@@racerex340 they dont use the nomenclature outside of slot, or type i guess you would call it. they dont call the part that, or the slot that, itd be m.2 2242 or mini pcie, and then you have to worry about the keying, but no weird ass names
isnt that what tech is like allways? i dont buy brand new anymore if i dont really really need it now or the use cycle is shorter. a monitor works what? 5-10 years and you maybe want a new one because of features? I have a really exspensive gaming "setup" around 15k retail price and payed about 30% off average so lets say 10k. i got my 9900KS for 450€ because its a bin reject (IMC is not the best but i do 4x8GB RAM OC so no problem) and a MX XI Formula for 380€. that was about 280€ less than what i would have payed off the shelf and that shit is nearly new. sometime you dont even need a year to get a discount
For those confused about the USB naming: USB 3.2 Gen 2 2x2: 20Gbps (bits not bytes) USB 3.2 Gen 2: Previously USB 3.1 Gen 2: Previously USB 3.1: 10Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 1: Previously USB 3.1 Gen 1: Previously USB 3.0: 5Gbps I know, WTF
A commonly over looked part of a usb drive is the format used. A lot of usb drive ship with FAT32 for compatibility between many OS's. The problem is that FAT32 only supports file sizes up to 4gig. The steam library you were copying over and games you were playing may have had files over 4gig. If you reformat the drive to NTFS or exfat the issues may disappear. Edit: Now that i watched the video again, the files that you were having errors with were both over 4gigs.
this is facts, and that the thing with these reviewers, they really do not know tech and be commenting about it. only "positive" is that this one did not negatively bash WD nor the controller company like many others would. But for them to not know this, they really should not be reviewing anything.
They have stated that these errors only happen when it's running at full native speed, which means it's almost certainly the controller on the motherboard. Just wait for motherboards to catch up.
@@Harvester88 I'm having an issue with my T5 on my 3900x system, but not on my laptop. I don't think its an issue with the drive. My drive keeps disconnecting and gets extremely slow/bottoms out, much like these guys are experiencing.
I've just recently bought one and I'm using it primarily as a portable virtual machine. So far I didn't encounter any weird problems and the ones presented aren't really a concern for me. Good video tho, could be quite a game changer for other potential buyers. I'm almost certain WD will improves things via firmware updates tho (if not already done idk), so if people are interested you may want to check some newer reviews as well.
Man hands down amazing work on the review time and quality spend, shows why this channel is one of the best when it comes to reviewing practices , to keep a more realistic and detailed approach
4:40 I give you a hint, why this is the case: it is about the power delivery, USB 3.0 (5 Gbps) only supports up to 4.5 W Power delivery. Since new SSDs commonly use more than 5 W (a few do not), the controller shuts down while being pushed to the limit since it exceeds the power limitation. Although USB 3.2/3.1 are downwards compatible with USB 3.0/2.0 protocol/data transfer wise, power delivery is not. If you use a more efficient SSD, speed usually goes down with it. The manufacturers have to fix the power problem with faster drives connected to slower interfaces. I had the same problems with a USB 3.0 drive without external power source connected to a USB 2.0 port, it lost connection every now and then.
that's literally why I just bought a 10 port USB 3.0/Card Reader Hub Amazon. I started having issues with connecting multiple portable ssd's and harddrives (especially) and started getting connection and transfer errors. When I finally realised it was due to it being a USB 2.0/Card Reader Hub (bc I've had it forever) it finally made sense. It was too much power consumption!
The intent is to have multiple opinions in one video. It helps cover more bases, plus Mike has been in the industry for 15+ years so his opinion can sometimes be very different.
Here's a hot take: I actually agree completely with both of you on your conclusions. The strix enclosure is upgradeable but mike is right too because western digital will for sure fix issues. Super informative though, nice work.
It's probably file corruption. You should create file hashes of the known good files and verify your files after you copy. Use rsync (rsync --stats --progress -rvzh /Path/ToUpload/ /Path/ToUploaded/) instead of Windows file copy to help avoid in file copy corruption.
Well done for being a BETA tester for WD. Did they let you keep the review unit permanently for the privilege? Thanks for all the honesty and screen grabs etc.
Watching this with my wife, Eber: From the outside it looks amazing. Wife: Wow, that looks just like a cheap blister pack that would be holding something nice inside. Me: you're right, it reminds me of the back of the blister pack for ram.
The best USB drive available right now is just to get a m.2 ssd and stick it in an enclosure that has either type c or usb 3.1 (10gbps) male port. My enclosure has both. With this, you get fast speeds (faster than sata), for relatively cheap (I spent about $100) with high capacity (I have 500gb). Because it's an ssd, the random writes and reads are fast enough that you can run an OS off of it too, and boot from anywhere. Unlike an external drive, it's also slim enough to fit in your pocket and not much bigger than a USB stick. I recommend b key over m key, because you won't be able to saturate m key on 10gbps and the random reads and writes are the same (and its cheaper). Though I do use m key because I upgraded the m.2 in my PC for more capacity and reliability and began using the old one as a flash drive.
Once I read this article, the transmitting speed depends on your plug-in speed. If you ram it in, it will perform as USB3.x. If you slowly plug-in, it will perform as USB2.x. Something related to backward compatibility.
