I met a clerk (girl lai de) very lihai at assemble those CPU, scary see-ing her tear off the clips.. haha. *ahem* back to main topic...

You will need to ask about the warranty and stuff, whether you gets 3-year or just 1-year, possible some won't entertain warranty or some shop has very bad RMA experience, just sell cheap only.
Other than warranty, yes, it's a darn good deal for 1TB 2.5" external HDD.

Source of the statistic... not mentioned?
I've met few failed WDC and also Hitachi, which none on Seagate yet on my long experience so I think I won't rely on such one sided information though.
There's actually a batch of WDC 320GB which failed on few desktop at my clients, that's probably some really bad batch, but since they're out of warranty, I can only replace them with new one.

It's their own data center so source is the company itself.

oh warranty is the standard 3 years... gone is the 5 years or lifetime...
now groupon is giving away RM25 coupon off so any goods you all wan can get... i saw western digital but still around Rm229 for 1tb...

fuhh.... i hope i can find a girlfriend like this


Anyway, back to topic, hmm... so far for me never had a faild hdd before, ext or int *touch wood touch wood touch wood*
so i cant say anything about harddisk reliability (had both Seagate and WD for int hdd, and Buffalo, Toshiba, and WD for ext hdd)
maybe is due to my low level usage, but mine has been since 2007....

if warranty is 3 years then is pretty standard, if not mistaken only those performance hdd will have 5 years warranty? lifetime warranty i dont think so.... so far only knew lifetime warranty are for RAMs

You're buying from advertisement at Groupon?
It's understandable that Groupon sometimes much cheaper but I wonder about the service.
If the retailer is reputable one and they have good history of providing good RMA service then I can say, go ahead with the purchase.
I myself still buying from local retailer due to ease for RMA service, but recently has bad experience with PC Image so I'm avoiding that for the moment.

She will tear apart your gaming system and experiment with it I'll cry de
Anyway, those HDD is about luck, for my case, my Seagate 320GB that I bought back at 2007 only last me 1 or 2 years (can't remember the exact date) then sent for warranty once, but using it until now and saved many PCs from losing tons of data. Planning for a bigger one for saving even more but that will wait until I have enough dough.. haha...

yeah from Groupon advertisement... normally the warranty goes back to the supplier... which in this case is Adata itself... if you get the WD from Groupon (u need to check whether the warranty is from WD itself or other PC shops) they do state in the advertisement it was being warranty by whom?

For Seagate and WDC, the warranty service is local and I can just deal with them easily; just sent to their service centre and wait for RMA to return with new one, and they're fast as well; within 1 week.

As for Adata, I'm not sure about this, can't even find their website on SEA (South East Asia) here, so I assume you'll need to send oversea (Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, etc.) for RMA which is a pain and expensive, which is why it's sometimes not recommended to get those brand unless you can refer back to the supplier/retailer for RMA.

hmm... true enough, this is like a lottery game with hits or miss....

so cant really judge based on one or two user's experience.... unless is like a few thousands or hundreds people, then can call is bad batch or something...

that is why i always buy at physical shop when it comes to peripherals or hardwares that i can source myself,

though is old fashioned brick and mortar, but just in case things happen *touch wood touch wood* RMA will not be as pain as buying online etc.

That's a very cheap ext HDD even when it's not PC/IT fair price. For the innerts it houses Toshiba HDD and Via VL701-T4 controller. Review at Tweaktown shows fast performance. Can't comment on warranty experience though.

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/5714/adat...view/index.html

Note that SG and WD 2.5" 1TB ext HDDs could sell < RM200 during PC/IT fairs although for now I would be avoiding WD 2.5" ext due to intregated USB3 controller to the HDD PCB which limits tinkering with the int HDD should the USB controller fail.


Yeah HDDs are generally hit or miss, but you can do alot to care for your HDDs better. Take a wholistic view on how to best maintain the PC components health. You will be surprise on how long your HDDs last once it gets pass the crucial 1st 6 months usage.

care to elaborate on this? what ext hdd of WD are using this design?

