WD My Book WDBBGB0160HBK 16TB for data storage?

[CrisR82]

While I'm guessing it's probably fine (I mean they are being sold and people are buying them for this I guess?), I thought I'd ask for some thought on this topic.

 

So far I have been using 11 external hard drives (mostly WD Elements or WD My Passport, 2.5'' USB 3.0 drives between 1TB and 4TB) and today I got my hands on a WD My Book WDBBGB0160HBK 16TB 3.5'' drive for a pretty good price. After checking online, I noticed that this one is most likely an SMR drive.

My intention was to migrate my data from the many 2.5'' drives onto this single one, which I have started and so far I haven't noticed it being any slower at all than my other drives (first 4TB drive being copied on it right now) however many people online seem to be on the "avoid SMR" wave so...kind'a not sure what to make of it.

 

Anyone has any experience with this model or this type of drive for just good 'ol backup, or anything I should be aware of/precautions to avoid possible issues down the line?

(in detail, my use case is backing up application installers, music collection, ISOs and other non-mission critical stuff...like, copy stuff on it, disconnect and power-off the drive, connect only when files from it need to be used/updated)

[Electronics Wizardy]

Id be very suprised if that drive is smr, as wd only makes smr drives up to 6tb( other than server drives, and maybe I missed some).

 

I wouldn't worry about using it, should work fine here.

[Needfuldoer]

12 minutes ago, CrisR82 said:

My intention was to migrate my data from the many 2.5'' drives onto this single one

[Anakin/Padme meme] And a second backup drive, right?

 

16 TB is a lot of data to trust to one mechanical device.

 

"Avoid SMR" is sound advice when the drive is going in an active machine, because SMR drives get slow once their buffers fill or they run out of blank tracks and have to start overwriting. For a backup drive, they're fine.

[CrisR82]

1 minute ago, Needfuldoer said:

[Anakin/Padme meme] And a second backup drive, right?

 

16 TB is a lot of data to trust to one mechanical device.

 

"Avoid SMR" is sound advice when the drive is going in an active machine, because SMR drives get slow once their buffers fill or they run out of blank tracks and have to start overwriting. For a backup drive, they're fine.

No second backup for this one, I mean yeah, it's a LOT of data for sure, but all of it I can either re-download or just re-rip myself (all the ISOs are copies of old physical games I own). One of my external drives is a 1TB WD Elements that I've had for over 10 years and it still seems to be working just fine, so my guess is unless I actually move it around, this one should last just as long...and at that point I will definitely be replacing it. (I do have all my drives cataloged so in case of a dead drive I can know exactly what I lost/need to re-acquire)

 

My actually important stuff like the family photo album gets a dedicated external HDD, a copy on a large SD card and a cloud backup. ^-^;;