WD 18TB Elements Desktop External Hard Drive - USB 3.0, Black

Product Information

Having it made from metal might have made more sense if the enclosure was designed to be reused, but the maker doesn’t encourage that, confusingly. When you compare the cost to that of a bare mechanism and a simple USB enclosure, the G-DRIVE Desktop Drive is one of the more expensive ways to get extra space, and it's also relatively slow compared to SSD drives.

Tip – how to measure drive lifetime with SMART. You can install smart sudo apt install smartmontools And while it does both those things admirably, it also makes the unit heavy and unsuitable to put in a laptop bag with a computer. With its external PSU, sharp edges and multiple USB cables, this drive needs its own bag for carrying, and it isn’t that portable.Given the premium price of this drive, it was disappointing to see that Western Digital provides no software with this unit at all, assuming the customer has that already. From the outside, the new G-DRIVE Desktop now has a more angular aesthetic and not the rounded tube appearance that the previous design and the PRO model sports. Western Digital's representatives tell us that the company's Gold drives can best be considered as a subset of its Ultrastar DC line—all Gold disks have technically identical Ultrastar equivalents, but not all Ultrastar disks have Gold equivalents. The Gold product line are all enterprise drives—but the entire line-up is all-SATA, all-CMR, all the time. Drives in the broader Ultrastar line-up may offer SATA or SAS interfaces, and either conventional or shingled magnetic recording.

Hard drives have moving parts, and over time the motors, heads, and actuators fail. SMART is useful for finding predictive failures and removing a device before the data is lost, but this is tedious for novice users to understand (although I will show you how later). HDDs exhibit a bathtub curve for failures, with device failures increasing as time increases, rapidly accelerating after the 5 year warranty on most models. Device time is measured in power on hours, not physical time (as time with the disk powered off for extended periods of time does not count towards device wear). To make it even more complicated, the higher the workload and temperature the drive was used at, the faster it will fail.The new design seems to be transitioning to more plastic and less metal, but there isn’t anything special about this solution unless you need 22TB of extra space sitting on your desk alongside your workday computer. Both the Western Digital G-Drive 18TB and LaCie d2 Professional 18TB are perfect for storing massive quantities of data whilst offering very fast data access. They both feature 7200 RPM drives for fast data transfers. The LaCie includes a Thunderbolt 3 interface where the Western Digital only USB 3.0. You need to move up to the Western Digital G-Drive Pro 18TB to get the faster Thunderbolt 3 interface. They feature aluminium cases for improved heat distribution. Hard drives can get quite hot under continuous load, therefore having adequate ventilation will help extend the longevity of the drive.