Ok the problems you're describing is something that I've seen in past drives that are designed for speed however even though they're designed for speed they do this thing where they cap out and their system doesn't know how to properly process that capping of the speed, so what happens is instead of just throttling correctly it instead starts to skip over sectors or crashes entirely. Which is why some games run perfectly fine and others don't run at all. The problem is not on your systems end, it's on the board of the drives end, they didn't setup proper throttling and this is the result. I wish I could tell you that this issue has been resolved but the fact of the matter is that over the last decade this issue has plagued nearly every high end drive because apparently no one figured to write in the right software into the drive to make it throttle properly when the hardware hits 80% of max speed.
@@hennochoi No I'm saying the SSD is trying to reach max speed and when it does there's no mechanism written into the process board that says "when you reach max speed even out and keep copying." So instead it stutters, crashes, and skips sectors trying to even out. There's a relatively easy solution to this but no one ever does it, they have to create a mini-bios for the SSD that's in a separate hidden file that has all the parameters for reading and writing and the ability to modify them, but for some reason they never do.
I'll certainly buy a car that crashes randomly in a wall. But I've been told this will be fixed in a future update. Nice customer advice there. Thanks!
I like how they assume the transfer issue with the ASMedia controller will be fixed instead of being ignored and other, actually functioning, chips replacing it in the market.
The USB Implementers Forum is screwing up their naming conventions. They have made an excellent way to connect everything from hard drives to screens, but the names they started using are confusing even tech experts...it's gotten really bad. The fact that this drive is producing errors on transfer is disappointing and I can't imagine anybody wanting one until this stuff is fixed.
Why weren't any PCIE 4 drives used in the comparison? I would have loved to see how it stacked up against a PCIE 4 drive when it was beating out the PCIE 3 drive...
I think your issue may be a result of power supply, specifically the capacitors powering the USB3 2x2 port on your motherboard. Sure would like to see the power wavelengths on that capacitor.
5:10 Blizzard has made it a point to demand modular design in their games. World of Warcraft for instance has been able to just sync up and play on external devices for years and years where other games need to be installed on the machine they are being played on and cannot be transferred over.
'Shadow Banned': I posted this earlier with its link but it's not visible when I'm logged out of TH-cam. Here it is again sans link. ASMedia USB 3.x chips have long had problems going back to the ASM1042A (do a search) commonly found on many 2012-era motherboards. Here's some insight into why that is: "... In general, USB3 host controllers based on ASMedia chipsets are known to be problematic, due to ASMedia hardware or firmware bugs causing errant DMA accesses to invalid regions of host memory. ..." POWER9 Hardware Compatibility List/PCIe Devices - RCS Wiki
Highly informative video...thank you. I didn't know about the ASUS ROG Strix Arion so this video was very educational for me. Yeah, think I'll skip the Black P50 but thanks again for the other tips!
Guys, as for the write speeds, this drive might be TLC or even QLC NAND, this NAND opertates in an SLC mode when copying files over, and then when the file transfer is done, the drive will, without any visibility to the OS, start coverting that data into TLC/QLC which requires reading the SLC state nand, copying it to TLC/QLC state NAND and then either marking the old data as ready for delete, or actively deleting the data and switching that SLC over to TLC/QLC. I have observed the exact same thing on my sabriant rocket Q, and Samsung QVO 860 you hit the SLC cache limit, and then the speed either drops off a cliff and goes from GB/s to ~60-140MB/s or it stops all together, This happens on an Intel 8750H, ryzen 3600(nonX) and 3950x system(all PCIe V3 when using the rocket Q or SATA3 for the QVO) 3D Xpoint does not run into this issue because it does not have multiple states per cell it is effectively stacked SLC if you want to compare apples to apples, though, i dont have a 2TB optane/micron 3DXpoint drive to compare against my rocketQ or QVO drives The problem i have with this SLC mode, is that the more data you put on a drive, the less SLC cache you have, for large writes with the drive half full, my toshiba 5TB spinning disk drive at 200MB/s ends up being faster than both the rocket Q and samsung QVO, with the samsung strangely being faster at 140MB/s even though it uses SATA instead of PCIe, the rocket Q seems to have a larger cache however because it seems to take more data for it to start throttling
Its my understanding that only enterprise drives using SLC come in capacities over 500GB, so considering this has an optional 1 and 2TB, this is likely TLC or the slower QLC
@@Vader294 why did you feel the need to reply if you didn't like his reply that also disliked the other guy's reply who hated this comment. This never ending hate replies tho Lol.
@@HardwareCanucks aye. I don't mind waiting those extra few seconds for s dirt cheap drive. Once games take advantage of said hardware will maybe change over lol
3:00 I actually did this with WoW (world of Warcraft) back in the day since the external WD was faster over usb then the internal HDD in my pc at the time .
I got an ROG Arion enclosure a few weeks back and put a spare Samsung 256GB 970 EVO in it for use for uni work with VMs. Makes things so much more convenient
So if you have a thunderbolt port on your laptop and use this drive will it limit it to the 10gbps or can it saturate more since it’s capable of faster speeds maybe the controller is different
Question: Sure you've been asked this already, but what were the memory configurations that you used in these test setups (number of sticks / speeds / OC on or off / etc.?
