Western Digital Storage

Deal Chatter Daily Deal
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For those with a desktop and multiple other computers. Add a larger HDD to your desktop and share it, then use a simple free backup software, such as SyncBack Free or any other multitude of backup utilities. You can have it fully automate with incremental backups each night from all your other computers to the desktop. I’ve been running with this configuration for many many years with great success and would highly recommend it for it’s simplicity and reliability.

Also, you can use this same software with ANY external hard drive on any desktop or laptop if you only have one computer.

Another thing to mention (and while I hate the interface of most of these) many external drives from WD and Seagate these days come with a backup solution right on the drive (in the form of the company’s own software usually) that you can use too.

Backing up your stuff doesn’t have to be complicated or cost you monthly fees. A basic backup plan just requires you having at least TWO copies of your stuff in TWO different places. So, even if you bought one of these drives, make sure it’s not attached to your main computer at all times. If lightning hits your house and takes your laptop out, guess what else usually gets fried with it… that’s right anything attached to it. (seen this happen many times to my customers, and there’s nothing I can do about recovering their backup or main hard drive often times). So, unplug that drive when you’re not planning to do backups… or if you get one of these NAS devices, make sure it’s in a different part of the house, on it’s own UPS backup. If the house catches fire, it’s possible at least one of your devices (the original or the backup device) may survive if separated, same for lightning or anything else. Make sure to think beyond just “oh my computer died, I have a backup” because many other things besides just your computer going dead can lead to you needing a backup of your stuff.

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What RPM are these drives?

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They are probably all green-line drive, which spin at a set RPM somewhere around 5400-6000RPM, what they call “intellipower” but it’s a constant RPM.

Hybrid drives will hopefully rise in options as time goes on with write caching, not just read caching.

$85 shipped for 2TB isn’t that impressive. I paid slightly less than this about 2 years ago (before the floods) for a cheap internal 2TB.

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Maybe a dumb question. What do the “mynets” do?

I assume it receives a wireless signal and can connect to other devices on my network and either take data from them (for backup) or send data to them? Is that right.
For example, if I had a chromebook, could I store pictures and videos on this and access them if necessary?

Does this also CREATE a wireless network? I think no, but that would be great.

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I saw this deal & had to throw my experience in… I’ve had WD NAS devices as well as a couple of their N-series wireless routers. They’ve all functioned TERRIBLY in relation to similarly-priced equipment from D-Link, Synology, LinkSys, and others.

While the devices are just awful, customer service is gaining on their performance in the “what’s the worst thing about dealing with Western Digital” competition. Shame on me, it took 2-3 WD purchases before I found better and more competitively-priced devices.

EDIT: I keep editing & typing “Shame on me,” but it gets replaced with “fie”. I don’t know what that’s all about.

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What’s anybody’s take on using a refurb drive? Is that something you would really want to take a chance on storing crucial data on instead of a new hard drive?