiba will gain the ability to compete in the 3.5" market.

Perhaps it is because the Samsung acquisition was completed first. Or perhaps more money exchanged hands in the Samsung deal.

Try reading the following guide to disable the WD Green's idle behaviour first before you buy an external casing.

How to Stop Excessive Load Cycles on the Western Digital 2TB Caviar Green (WD20EARS) with WDIDLE3

The WDIDLE3 download page does not say if it is compatible with the Green drives, but a WD Community Manager posted the following:

Source: http://community.wdc.com/t5/Desktop/Green-...-p/15731/page/2

If you RMA, you will lose the data on it because the manufacturers won't bother to fix the HDD and give you back another HDD; check the serial numbers if you got back the same model.

If you really want the data, the easiest solution is to send it for data recovery. Please bear in mind that you're likely to spend at least a few hundred ringgit anyway if you try to fix it yourself. You may need to buy HDDs for their PCBs as some PCBs may not work for you, then you may discover that the problem wasn't with the PCB but something else, etc etc, and then finally discover that your data was completely lost, either through the original damage or you had damaged it while trying to fix it.

USB 3.0 supports 400+MB/s read/write, but HDDs have lousy performance and is the bottleneck. Depending your HDD's model, 60MB/s isn't surprising.

All your listed HDDs are in good working condition. Not all SMART data are important to the actual health of your HDD. Most of them are informational, like the "Power On Hours Count". "Reallocated Sector Count" and "Current Pending Sector" are something to look out for, but only if the values are increasing over a short period or the value is large. I don't know why your "Spin Retry Count" is highlighted as a warning.

It can be hard to interpret the raw data shown. My Samsung 1TB's "Spin Retry Count" has a Current and Worst value of 252 and a Threshold of 51, unlike your 100 and 97. I haven't looked deeply into the meaning of the SMART attributes.

This post has been edited by everling: Mar 29 2012, 08:26 PM

Both of my WD Green 1TBs have passed their third year of life. *touch wood*

Interpreting the data is difficult, especially as it doesn't seem to adhere to a single standard. This is why I don't read too deeply into the SMART data and so I haven't learned it. If you wish to learn, you'll have to look from other sources. Furthermore, a Google white-paper (linked on the first post of the topic) suggests that SMART data does not adequately predict impending HDD failures, making it less useful to learn.

WD's 808GB HDDs are not new, it has been a few years already, and are created from scavenged defective platters and targeted at Chinese customers, hence the unusual use of the 8s. That said, I have no idea if they are less reliable or not.

It's not all bad. The platters might be scavenged, but it could still last you 3 years so you've gained 300GB for free.

There are several HDD testing tools listed on the first post of this topic which you could try. If in doubt, use the HDDScan 3.3.

I strongly recommend taking your external HDD to your local shop or trusted expert for testing and advice. They might need to extract the HDD from the casing to test it with another external device or directly plug it in to a computer to see if the HDD is still working or not. Please do not use or power on the external until they have examined it.

They will only test if the HDD is good or not. They will not do data recovery. Testing and advice is a free service in my experience, but there are strings.

• Some external HDDs have their warranties void if you open the casing. You technically lose your right to a free warranty replacement if this is the case.
  
  
• Some external HDDs uses non-standard connectors. I have come across one external HDD that had its built-in standard SATA connectors replaced with USB connectors, this allows a small external case, but you're out of luck if the USB is damaged.

A 2TB HDD now costs about RM400.

But yes, most people tend to give up on the data than to pay for expensive and uncertain data recovery; data recovery is not guaranteed. It's much cheaper to buy two HDDs.

If ruggedness is more important than capacity, how about an SSD?

Then again, SSDs are wasted if put in external casings.

If buying external HDDs, 2.5" HDDs have better toughness than 3.5" HDDs, but treating them as fragile items is still strongly recommended. Other than that, I have no specific HDD recommendations.