I've a client that uses this WDC passport, I think their controller is very complicated and not friendly for any OS, means if you're using XP or 2003, you need to install SCSI driver for the Ext Hard disk (yes, SCSI!!) If you're using Linux, I assume that as well, which defeat the purpose of having portable hard disk that can plug in any where, so far only 2003 needs to install the driver to works, XP... probably Windows update settle it automatically.
As for the controller, it could have been integrated with the hard disk which means either one dead, you can't retrieve data yourself, you'll need to send to specialist to extract data the "special" way, not very friendly in another way, Seagate Expansion is just another normal hard disk inside, tear open the case, and you got yourself a 2.5" hard disk that you can use on any machine and vice versa...

oh..... like that ar...... learnt new stuff today

hmm.... guess i think i know the next brand of ext hdd im gonna test

WD Passport warranty is 3 years i think, the rest i don't know, well for me, i dont really care how complicated the external hdd is,
Just back it up regularly if the data is important, and it will save you from spending thousand Ringgit on data recovery service when it died.
buying 2 or 3 external HDD for backup is certainly cheaper than data recovery service.

Windows backup utility isnt very hard to use.

Skipped that and go for Cobian backup for my case, I think it's much flexible in terms of backup ability, in of its own preferences. (Btw, Cobian is FREE )
And yes, critical data works always rely on multiple backup copies, and cycle them daily for offline backup in case of... erm... well.. anything. This is what Insurance can't cover

hahaha, you are absolutely correct, as the sayings go "Prevention is always better than Medication"

I do backup my files regularly, but I only using ext hdd mainly because other backup solutions like NAS is kind of out of my reach

Just saying that it is good to know that in case my trusted ext hdd failed not due to HDD issue, but other issue like the USB connector *touching wood on my desk vigorously* then I can at least have a simpler mean of recovering my data

Googling WD Passport issues brings up a fair bit of reports on loose USB port. When disassembled, users found custom USB-controller-integrated HDD PCBs that cannot be installed into any SATA ports. The integrated PCBs seems to be on most 2.5" Passports even on the good old Passport Essential. You can also find plenty of pictures on the net. Here are some.

WD Passport Essential



WD Passport Edge


WD Passport Ultra


Problems with USB connector could be fairly easily fixed by resoldering. However if USB controller fails then you better have a backup otherwise there's just a slim chance of recovering the data by replacing the integrated PCBs sourced through 3rd-party spare part stores.

This post has been edited by mrbob: Oct 3 2014, 07:47 AM

hmm.... like that is almost dealbreaker already (at least to me)....
hmmm.... guess I will have to go to Seagate for my future ext hdd....
currently have 4 WD Passports in my backup....

Currently the only model that has been dissect (confirmed on Youtube) is Seagate Expansion of which is the cheapest among all the series.
I'm not too sure about the Slim series and beyond though so keep an eye on.
Seagate Expansion has 2TB model... 2TB on laptop anyone?

Youtubed a bit and found this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeVGN8QycTs
There's always some surprise

This post has been edited by wildwestgoh: Oct 3 2014, 10:24 AM

I know how you feel, I also got a WD Passport in my collection. Jumped at a really good offer before I did a proper checking with Uncle Google. Sigh...


There's already a YouTube video showing how to extract the 2TB Samsung M9T HDD from a SG Backup Plus Slim. The USB controller is clearly shown as a separate adapter. We should get the same innerts here in SEA.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6eV3pEXKgo

From another SG 2.5" Backup Plus disassembly video, also shows that the USB controller is separate from the HDD PCB. So I think it's pretty safe to conclude that the current batch of SG's 2.5" ext HDDs can be extracted and redeployed to normal SATA port.

SG 2.5" Backup Plus disassembly
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e67098dYZ_0

This post has been edited by mrbob: Oct 3 2014, 06:51 PM

Really learnt alot from sifus of hdd here, now will be more picky about getting ext hdd already, although warranty is still a priority, now there is another factor to consider, which is ease of data retrieval juuuuuuuuuuuust in case something happens

Edit: Just simply checked in garage sales, Seagate Backup Plus 2.5" ext hdd max capacity only 1TB? no 2TB models?

This post has been edited by rurushu: Oct 3 2014, 10:48 PM