Hitachi 4TB Touro DX3 Desktop External USB 3.0 Hard Drive questions

hhhhbk

hhhhbk

hhhhbk

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http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-088-HI&groupid=1657&catid=1659

Hitachi 4TB Touro DX3 Desktop External USB 3.0 Hard Drive - Retail

im thinking of getting a couple of these
look easy enough to open up to stick in tower too

i have a few questions after reading comments arounsd the internet

1 theres supposedly a spin down feature for when they arent in use which automatically powers them down... is it on the drive or in the caddy part
ie if one is put inside pc tower will it spin down?

2 are they suitable for running 24/7 inside a media server? or are they far more likely to fail as only intended as backup drives

3 iv read a comment that the drive isnt interchangable between tower and caddy, the enclosure formats it in a weird way and it cant then be removed from caddy and inserted into a pc and be read, it would have to be reformatted... is this true? if enclosure or power supply broke i like to be able to put a hdd in a tower to retrieve data

4
am i better off spending the extra 25 quid on something like a wd red 4tb for use in a computer thats always on
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-408-WD

i cant mention competitors but have seen the touro for £106

TIA
 
hhhhbk said:
look easy enough to open up to stick in tower too
Click to expand...
You need to use a bit of force and you're likely to damage the external case - there's a video on youtube which shows you how to do it.

hhhhbk said:
2 are they suitable for running 24/7 inside a media server? or are they far more likely to fail as only intended as backup drives
Click to expand...
Yes they work fine in a media server. I have 20+ of the 4TB 5900/7200rpm drives running in a server case without issue.

hhhhbk said:
3 iv read a comment that the drive isnt interchangable between tower and caddy, the enclosure formats it in a weird way and it cant then be removed from caddy and inserted into a pc and be read, it would have to be reformatted... is this true? if enclosure or power supply broke i like to be able to put a hdd in a tower to retrieve data
Click to expand...
I've never had any data on mine before removing the drives from the caddy and putting them in a server, but this doesn't sound right. I've plugged other drives into the usb3 connector stripped from the external case and interchanged that between desktop pc's without issue or data loss.

hhhhbk said:
4
am i better off spending the extra 25 quid on something like a wd red 4tb for use in a computer thats always on
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-408-WD
Click to expand...
The red's have a longer warranty which may be worth paying the extra for, but I'm a big fan of the hitachi drives (have been using them for years without much issues) so would go with them personally.
 
LFletcher said:
Personally I've had nothing but trouble with WD green drives, so wouldn't touch them with a barge-pole and definitely wouldn't put them in a media server.
Click to expand...

Swings and roundabouts though.

I have a red in my home server and a green in my main pc and they haven't skipped a beat.
 
from what iv read the caddy does something along the lines of formatting it as 2x 1.5tbs and a 1tb then uses software to combine them so they workon old systems that have a 2tb drive size limit

this is fine in the caddy but if it ever packs in youd have to put it in another identical caddy. if you stick it in a pcit thinks it cant recognize what the caddys done and you have to convert/format it and lose the data

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answe...rd-drive-removed-usb-casing-show-windows.html
 
Last edited:
Steveocee said:
Swings and roundabouts though.

I have a red in my home server and a green in my main pc and they haven't skipped a beat.
Click to expand...
It is indeed.

I've not used Red's in my own system's but have installed them for friends and they haven't had any issues. I've used Black, Blue and RE drives from WD also without issue. It's just the green ones I don't like :D They are also poor for use with hardware RAID as they have a tendancy to drop from the array.
 
hhhhbk said:
from what iv read the caddy does something along the lines of formatting it as 2x 1.5tbs and a 1tb then uses software to combine them so they workon old systems that have a 2tb drive size limit

this is fine in the caddy but if it ever packs in youd have to put it in another identical caddy. if you stick it in a pcit thinks it cant recognize what the caddys done and you have to convert/format it and lose the data

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answe...rd-drive-removed-usb-casing-show-windows.html
Click to expand...
Easiest thing to do would be to reformat the drive on first use. I'm stress testing some new 4TB touro's that I got cheap at the moment.

If you delete the existing volume that it ships with, you are left with 2 volumes underneath (a 2048GB one and a 1678GB one). Convert the disk to a GPT one and you're left with one larger unallocated volume. You should be able to format that and it won't have any issues being swapped into a normal pc.
 
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