Mighty_Miro_WD

Hi there @yoshiii! The main benefit from running a game from the SSD is the reduction in load times which occurs because the data transfer speed of a SSD (over 400 MB/s) is higher than that of a HDD. As for specific games, most beneficial will be games that require such like for instance open world games that have to load often and load in objects. Hope this helps. Cheers!

Hi there @DONCraven! It depends on your personal preference. I personally would go with the bigger one if your budget allows it because that way there will be more space for apps and games since 120GB will be enough for the OS and few games. Cheers!

Hi there @Cgermino89! Yes, you can use any external drive on the Xbox One as long as the drive itself is USB 3.0 and over 256GB. Furthermore, since you're looking for a portable one from the WD brand, you can take a look at My Passport X which is designed for such usage in particular. Here's a link if you want to check it out: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=L0y6Fa Hope this helps. Cheers!

Hi @Joshua A! It's not a good sign that you can barely feel any vibrations coming from the drive. Can you see the drive in BIOS? If not you can try the basic troubleshooting steps and see if the HDD will be recognized there: 1. Since you've tried to connect it with a different SATA cable and it didn't helped, plug it in a different SATA port of the motherboard. 2. In case it is not recognized try to plug it in a different computer - that is the best way to see if the problem is with the drive, or with the motherboard of the computer. Let me know how it went.

Hi there @Anglofdeath! You cannot simply remove your OS drive to a different computer and boot from there. That's because Windows installs some drivers during the installation, and moving the drive to another PC after could therefore make it crash or make the installation a drive mess that will slow the thing even further, so it will be best to contact Microsoft's support on this matter. Also, if you have an OEM license OS then it is tied to the motherboard,which means that moving the drive would therefore invalidate the license. Hope this helps. Cheers!

Hi there @Wickens! You don't need and don't want to defrag a SSD because it wouldn't make your access faster, nor your speed, and it will decrease the lifespan of the drive. Since there's no physical movement in the SSD the defragging is just causing a significant number of writes for no reason, which decreases its lifespan as that is set by the number of writes per cell. Cheers!

Hi there @Revan654! For this configuration 750W will be plenty enough, or 800-850W if you want to have some additional wattages aside for any upgrades on the rig. In my opinion there is no need to go with a PSU with way more wattage then you will ever need, and 1000W here will be a slight overkill, even if at some point you decide to go with 3 video cards and a significant overclock of the CPU. Hope this helps. Cheers!

Hi there @TechDookie! Most likely you just have to initialize the drive in Disk Management - just right click on the Unallocated space as which the drive appears in Disk Management, and after that simply follow the Volume Wizard. You can check this KB article with the detailed steps how to partition and format a HDD if you want: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=8SyZo6 Hope this helps and feel free to ask any questions you may have!

Hi there @BroProStudios! You cannot boot your computer from the laptop SSHD drive because Windows installs some drivers during the installation, and when you move the drive to another PC and try to boot from it, it could therefore make it crash or make the installation a drive mess, which is why I think you are getting these black screen and blue lines. What I would suggest to do is to go in BIOS and change the boot order to the initial drive of your PC, so the hybrid one could be the secondary unit and the computer won't try to boot from there. Hope this helps. Cheers!

Hi there @r-4! I'm sorry to hear about the problem you're experiencing with your HDD. Since the drive is not detected in BIOS you may try connecting it to a different computer and see if it's recognized there. In case it's not, then the best option in order to retrieve the data stored on it will be to consult with a data recovery company: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=SQoD5p However, if it's detected, backup any crucial information you have there and you can run a test with Data Lifeguard Diagnostics to see if any errors or bad sectors will be detected by the program: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=nq099l Let me know how it went.

Hi there @ScubaChase! I'm sorry to say that, but your HDD is dying. Nonetheless, you can try to check its health with chkdsk /r command in the CMD, or look if the manufacturer has it's own diagnostic tool that you can download and test the drive with, but first make a backup of the important data . For instance, if you have a WD hard disk you can do this with Data Lifeguard Diagnostics: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=5LwxuA In case the check confirms there's something wrong with the hard drive, look for a replacement. Hope this helps and best of luck! Cheers!

