Just wonder how USB 1.1 performed.
About this item
CamelCamelCamel.
If Amazon shipping actually padded their packages I would jump at this price.
I've bought a few of these and never had issues. These retail boxes will probably come inside a box too.
Worse: I bought $4k of bare drives of a specific type from Amazon USA. We needed 6tb with 512n format - not 512e or 4K. They crammed all of them in one box without any bubble wrap and with 3x airbags on top.
Managed to convince returns after testing 3x out of the first ones I took out as they were faulty. I didn’t bother with the other 15.
At least there’s the packaging in these.
Bare drives are different. I got my bare drive well packaged but yeah I've heard horror stories. Retail boxes should be fine.
Currently almost out 1K waiting for my return to be processed.
Amazon box was so beat up the tape actually broke its seal on the sides, the WD retail boxes also had the corners bent in, one corner significant enough that it tore through the cardboard.
I’ve said it before and I will say it again, it would cost them 3 cents to add some bubble wrap or padding, just do it to be on the safe side.
Did you try the drive or did you return it straight away? As long as the drive wasn't touched it was probably going to be ok.
@Mitch889: I don't trust any drive no matter how well packaged it is. There can be defects during manufacturing. I would test my drive thoroughly before putting stuff on it. Doubly so if I'm going to be shucking it. I'm not saying you guys are wrong for returning it. I just probably would have at least plugged it in and run some basic tests if only the outside cardboard was torn. There's still many layers of protection to get past before getting to your actual hard drive.
If there was too much space in the box, just a heavy package on top could have cause that amount of damage.
Edit: I'm guessing it's a little different in the real enterprise world as they would have extra drives for redundancy and just rip one out and throw in another. They probably have special arrangements with companies to just deal with any duds. They also wouldn't care what's on the drives as it's probably all encrypted.
@ozbs25: I agree with this, I just think you should give yourself the best chance possible and when it’s clearly been thrown around then I feel like I would have a better chance with a drive that hasn’t been?
I suppose the real question is, if it passes all read and write tests does that confirm the lifespan has not been affected by the drives handling in transit? Or just that the drive hasn’t currently got any bad sectors?
I’m more worried if it passes the tests that bad sectors could develop prematurely (which may not even be something that is possible?).
I just think you should give yourself the best chance possible
I agree, that's why you need to thoroughly test ALL the drives you receive. Check they're good before you put them into service.
@ozbs25: It was packed with zero protection in a foil sleeve and the courier dropped it on the ground right in front of me, I’m was not going to waste my time testing it.
@Mitch889: Sorry, I wasn't talking about that one. I wouldn't accept a bare drive shipped like that. I was speaking about the external one shipped in a retail box with the edge torn.
Did you actually thoroughly test the drives before returning ?
Hard drives are not that fragile - the drive is mounted in rubber inside the enclosure, and the enclosure is mounted in the foam inside the box.
Box is smashed to bits ? Who cares, if the drive passes the full round of tests, then it's good.
Because these are mounted in rubber in an external enclosure that itself is in an egg-crate style package in the WD box Amazon don't really need to pad their boxes much. I've got a very very low failure rate on these. On the other hand despite at least some OEM packaging (egg crate style) I haven't had a great success rate on the small number of the bare drives I've had from Amazon, albeit a much much smaller sample.
Thanks, this puts my mind at ease a little but already sent them back
I ordered a bare 14TB drive from Amazon last week. Arrived in a barely padded envelope, no box or bubble wrap. Courier fumbled around with another parcel and dropped it on the concrete right in front of me.
Needless to say, I filed a return moments later and took it straight to the post office.
I bought one of these and arrived dead, and the box was squashed in one corner. Would bever buy hard drive from Amazon unless local stock
Oh, right. I would have posted this an hour ago but it said I bought the last two. I guess they've updated quantity
Anyone have any idea how to register these for warranty? I can't find a way, online fails, software that comes with it never actually loads the part to register. Seems to be a mystery. Thanks in advance
Lets try again, the last couple I got were 12TB drives, in 12TB boxes, with 18TB barcodes…..
did you return it for a refund?
Started the process, takes a while as they ship it all the way back to the US/UK before refunding. :\
If people don't know, warranty is through Amazon and you have to RMA back to US for refund or issue.
But it's free and there's a plenty of pickup stores what's wrong with that?
I have returned one before and it was so easy
you have to RMA back to US for refund or issue.
I thought you only had to send them back to Amazon's local depot, since you're buying though Amazon.au's site, rather than Amazon.com directly.
that is correct, but you have to wait for the product to arrive internationally in order to get refund.
The refund options are post to the US (for which their default isn't to give you enough for postage to actually cover that), or give it to their local pick up point, which itself ships back to the US where they check it before you get the refund.
