new western digital ext drive - not sata

[Grant]

I notice western digital are using a propriety connection on their 2.5 inch "external" drives.
Anyone have any idea as to why they have chosen this route as opposed to sticking with the standard SATA connection.

I have always had a cloned backup drive for each computer, so in the event of a drive going belly-up, the drive can be pulled out & replaced by the clone drive.

This is no longer an option with the ext WD drives.
Its no biggie really, simply a matter of no longer buying WD ext drives.

 

[Crowley]

Both the WD and Seagate USB 3 drives use the same connector as far as I know. Think it has something to do with the transfer speeds.

 

[SouthBit]

They have been doing it for years. Samsung as well. It's a cost saving process. Instead of having a SATA PCB and then a SATA to USB adapter, they just make the PCB itself USB, removing the SATA connection.

 

[ponder]

They have been doing it for years. Samsung as well. It's a cost saving process. Instead of having a SATA PCB and then a SATA to USB adapter, they just make the PCB itself USB, removing the SATA connection.

just to add and state the obvious the SATA logic/circuitry is still there, just minus the actual connector. On some boards you can pick up the sata interface pins at various places across the PCB.

 

[SouthBit]

just to add and state the obvious the SATA logic/circuitry is still there, just minus the actual connector. On some boards you can pick up the sata interface pins at various places across the PCB.

Yes, the SATA interface is still there, but no connector. You can wire up some leads to the SATA pinouts on a USB PCB.

 

[ponder]

Yes, the SATA interface is still there, but no connector. You can wire up some leads to the SATA pinouts on a USB PCB.

From a data recovery perspective it just makes it a wee bit harder and time consuming which is a PITA.

Beyond that it's still the same drive.