New WD Elements portable drive issues

phly

phly

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So I decided after such a tumultuous year that I'd get myself an external hard drive. I had a similar 4GB and has been fine playing stuff through kodi, on pc copying stuff etc and even though it has some Issue being read on windows, I use it on a Mac daily and its fine. The plan was to get a 4GB portable drive and settled for the WD elements.

Issue though is it seems very slow to copy stuff to it from the other drive. Folders fail copying which sucks when you wait hours to transfer your precious stuff from one drive to another. AT times I hear a ticking sound. not sure if this is normal. To sum it all up. Feels like I got sold a dud. My question is, could it be that my former drive being smaller, NTFS formatted with MBR is the reason it has no issues compared to the newly formatted EXFAT (for compatibility purposes) GPT partition drive?

Any tests I can do before returning it? Just want to rule out user error before settling for hardware error. May I also point out that it takes ages to get read on machines and when I unplug it, It still appears on my desktop on Mac.
 
Sounds like I am out of luck then. Sigh.
 
I stay away from WD, they just not reliable.

Toshiba is the way to go for externals and Seagate for internals.
 
Rickster said:
I stay away from WD, they just not reliable.

Toshiba is the way to go for externals and Seagate for internals.
Click to expand...
Reason I settled with WD is that i have a similar one and no issues. NTFS formatted and works just as fast on Mac using third party app for reading and writing to and from it.
 
phly said:
Reason I settled with WD is that i have a similar one and no issues. NTFS formatted and works just as fast on Mac using third party app for reading and writing to and from it.
Click to expand...

Load up Crystal disk info on your windows PC to check the health or DriveDx on mac.

The app you referring to is black magic?
 
Rickster said:
Load up Crystal disk info on your windows PC to check the health or DriveDx on mac.

The app you referring to is black magic?
Click to expand...
No. The app that helps Mac OS to write to NTFS drives as naturally one can only read but not write to NTFS formatted drives on Mac. Currently using Tuxera but Paragon NTFS does the same
 
You can download the WD Drive Utilities that will do a diagnostic on the drive. Last time I had a fault with a WD drive I submitted the report from this together with the drive for the warranty claim, which helped.

My personal experience of drive reliability is that the most important factor is how well it is packaged in bubble wrap before being sent by courier (the back of the van that is driving around all day can be a harsh place). It is best to pick it up in person or buy from a place that does decent packaging, like Wootware.
 
garyc said:
You can download the WD Drive Utilities that will do a diagnostic on the drive. Last time I had a fault with a WD drive I submitted the report from this together with the drive for the warranty claim, which helped.

My personal experience of drive reliability is that the most important factor is how well it is packaged in bubble wrap before being sent by courier (the back of the van that is driving around all day can be a harsh place). It is best to pick it up in person or buy from a place that does decent packaging, like Wootware.
Click to expand...
The app completely refused to detect my drive. I tried the earlier mention DxDrive and that does not pick any issues. So I'll try and fight with it some more and see if I get anywhere
 
So I plugged in the hard drive later on and the following happened. An issue was found. Not sure how severe it is or if it is just one of those pre warnings.
Screen_Shot_2020-12-20_at_9.57.13_PM.png
 
...worried here as well, paid R1500 to incredible for personal use, and ended up using it to backup for work instead. Have copied > 3.2TB to it already.

I have been meaning to pull the trigger on the R1699 from Takealot to backup my 4TB Seagate which is a brand I do not trust either.
 
Vis1/0N said:
...worried here as well, paid R1500 to incredible for personal use, and ended up using it to backup for work instead. Have copied > 3.2TB to it already.

I have been meaning to pull the trigger on the R1699 from Takealot to backup my 4TB Seagate which is a brand I do not trust either.
Click to expand...
Funny enough that is the one I pulled the trigger on. The one for R1699 expecting it to be on par with the WD Passport that I already had. But man am I disappointed.
 
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