Not surprised by your results. All new tech needs the drivers to be hashed out. USB3, had its issues as well when it was released. I didn't feel it was reliable till the Z77 platform made it standard on the chipset itself. TB 1/2/3, also had some issues in Windows and Custom Mac computers. Now that Intel is including it on the chipset. It'll be a lot more reliable. (: Especially for Custom Mac users.
Infancy illnesses. Those happen when to often on new standards. I mean remember the bugs on the ryzen am4 platform at launch ? They were a lot and yet no one talks about those now because they have been ironed out. You shouldn't buy those new standards close to launch. However, as said in the video if you needed and you can use it and for some.reason you want to wait till every is fixed. Thankfully I don't have a need for big file transfers at the moment, but I dig it. You can backup an entire system with the right Connectivity in no time. Also you can run an os on it and basically have sata speeds at least with promise for.more down the line if testing systems is your thing.
It's the ASSmedia controller. I got the same problem with all SSDs I throw at it, even non 2x2 ones. ASSmedia should be shove upp their ass. I should disable the whole controller in the UEFI of my MSI Creator TRX40 motherboard to avoid system instability. Can't trust that shit.
Last night. I bought a p10 because I needed a decently sized 2.5" drive quickly, and it was the best option. They are false marketing the p10, the wd black line of mechanical drives are all 7200rpm from what I've found, and they advertise that on them. The p10 is just a 5400rpm drive, and they purposely do not list the speed of of anywhere online or on the box. Its not a wd black drive in the case either, its a wd blue drive crammed in the case and marketed as a black.
I've been having similar issues with USB 3 since my Z68 motherboard from 2011 with an Etron controller. I've had problems with 2.5" drive enclosures from several companies and 3.5" external RAID drive bays as well. For the latter, I've resorted to using eSATA instead of USB to avoid this kind of problem. It has to be some form of compatibility issue with the two different controllers communicating to each other, from drive enclosure to motherboard. But this problem has been around since USB 3 was a thing. That's like more than 10 years ago. Why has it not been addressed? I never had this problem with USB 2... ever.
Did you guys tested it with Linux? Prolly some Windows 10 caching issue or "Removal policy" is set to "Quick removal" (which means it's isn't optimized for the speed). Check the device policy on device manager.
I am getting that same issue @ 4:25 on the bottom window with an 10+ year old 500GB WD Green internal drive that I suspect is dying. Been in the process of recovering files off of it. Got a 4TB WD Gold ordered on the way to be my new backup hard disk drive. Seeing you guys experience this similar issue with a modern external WD product is pretty interesting.
I have this happen all the time 🤦♂️ I have a _Lacie_ USB-C drive that is _supposed_ to be extremely fast but I never get more than about _150 mb/s_ out of it. It's not my PC because I have a USB-C gen 2 port on my MSI M7 motherboard and my hard drives are all _NVME ssd's_ 🤷♂️
I'm curious, did you guys checked what's the controller chip in the WD drive? There is your Problem: WD uses *all* the new Configurations and their Controller is up to the newest STandards. But - as it is always with ASmedia - that thing is like Realtek Networkcards - The Driver says it supports all the Features - but only with Software tricks. Make a comparison of standard USB 3.0 controller (eg ASmedia + intel) -> you'll find there are a lot of issues with ASMedia's implementation. Same goes for their 3.1 and 3.2 Controllers. - Just ignore, it exists and turn it off in BIOS, to be sure not to have any issues ;)
To comment on how ridiculous this solution is; How about someone makes a TB3-capable adapter rated for USB 3.2 G2X2 with an M.2 header to accept that kind of media? It would be way more versatile and with care, produce something not only to store your games, but allow for some OTG M.2 data forensics. Silverstone already has such an adapter, but I don't think it's quite as fast.
Asmedia is known for errors a lot of VR users have a lot of issues to the point they have to get an addon card. from 2016 to relatively within this past year Asmedia has fixed the issues with their drivers for VR on 3.0 Chips as long as you are running the newest version of Windows and have updated the chipset drivers, USB drivers, and the Bios. A lot of people had issues since last summer when the Rift S was released and having problems into the new year, 4Years? to get a freaking driver right, let that sink in, that's just about half or over half a motherboards life cycle.
I feel like answering the question of 'would you buy it right now?' by saying that you would because the issues will be fixed soon sort of negates the point of the question lol. The state it is in RIGHT NOW is that it has potential, but is basically useless because of all the fails a user will encounter. Of course it becomes a better prospect when these issues are fixed!
The Errors may be caused in part due to data corruption from being copied too many times. As you are probably aware, every time you make a copy of a file, it's not a perfect copy a few 1's and 0's get moved around and normally that's not an issue due in part to the ECC Memory...so maybe check into the ECC Memory Buffer and see if it has a large enough capacity to deal with those large volume transfers, maybe try copying the files over as individual game folders instead of just a giant library of games..... there's a lot to test out really...
