As fingers66 said - yep There are basically 3 HDD mfrs left - WD [including HGST as-was and SanDisk], Seagate [including Maxtor as-was, Samsung's HDD division, LaCie etc.] and Toshiba. [and maybe some random chinese ones] Even on the SSD front, there may be wider vriety of names, but underneath the label there are only handful of NAND mfrs and small number of suppliers of the controllers [Sandforce et al.] .
Hmm, The EDAZ had a blue sticker when I shucked it. Given that these all appear to be pmr /CMR maybe those Seagate's are too, given that they were in the array at one point with the WD without any issues. Also price drop on the elements 10tb to 187 on amazon
Useful site to determine price per TB at Amazon in different countries: https://diskprices.com Worth a look.
I've received 3x 12TB WD Elements Drives from Amazon today. Not opened them yet as going to give them a test first. First one shows as an EMAZ in CrystalDiskInfo.
i opted for the seagate 10tb just arrived hadn't noticed the 12tb wd ones were cheaper than 10tb wd drives.
Just an update on mine. All three drives are EMAZ and all work without having to do the tape mod trick for power which I'm happy about!
And doh, just lost a 5tb last night and need to replace it. 12tb gone up in price! Any thoughts on the 8tb elements? Current 140 so easier to swallow than 12tb at 225
Looks like your in luck: https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/wd...6150-students-at-western-digital-shop-3471170 Disappointed I missed out on that deal but nevermind.
Depending on how careful I have been. 1) If they shuck was clean, i keep it so I can put it all back together again. 2) If its bad, the off to the recycle centre, though i keep the psu and usb cables. From my understanding they dont always play nice when you use other drives in them.. Also the controller does something weird, so its not always the case that you put in an old other drive and it becomes external, if it works, often you have to reformat.
recently shucked my 4tb mybook, was a white label red drive, easy as pie to open, didnt know that you have to cover a pin on the power connector to get it to work in the pc tho. But after figured that out also took the enclosure and tried my 1tb drive that was now excess inside it. Didnt work, then found break off 2 pins on the winbond chip , put back together and done. No reformat needed, Works as it did Nice new 4tb internal drive, and a nice new 1tb spare external. Happy dude