Doesn't appear to actually matter that you're buying it through Amazon.com.au other than access to their pick up / collection points.
I got 3 of these drives a week ago and all three tested fine via SMART inside a Synology 1821+ NAS. They are pretty easy to shuck, as one can it seems just pull the cover forward as the sides slide on grooves and only 3 clips per side at the back (managed to do 1 dead easy like). Going to try hooking something inside the kensington lock hole next time and just pulling the 2 side apart.
Could you post a screenshot of your Synology with these drives in. I want to order x 4 for my NAS but none of the 18TB are on the hardware compatibility list. Max is 16TB. BTW.. Are these helium or air & what's the model number? Thanks in advance.
I bought one of these on the Black Friday sales and it was a WDC WD180EDGZ drive.
I'll have a look when I get back home (still setting up the NAS), but they are helium drives (anything over 10-12TB is Helium to my knowledge) and the drives are the WDC WD180EDGZ.
The hardware compatibility list is simply the list of drives they've tested.
Don't worry about sourcing outside of the list - unless there's a (vanishingly rare) specific compatibility issue with that drive, it'll work just fine.
I agree. But hard to pull trigger on $2k+ purchase without knowing the deets. 🙂
So the WD 18TB that is a OEM Model is WDC WUH721818ALE6L4 (HC550) and these drives are the WD180EDGZ-11B2DA0.
Though Top Tip: If you setup SHR-1 or 2 you are limited to adding only the same or larger drives later, I made a SHR-2 with 4x 18TB and so am F out of luck adding my 2x 10TB and 2x 12TB to that Volume. My solution is throw money at it…
P.S. I'm new to Synology so if you wanted something in particular you'd have to tell me where to look.
Always worried to order hard drives from Amazon US. I bought from Amazon Australia before and it arrived in box instead of soft envelope.
I bought a g shock from Amazon us recently, cardboard box ripped up and my g shock got dented and a button doesn't work. Waiting for refund.
These external drives are well protected, as they are held in place via plastic trays and the drive inside has rubber mount to the outer shell of the external enclosure.
I understand, I am just implying that things from Amazon US have a rough trip before it arrives.
If my g shock can get damaged, then anything can get damaged.
ty OP
ordered one.
hope this item i receive a fine one
OP, what do you mean USB 1.1?
Read Amazon's specs.
Fan fact - it'll take almost 2 days to fill these drives at maximum write speed.
That's why I use "clone" for my daily backups as my NAS would take 2-3 days if I did a normal "backup" write to my external drives.
That must be a mistake surely? Also, the item heading says USB 3.0?
That must be a mistake surely?
That'sTheJoke.jpg.
Check out the specs on a bare 4TB WD Red+ HDD from the other day.
@Mr Bob Dobalina: Had to look this up, luckily I know a guy who is an expert on A batteries (pawn stars style)
Regarding the unanswered question about battery sizes, "B" size batteries were once relatively common. Old type "B" batteries were once used in tube type portable radios. There was also an "A" battery to power the tube filament. The "B" battery had a relatively high voltage - from 22.5 Volts to over 90 Volts. The "A" battery was a lower voltage battery 1.5 Volts to 9 Volts. You can still find these in antique shops.
*Fun Fact
Damn autocorrect…
is there a way where I can get these to act as a third backup without using a NAS or PC?
What do you mean?
You mean have data transmit to it via magic?
Just because you don't understand something, doesn't mean it is magic. These drives probably have LiFi
Plug it into your router.
Can i use this to backup my nas?
Yes, plug this into the usb 3.0 port & create a backup schedule for your desired folders. You can eject at the end of your backup. You can power up using a smart plug on schedule so it's not on all the time but that take a lot of testing & patience to get the timing right with your backup.
Mmm I’ve got an 18tb WD ultra-star bare drive on order from Amazon US for $515, comments here seem to make me think I should order this as it’s sounding like it’s going to be terrible packaging. Is there much difference in this drive once shucked vs the above?
I bought one of this last year for the same price. Currently use it for my NAS external backup. If you are thinking to use it for NAS’s HDD, just forget it. The quality of this drive is somewhere under normal standard. It is very slow read and write, also making a lot of noise. I am currently deleting about 3TB of files on the drive, it took 2.5 days for locating each file of 3TB, then pop up and asked me to confirm I want to delete them or not, once I clicked yes, it took 4 hrs to actual deleted 2% of 3TB files. I don't know how long will it take for deleting all these 3TB, don't know why… Terrible! My laptop has not been turned off for 3 days because of this.
Strange. I have one hooked up externally to my NUC. Other then taking a moment to spin up from standby it does its job well.