Problem is cables and plugs. Laptops and computers don't have plastic 'dongles' to protect plugs from the build up of dust, hair and dirt. Cables need to be of better quality. Why don't they have an 'exposed'/ accessible nvme2/ msata socket? A mSata/ nvme drive is tiny.
These issues can be because of overheating controller on the motherboard or inside the drive itself by opening it you can pinpoint the cause and fix it and then seeing the improvements
Go ahead and point fingers. I had a 1st gen USB3 drive that would auto disconnect every time I had it plugged into an Intel USB3 port, regardless of motherboard and/or motherboard manufacturer. The only commonality was that they all had at least 1 Intel USB3 controller onboard. When I switched over to ANY non-Intel USB3 port, the drive worked perfectly fine.
Thunderbolt 3 + Thunderbolt 3 enclosure. Sure, TB3 enclosures cost more than USB 3.2 enclosures, but prices are dropping. For example, there's one on sale at Newegg right now for $70.
File copy errors may be due to Windows itself. Copying certain files, such as the NVidia driver package .exe file was producing errors copying to a normal USB 3.0 thumb drive and then running the .exe file on another machine. However, compressing the .exe file first (with 7-zip) to a .zip file, and the file transfer errors were eliminated. Amazon has an external NVMe enclosure for ~$30 USD: "TDBT M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure with Heat Sink" which has excellent passive cooling. However, the speed is limited to 10 Gps.
Compressing the file means just copying the ::DATA$ stream instead of all the streams. Perhaps investigate if you have weird streams attached to files, could happen if you have Kaspersky Antivirus or some other weird software doing weird stuff to NTFS file system. Could be other things as well, like an AV product stopping to scan your exe copy or such. Generally speaking, exe files copy fine onto disks unless you got something weird going on.
For my desktop I got an 860 EVO 4 TB for $829 so when you showed me $700ish for 2 TB i kind of barfed regardless of the speed. The SLC buffer on it is so large it is functionally always maxing out SATA III so it’s still good enough in terms of speed. In addition I have that three layer MLC longevity and it helps me sleep at night even with a nightly back up to a HDD. My upgrade path can skip NVME entirely and jump straight into Optane if I so choose so the SATA III is not going to be a serious problem for a long time into the future.
The maximum upgradeability for the Asus rig attic arion it’s only 2 TB so yes you can upgrade it from one terabyte but only to a maximum of 2 TB that enclosure will only take a maximum of 2 TB just a heads up for anyone else watching this, asus rig strip arion 2TB max! .
You saved my ass a lil. I was about to waste time lookin for a 4tb one that doesn't exist lol. Good thing too since 4 tb is what I'm lookin for. 2TB aint gunna cut it I got like 200 games on my ps4 pro lolz. 1 3rd of which are games that take up close to 50 gigs each. Shoot DooM 2016 took up like 108 gigs. Nutso! Think I'll go with samsung products. Seem to have the best over all quality and price. Perhaps often not as quite as fast as this WD product... But fast enough based on the math. You can't be TOO picky about speed lol. 3 seconds vs 5 seconds when it comes to some game's load times isn't exactly keeping me up at night lol. Sometimes 10 seconds on massive gamers that take a lot of time to load but meh... Can't be too picky about small stuff like this. It's just ridiculous at that point... I would just upgrade to a ps5 but you know... Scalper prices... Console is still fairly new and doesn't have as many cool accessories and exclusives that I'd want on it yet... It's visual upgrade isn't that great. It's not like the visual jump from snes to n64 or anything lol. And if I just upgrade my ps4 pro with a 4tb sdd, It will be good enough for the next year or so before I upgrade to a ps5 and by then, maybe a ps5 pro model will be a thing and then I'll just get that in a year or two from now. (Smart gamer) lololol.
There's a am4 board that has tb3 which works with 2x2. It's a Intel chip on it and it's mini itx so if u need a portable windows machine with amd, you can get a 3900xt and the itx-tb3 mobo for like $1000 after tax. Boom tb3 on a portable mini itx windows workstation.
Wow once again a wonderful review by hardware canucks... Was there heat issues? What drive is underneath? Do these drives have buffers that once they fill up they crash and slower?
The consumer conclusion is pretty obvious don’t buy 2x2 if it’s not compatible yet, but it would be fun to known what’s up. Any event viewer hardware failures registered? Or anything visible in USB Event Tracing for Windows tools? Have you checked LinusTechTip video on their NVME raid problems they seemed to claim due to kernels failing to process interrupts correctly if two interrupts are merged in the interrupt controller (which seems weird...). Linus team might have some ideas on how to debug storage I/O problems. If these are the first USB devices with two concurrent streams, and it’s not working, it would be very interesting to know why. Perhaps it’s interrupting much more often and closer than single stream devices - effectively testing the interrupt handling and drivers much harder than single stream devices.
I have the WD Black P10 4TB gaming external drive and it works far better than my Toshiba 500 GB. Havent had any issues with it so far and spent only 100 bucks on it.
I'm pretty sure the fastest m.2 drives are a fraction of those speeds. A Samsung 970 evo has a read/write of only 3500/2500MB/s. I think Crucial said they are coming out with a gen 4 that will be about twice that this year, but that is still less than half the speed of USB 3.2 gen2. I don't know if it is the flash or the controller that drives the flash, but there is a component of the tech that hasn't yet caught up to the speeds in which we can carry information.