Hi there @Nikolithebear! You can try the basic troubleshooting steps: 1. Since you've already tried a different SATA cable, you can plug the drive in a different SATA port of the motherboard. 2. In case the issue continues, try to plug it in a different computer - that is the best way to see if the problem is with the drive, or with the motherboard of the computer. If there's still an issue, check the drive's health by using chkdsk /r command in the CMD, or look if the manufacturer has it's own diagnostic tool that you can download and test the drive with. Hope this helps. Cheers!

Hi there @megjake! When you reinstall the OS on your drive the best thing will be to format it. This means that all the programs on it will be wiped and you cannot select few that will remain there. However, you can still make a backup of your Steam games somewhere (external drive, discs, etc.), and like @k4p84 wrote when you are logged into Chrome the bookmarks and extensions are backed up to the cloud, so you can reinstall them. Hope this helps. Cheers!

Hi there @Commander_Z! You cannot plug a mSATA drive in the SATA port of your motherboard directly. However, you can attach a mSATA device to a standard SATA port using an adaptor, though, check the specifications carefully to ensure compatibility with your particular mSATA drive as there are different types. Specifically, there are those that use SATA and those which use PCI Express, although both use a connector, which is physically identical. Hope this helps. Cheers!

Hi there@Andrew Storlie! I agree with Goose Legs - it depends on your backup strategy because any drive may die, no matter the technology. That is why you should build in a good backup plan, - any data that lives on one and only one drive, be it SSD or HDD, may be said to not exist at all. Especially with a RAID 0, which is an array that offers no redundancy. However, since you have a 20TB NAS device and do a regular nightly backup (very good backup strategy in my opinion), you can go ahead and give it a try in my opinion. Hope this helps. Cheers!

Hi there @GpuTweak! It could be that the drive is not firmly seated in the HDD bay, so you can check if it's loose and screwed it in. Also, since you think that there might be something wrong with the Blue drive, you can run a test with Data Lifeguard Diagnostics and see if anything wrong will be detected by the program: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=rjEyFY However, since you can feel the vibrations on the desk I don't think it's the drive, but more likely some fan. Can you disconnect it and start the computer to see if the vibrations will be that strong again? Cheers!

Hi there @Erfurt! I agree with the others - the difference and the only benefit from running a game from the SSD is the faster loading times which occurs because the data transfer speed of a SSD is higher than that of a HDD (for instance for open world games and such that have to load often and load in objects, etc.). However, gaming from the solid state will not affect your FPS since your GPU and CPU will have the major role there, and upgrading to an SSD will not make that much of a difference in the general performance (except for the mentioned loading times). Hope this helps and cheers!

Hi there @PM97! Both drives indeed have the same RPM, but they are meant for different purposes and have different build-in features. WD Blue is designed for everyday usage and it is most commonly used for regular computing, light gaming and workloads and combined with SSD. It is fully capable to run most games as well as many programs for editing or programming, and it comes with capacity up to 1TB. WD Black on the other hand is a performance oriented drive. It is the fastest among the WD consumer line and has good features such as a built-in dual-core CPU that makes the drive great for multitasking. It is designed for heavy gaming, big workloads and intensive file usage, and its mostly used in gaming computers or editing machines. It comes in bigger capacities compared to the Blue drive and has 5-year limited warranty and its mostly used in gaming computers or editing machines. Hope this helps. Cheers!

Hi there @iamdarkyoshi! Judging by the results of the hard drive check you've run I would say that you need to replace the HDD since it's failing. So make a backup of your important data and look for a replacement drive. As for what type of RAID to use in your machine, I would suggest to set them up in RAID 1 since it will give you some additional redundancy. However, keep in mind that this array is not a substitute for backup because there are a lot of risks that it can't protect against like: * If you accidentally delete a file, it will instantly be removed from both mirrored copies. * If your disk is corrupted by a software bug or virus, the corruption will be done to both mirrored copies simultaneously. * If you're hit by a bad enough power surge, it'll probably fry both disks at the same time, etc. Hope this helps. Cheers!