If you are thinking to use it for NAS’s HDD, just forget it. The quality of this drive is somewhere under normal standard.
Nope, they use white label data center drives in these. The quality is much higher than a regular consumer drive.
It is very slow read and write, also making a lot of noise. I am currently deleting about 3TB of files on the drive, it took 2.5 days for locating each file of 3TB, then pop up and asked me to confirm I want to delete them or not, once I clicked yes, it took 4 hrs to actual deleted 2% of 3TB files.
The reason the drive is noisy is due to it being a data center drive, they optimize it for speed rather than being quiet since it's designed to be used in a server out of earshot.
This speed problem sounds like an issue with your NAS. Try formatting the drive in ext4 instead of NTFS as many NAS have poor performance on their NTFS drivers. Also make sure the port you have it in is a USB3 port.
I can’t agree with you on all points you made, though thanks for input.
This elements HDD does not fit to use in NAS. please check the compatibility chart to match your NAS model. Again you don’t have to take my words for it, once you do some the research you would see yourself.
I have said I used this elements for doing NAS backup drive externally. It is nothing to do with my NAS. I do deleting job from my laptop connecting to this HDD, again my laptop is the latest model with win11.
Just to update the deleting job, I gave it up after three days reading and it took 8 hours to deleted 2% of 3 TB files, I just can’t wait no more, turned it off all together. Now I have 18TB elements with full up capacity HDD, don’t know what to do next, thinking to format all and start hyper back up again.
It sounds like you might've received a defective one, it should not be that slow when attached to your laptop.
These drives are very popular in the NAS community to buy them and open the casing as a way to get data center drives at cheaper pricing to install internally into a NAS.
please do a SMART or dd test, if slow than the spec, it is better to RMA or return it asap - those wd elements have 2 yrs warranty only.
@s12321: I would do smart on this drive. I bought it from Amazon and seller is from UK. not sure how RMA could be done on this.
I bought a 12TB back in Feb, which since has been lost by their 3PL company 'SEKO'. So Amazon refunded, ordered another one, now THAT one has also disappeared into the mail blackhole. What the fk! May as well spend the premium and buy on Amazon.com.au.
Also side note, one of my WD Shucked 12TBs suddenly had 18 or so bad sectors just under a year old. Amazon replaced.
too much of a co-incidence, someone is probably lifting packages from the front of your house
They've actually never even made it to 'Out for delivery' - Lost in warehousing it seems. Really odd.
Hey mate, exact same thing has happened to me. 12TB ordered 08/03/22, shipped with SEKO and now its stuck on "delayed - waiting to be processed for delivery". I've logged an enquiry with Auspost but Auspost wont start investigating until 08/04/22. Can I ask how you went about getting you refund via Amazon? TIA
Why would Amazon give you a refund whilst your parcel is delayed… ?
You just need to wait longer - postal delays are normal at the moment, I've just had an Express package take a whole week from suburb to suburb in the same city 🤷🏼♂️
AusPost turned around to me and said "Not with us, its with the 3PL provider still (SEKO)"
Amazon refunded me in full, once it's 3-5 days past delivery date and tracking is not of any use, it seems they just write it off.
Thanks for the reply. Hopefully I dont have too much trouble getting the refund after auspost investigates. Estimated delivery was the 16th of march and theyre not going to start investigating until the 12th of april. Have 0 faith that the package will show up in the meantime lol
@Tenpenny: If it's past the estimated delivery time on Amazon.com.au, kick off a live chat convo and tell them it's missing. I really don't think they care, instant refund on my end!
this will be my 7th drive from Amazon (US & UK) ranging from 12 - 18tb.. all shucked.. working great.. i run Crystaldisk often just to see.. 12months on all good.. its a gamble to get a good one.. no drama for me to go through RMA as long as its accepted.
It's showing as $505.42 for me now…
Has anybody had this posted yet? My order has been stuck on "Ordered Sunday, 27 March" for like a week now.
You need to look at the "expected delivery" date on your order.
It doesn't matter when they post it…
Yes I am just wondering if there is a particular reason why Amazon would delay posting it, I have had item posted pretty soon after ordering from Amazon US before and I also have had a couple of item getting cancelled on the expected date after the status not getting updated after ordering.
It's just because they don't need to post it yet, in order to meet the expected delivery date.
They'll send it to meet the date - this is just normal Amazon operation 👍
Mine arrived today. Amazon box in terrible condition, 60% of the air bubbles inside had burst, from what I assume are high impact events or maybe a crush.
To be expected, the actual box for the hard drives is quite intact, and the drive itself has 2 large pieces of plastic to protect it, and of course the portable enclosure itself.
Time to start testing, but they have booted so far.
Thanks OP, bought a couple of hours ago when my camels alert came in.