Making your own thunderbolt 3 ssd enclosure is much faster and about the same price as this, without the problems. I threw in a Sabrent 2TB gen4 nvme ssd into a thunderbolt 3 enclosure I got on amazon for like $120 bucks and I am getting around 2400 MB/s sustained read/write, with none of the headaches. Assuming you do have thunderbolt available to you.
USB "Three Point Two Gen Two By Two".
The spec itself sounds concerning!
It's so dumb
whats wrong with just naming usb 3.5 or usb 4.0....
@@1sonyzz because it makes sense.
Tech companies don't like that.
Check intel's latest cpu names for example.
every time I hear that I think "two by two, hands of blue". Bonus points if you get that reference.
@@racerex340 they dont use the nomenclature outside of slot, or type i guess you would call it. they dont call the part that, or the slot that, itd be m.2 2242 or mini pcie, and then you have to worry about the keying, but no weird ass names
So wait a year and buy one for half the price with all the bugs fixed? sounds like an AAA game release.
isnt that what tech is like allways? i dont buy brand new anymore if i dont really really need it now or the use cycle is shorter. a monitor works what? 5-10 years and you maybe want a new one because of features? I have a really exspensive gaming "setup" around 15k retail price and payed about 30% off average so lets say 10k. i got my 9900KS for 450€ because its a bin reject (IMC is not the best but i do 4x8GB RAM OC so no problem) and a MX XI Formula for 380€. that was about 280€ less than what i would have payed off the shelf and that shit is nearly new. sometime you dont even need a year to get a discount
WayStedYou ... It's the problem living on the bleeding edge.
Sounds like AMD products !
WayStedYou I’m actually amazed that the Samsung 2TB T5 is £352 (at lest on their website)
AAA games' bugs get fixed now?
I thought they only get partially patched to give micro transactions a chance to milk gamers even more.
For those confused about the USB naming:
USB 3.2 Gen 2 2x2: 20Gbps (bits not bytes)
USB 3.2 Gen 2: Previously USB 3.1 Gen 2: Previously USB 3.1: 10Gbps
USB 3.2 Gen 1: Previously USB 3.1 Gen 1: Previously USB 3.0: 5Gbps
I know, WTF
Wtf, why did they change the name so many damn times
yeah, linus made a rant about the naming scheme
Just name them 3.0, 3.1, and 3.2 (bottom to top)
Whoever came up with these names shouls perish in hell
i will just say usb 2.0 usb3.0 usb 3.1 usb 3.2 becuz these names are confusing
They should never have redone the USB naming scheme. like isn't this what usb 3.2 was? Isn't 3.2 gen2 now what 3.1 was and 3.0 now is called 3.2 gen1?
3.0, 3.1 gen 1 and 3.2 gen 1 are the same. (5gbps)
3.1 and 3.2 gen 2 are the same. (10gbps)
3.2 gen 2x2 is dumb. (20gbps)
@@cydonia9342 it's all dumb, it should have just been 3 = 5gbit, 3.1 = 10gbit, 3.2 = 20gbit
@@mika2666 woah there that actually makes sense
I never imagined I would laugh out loud to a description of a new USB standard.
Which is a dark omen. Imagine what these ppl naming their children.
@@muddybloody Kevin 4.2 third gen 12x
USB gen 2×2 square root of 2.
1.41
They could have called it 2 squared
@@635574 they could have called it 3 then 4 then 5.
A commonly over looked part of a usb drive is the format used. A lot of usb drive ship with FAT32 for compatibility between many OS's. The problem is that FAT32 only supports file sizes up to 4gig. The steam library you were copying over and games you were playing may have had files over 4gig. If you reformat the drive to NTFS or exfat the issues may disappear. Edit: Now that i watched the video again, the files that you were having errors with were both over 4gigs.
Yeah ran into this kind of problems before... in the end you need to format it into NTFS. 😂
this is facts, and that the thing with these reviewers, they really do not know tech and be commenting about it. only "positive" is that this one did not negatively bash WD nor the controller company like many others would. But for them to not know this, they really should not be reviewing anything.
Well the fact it has errors removes it from consideration. Te End. Maybe next year.
Yeah sticking with my T5. This cost to much for the issues.
They have stated that these errors only happen when it's running at full native speed, which means it's almost certainly the controller on the motherboard. Just wait for motherboards to catch up.
@@Harvester88 I'm having an issue with my T5 on my 3900x system, but not on my laptop. I don't think its an issue with the drive. My drive keeps disconnecting and gets extremely slow/bottoms out, much like these guys are experiencing.
@Jacob Dawson The transfer is 20 gigabits per second, which translates to 2.5 gigabytes per second.
USB version naming is still a complete nightmare. Gotta hope USB 4 fixes this.
I've just recently bought one and I'm using it primarily as a portable virtual machine.
So far I didn't encounter any weird problems and the ones presented aren't really a concern for me. Good video tho, could be quite a game changer for other potential buyers.
I'm almost certain WD will improves things via firmware updates tho (if not already done idk), so if people are interested you may want to check some newer reviews as well.