Hi there @Jayhawk! There are two options you can try to delete the information from your hard disk. The first one is simply to reformat the HDD and that way all the data stored on it will be deleted. You can do in Disk Management: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=w0v2vh The other thing is to write zeros to the drive with options of Full Erase and Quick Erase with Data Lifeguard Diagnostics. That way the file system and data stored will be lost. You can download the program from here: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=QdNmxt Hope this helps. Cheers!

Hi there @DJ_Deedahx! When the drive detects an error during a write operation it can immediately remap to a sector reserved for this purpose. No data is lost. But if the error occurs during a read operation the drive cannot remap the sector because it doesn't know what the data is supposed to be. The drive makes a not of these and will remap them when or if the sector is later written to or if it can be successfully read. The "Pending Sector Count" is the count of these pending sectors, and the Current Pending Sectors are active visible bad sectors that cannot be read but are still visible to the operating system, and these are dangerous and can cause a lot of problems. Since the program is giving you a caution warning, I would suggest to make a backup of your important data and look for a replacement HDD. Hope this helps. Cheers!

Hi there @Bubblez! Since you're looking for a secondary mass storage drive I can recommend WD Green drives since they are energy efficient, cool operating and designed for such usage. The main benefit is that they save power and wear by spinning down when they can, this means they're basically best for things like backup drives which are only in use periodically (e.g - once an hour). You can check them out here: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=EJ6zBb As for the HDD cache,it is a buffer where data is kept in transition from the drive platter and being requested by the processor. In terms of performance it will hold files in memory that are used quite often or for prefetching. Memory transfers will always be faster than reading off hard drives. So the more cache you have the more files can be held in memory, the faster the drive will be for those files. Once it has to pull off the hard drive you're back to normal speeds. In that matter, the drives with larger caches will perform better since they can temporarily store more and larger files in their memory for repeated access. For mass storage I would say that 64MB would be plenty. Hope this helps and feel free to ask any questions you may have! Cheers!

Hi there @Thedudely1! It depends on which device you're trying to format. For smaller flash based storage devices exFAT will be faster, while on large disk partitions NTFS would be the more logical solution - exFAT is designed to be used more on removable/flash media and embedded storage while NTFS is intended for use on high-density storage mediums, i.e. hard drives and SSDs. Hope this helps. Cheers!

Hi there @mineblaster! Since you're going for a big RAID 6 array I would recommend to consider hard drives that are meant and have the necessary build-in features for such usage in particular. For instance, you can take a look at WD Red because it's 24/7 operational, and have better vibration tolerance, error correction, reduced heat when all packed together next to each other which is basically the most important features when it comes to building an array. Furthermore, the Reds also have TLER, which helps the drive recover faster in case of read/write error and the drive doesnt drop off the RAID, and NASware 3.0 as well. You can check them out here: WD Red - http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=R1BdhC Hope this helps. Cheers!

Hi there @Roboslash1! The difference between these drives is in the purpose they're designed for. WD Green is an energy-efficient drive that works cool, quiet and saves a lot of power. It is designed for backups and secondary storage and its features allow it to be a great choice for quiet backup builds or for archiving. It is mostly chosen for massive media storage (it comes in capacity up to 6TB) in builds that have another drive for the OS and active programs and games. WD Blue on the other hand is a regular everyday drive that is most commonly used for regular computing, light gaming and workloads and combined with SSD. It is fully capable to run most games as well as many programs for editing or programming. If you're looking for a HDD to run games from, I would recommend you this one since it will suit better. You can check them here: WD Blue - http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=Ty2xsX WD Green - http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=7bOiVv Hope this helps. Cheers!