Man hands down amazing work on the review time and quality spend, shows why this channel is one of the best when it comes to reviewing practices , to keep a more realistic and detailed approach
We try! :)
big channel but not sold outs, respect!!!
4:40 I give you a hint, why this is the case:
it is about the power delivery, USB 3.0 (5 Gbps) only supports up to 4.5 W Power delivery.
Since new SSDs commonly use more than 5 W (a few do not), the controller shuts down while being pushed to the limit since it exceeds the power limitation. Although USB 3.2/3.1 are downwards compatible with USB 3.0/2.0 protocol/data transfer wise, power delivery is not.
If you use a more efficient SSD, speed usually goes down with it. The manufacturers have to fix the power problem with faster drives connected to slower interfaces.
I had the same problems with a USB 3.0 drive without external power source connected to a USB 2.0 port, it lost connection every now and then.
that's literally why I just bought a 10 port USB 3.0/Card Reader Hub Amazon. I started having issues with connecting multiple portable ssd's and harddrives (especially) and started getting connection and transfer errors. When I finally realised it was due to it being a USB 2.0/Card Reader Hub (bc I've had it forever) it finally made sense. It was too much power consumption!
I love how Hardware Canucks keeps on making more and more collab videos with themselves
The intent is to have multiple opinions in one video. It helps cover more bases, plus Mike has been in the industry for 15+ years so his opinion can sometimes be very different.
Here's a hot take: I actually agree completely with both of you on your conclusions. The strix enclosure is upgradeable but mike is right too because western digital will for sure fix issues. Super informative though, nice work.
It's probably file corruption. You should create file hashes of the known good files and verify your files after you copy. Use rsync (rsync --stats --progress -rvzh /Path/ToUpload/ /Path/ToUploaded/) instead of Windows file copy to help avoid in file copy corruption.
Well done for being a BETA tester for WD.
Did they let you keep the review unit permanently for the privilege?
Thanks for all the honesty and screen grabs etc.
Problems start at 4:00
The title made it seem like you were reviewing a USB stick not an external SSD
It looks like a very slim shipping container and I love it.
are the problems of this drive fixed yet??
Watching this with my wife,
Eber: From the outside it looks amazing.
Wife: Wow, that looks just like a cheap blister pack that would be holding something nice inside.
Me: you're right, it reminds me of the back of the blister pack for ram.
I had the same problem with mine, I ended up formatting it from FAT to NTFS and it runs much more consistent now.
When it comes to esthetics, yes, the WD_Black line indeed looks amazing.
The best USB drive available right now is just to get a m.2 ssd and stick it in an enclosure that has either type c or usb 3.1 (10gbps) male port. My enclosure has both. With this, you get fast speeds (faster than sata), for relatively cheap (I spent about $100) with high capacity (I have 500gb). Because it's an ssd, the random writes and reads are fast enough that you can run an OS off of it too, and boot from anywhere. Unlike an external drive, it's also slim enough to fit in your pocket and not much bigger than a USB stick. I recommend b key over m key, because you won't be able to saturate m key on 10gbps and the random reads and writes are the same (and its cheaper). Though I do use m key because I upgraded the m.2 in my PC for more capacity and reliability and began using the old one as a flash drive.
Once I read this article, the transmitting speed depends on your plug-in speed. If you ram it in, it will perform as USB3.x. If you slowly plug-in, it will perform as USB2.x. Something related to backward compatibility.
Ok the problems you're describing is something that I've seen in past drives that are designed for speed however even though they're designed for speed they do this thing where they cap out and their system doesn't know how to properly process that capping of the speed, so what happens is instead of just throttling correctly it instead starts to skip over sectors or crashes entirely. Which is why some games run perfectly fine and others don't run at all. The problem is not on your systems end, it's on the board of the drives end, they didn't setup proper throttling and this is the result.
I wish I could tell you that this issue has been resolved but the fact of the matter is that over the last decade this issue has plagued nearly every high end drive because apparently no one figured to write in the right software into the drive to make it throttle properly when the hardware hits 80% of max speed.
Wait are you saying that the usb is trying to go max speed even though the SSD itself can't reach it?
@@hennochoi No I'm saying the SSD is trying to reach max speed and when it does there's no mechanism written into the process board that says "when you reach max speed even out and keep copying." So instead it stutters, crashes, and skips sectors trying to even out.
There's a relatively easy solution to this but no one ever does it, they have to create a mini-bios for the SSD that's in a separate hidden file that has all the parameters for reading and writing and the ability to modify them, but for some reason they never do.
I'll certainly buy a car that crashes randomly in a wall. But I've been told this will be fixed in a future update. Nice customer advice there. Thanks!
I like how they assume the transfer issue with the ASMedia controller will be fixed instead of being ignored and other, actually functioning, chips replacing it in the market.
Paying for a future tech? Sounds like RTX
The design is very army-ish love it.
Tacticool crap design for folks who peaked in high school and think that hissing at people makes them seem hardcore...
The USB Implementers Forum is screwing up their naming conventions. They have made an excellent way to connect everything from hard drives to screens, but the names they started using are confusing even tech experts...it's gotten really bad.
The fact that this drive is producing errors on transfer is disappointing and I can't imagine anybody wanting one until this stuff is fixed.
Overheating of the Asmedia chip perhaps?
Why weren't any PCIE 4 drives used in the comparison? I would have loved to see how it stacked up against a PCIE 4 drive when it was beating out the PCIE 3 drive...
So how is it performing today?
I think your issue may be a result of power supply, specifically the capacitors powering the USB3 2x2 port on your motherboard. Sure would like to see the power wavelengths on that capacitor.
UUUFFF!! those are some very beautiful shots!!!!
5:10 Blizzard has made it a point to demand modular design in their games. World of Warcraft for instance has been able to just sync up and play on external devices for years and years where other games need to be installed on the machine they are being played on and cannot be transferred over.
'Shadow Banned': I posted this earlier with its link but it's not visible when I'm logged out of TH-cam. Here it is again sans link.
ASMedia USB 3.x chips have long had problems going back to the ASM1042A (do a search) commonly found on many 2012-era motherboards. Here's some insight into why that is:
"... In general, USB3 host controllers based on ASMedia chipsets are known to be problematic, due to ASMedia hardware or firmware bugs causing errant DMA accesses to invalid regions of host memory. ..."
POWER9 Hardware Compatibility List/PCIe Devices - RCS Wiki
Comments with links are automoderated and moved to be reviewed (unless that is disabled)
@@TechLifeYT Of course they are...
Highly informative video...thank you. I didn't know about the ASUS ROG Strix Arion so this video was very educational for me. Yeah, think I'll skip the Black P50 but thanks again for the other tips!
Just 22 different types of USB … it’s quite simple, ain’t ya?
USB Standard - Year - Throughput - Marketing - Name - Interface
1.0 - 1996 - 1,5 Mbps - Low-Speed - Type A/B
1.1 - 1998 - 12 Mbps - Full-Speed - Type A/B
2.0 - 2000 - 480 Mbps - Hi-Speed - Type A/B, mini A/B, micro A/B
3.0 - 2008 - 4,8 Gbps - Super-Speed - Type A/B, micro B
3.1 - 2013 - Gen1: 5 Gbps; Gen2: 10 Gbps - Super-Speed+ - Type A/B/C
3.2 - 2019 - Gen2x2: 20 Gbps - Super-Speed 20 Gbps - Type A/B/C
4 - 2020 / 2021 maybe - 40 Gbps - Non known yet - Type A/B/C
Guys, as for the write speeds, this drive might be TLC or even QLC NAND, this NAND opertates in an SLC mode when copying files over, and then when the file transfer is done, the drive will, without any visibility to the OS, start coverting that data into TLC/QLC which requires reading the SLC state nand, copying it to TLC/QLC state NAND and then either marking the old data as ready for delete, or actively deleting the data and switching that SLC over to TLC/QLC. I have observed the exact same thing on my sabriant rocket Q, and Samsung QVO 860 you hit the SLC cache limit, and then the speed either drops off a cliff and goes from GB/s to ~60-140MB/s or it stops all together, This happens on an Intel 8750H, ryzen 3600(nonX) and 3950x system(all PCIe V3 when using the rocket Q or SATA3 for the QVO) 3D Xpoint does not run into this issue because it does not have multiple states per cell it is effectively stacked SLC if you want to compare apples to apples, though, i dont have a 2TB optane/micron 3DXpoint drive to compare against my rocketQ or QVO drives
The problem i have with this SLC mode, is that the more data you put on a drive, the less SLC cache you have, for large writes with the drive half full, my toshiba 5TB spinning disk drive at 200MB/s ends up being faster than both the rocket Q and samsung QVO, with the samsung strangely being faster at 140MB/s even though it uses SATA instead of PCIe, the rocket Q seems to have a larger cache however because it seems to take more data for it to start throttling
Its my understanding that only enterprise drives using SLC come in capacities over 500GB, so considering this has an optional 1 and 2TB, this is likely TLC or the slower QLC
"uploaded 6 seconds ago"
nicee
This comment : 17 minutes ago
The video : 14 minutes ago
Whaaaaaaaaaat
@NonLegit Nation why did you feel the need to reply. If you dont like it, just f off?
Tayfun Saral why did you feel the need to reply if you didn’t like his reply? The irony of internet trolls lol
@@Vader294 why did you feel the need to reply if you didn't like his reply that also disliked the other guy's reply who hated this comment.
This never ending hate replies tho Lol.
I use a 4tb external 5400rpm drive for my steam library. Load times fps etc.. are totally fine.
Since many games are cached anyways, there's no need to have ultra fast interface speeds other than for loading.
@@HardwareCanucks aye. I don't mind waiting those extra few seconds for s dirt cheap drive.
Once games take advantage of said hardware will maybe change over lol
3:00 I actually did this with WoW (world of Warcraft) back in the day since the external WD was faster over usb then the internal HDD in my pc at the time .
I used one because my dad wouldn't let me install the game on his computer lol. The good old days.
ShortyOrc 1 lol.
I got an ROG Arion enclosure a few weeks back and put a spare Samsung 256GB 970 EVO in it for use for uni work with VMs. Makes things so much more convenient
So if you have a thunderbolt port on your laptop and use this drive will it limit it to the 10gbps or can it saturate more since it’s capable of faster speeds maybe the controller is different
Question: Sure you've been asked this already, but what were the memory configurations that you used in these test setups (number of sticks / speeds / OC on or off / etc.?
I have the same drive one day it work and other days it doesn't like today when I wanna play my game
Will there be an updated video for WD P40 and P50? Is the SSD still having these issues? I was planning to get one of the two(1TB).
Not surprised by your results. All new tech needs the drivers to be hashed out. USB3, had its issues as well when it was released. I didn't feel it was reliable till the Z77 platform made it standard on the chipset itself. TB 1/2/3, also had some issues in Windows and Custom Mac computers. Now that Intel is including it on the chipset. It'll be a lot more reliable. (: Especially for Custom Mac users.
Infancy illnesses. Those happen when to often on new standards. I mean remember the bugs on the ryzen am4 platform at launch ? They were a lot and yet no one talks about those now because they have been ironed out.
You shouldn't buy those new standards close to launch. However, as said in the video if you needed and you can use it and for some.reason you want to wait till every is fixed. Thankfully I don't have a need for big file transfers at the moment, but I dig it. You can backup an entire system with the right Connectivity in no time. Also you can run an os on it and basically have sata speeds at least with promise for.more down the line if testing systems is your thing.
It's the ASSmedia controller. I got the same problem with all SSDs I throw at it, even non 2x2 ones. ASSmedia should be shove upp their ass. I should disable the whole controller in the UEFI of my MSI Creator TRX40 motherboard to avoid system instability. Can't trust that shit.
Last night. I bought a p10 because I needed a decently sized 2.5" drive quickly, and it was the best option. They are false marketing the p10, the wd black line of mechanical drives are all 7200rpm from what I've found, and they advertise that on them. The p10 is just a 5400rpm drive, and they purposely do not list the speed of of anywhere online or on the box. Its not a wd black drive in the case either, its a wd blue drive crammed in the case and marketed as a black.
I've been having similar issues with USB 3 since my Z68 motherboard from 2011 with an Etron controller. I've had problems with 2.5" drive enclosures from several companies and 3.5" external RAID drive bays as well. For the latter, I've resorted to using eSATA instead of USB to avoid this kind of problem. It has to be some form of compatibility issue with the two different controllers communicating to each other, from drive enclosure to motherboard. But this problem has been around since USB 3 was a thing. That's like more than 10 years ago. Why has it not been addressed? I never had this problem with USB 2... ever.
Soon I can install windows 27 using USB 6.8 Gen 2x3x62x2squared+37,2
Lauri - PokaLammutaja dude that version of windows is soooooooo outdated.
Did you guys tested it with Linux? Prolly some Windows 10 caching issue or "Removal policy" is set to "Quick removal" (which means it's isn't optimized for the speed). Check the device policy on device manager.
I have had similar errors with a usb drive and it was fixed by formatting the drive in NTFS.
I am getting that same issue @ 4:25 on the bottom window with an 10+ year old 500GB WD Green internal drive that I suspect is dying. Been in the process of recovering files off of it.
Got a 4TB WD Gold ordered on the way to be my new backup hard disk drive.
Seeing you guys experience this similar issue with a modern external WD product is pretty interesting.
More like worrying.....
USB needs to get their naming shit together good lord
Such a cool design we created a stick for the P10 version.
I just bought 3 WD Black P 10's. Running transfers on HP Zbook's and Z6's they produced the same inconsistencies
Would be interesting to see if it worked better with a different OS. Does it still error out in Linux?
For anyone wondering , the problem is FIRST described at 4:18
I have this happen all the time 🤦♂️ I have a _Lacie_ USB-C drive that is _supposed_ to be extremely fast but I never get more than about _150 mb/s_ out of it.
It's not my PC because I have a USB-C gen 2 port on my MSI M7 motherboard and my hard drives are all _NVME ssd's_ 🤷♂️
The advertised speed is a theoretical maximum. In the real world you get a fraction of it.
It depends on the types of files you are transferring, the 20/10gb/s is ideal conditions.
I'm curious, did you guys checked what's the controller chip in the WD drive?
There is your Problem: WD uses *all* the new Configurations and their Controller is up to the newest STandards. But - as it is always with ASmedia - that thing is like Realtek Networkcards - The Driver says it supports all the Features - but only with Software tricks.
Make a comparison of standard USB 3.0 controller (eg ASmedia + intel) -> you'll find there are a lot of issues with ASMedia's implementation.
Same goes for their 3.1 and 3.2 Controllers. - Just ignore, it exists and turn it off in BIOS, to be sure not to have any issues ;)
We don't think WD is using ASMedia on their drive. ASM 3242 controller is on the host device.
To comment on how ridiculous this solution is; How about someone makes a TB3-capable adapter rated for USB 3.2 G2X2 with an M.2 header to accept that kind of media? It would be way more versatile and with care, produce something not only to store your games, but allow for some OTG M.2 data forensics. Silverstone already has such an adapter, but I don't think it's quite as fast.
Asmedia is known for errors a lot of VR users have a lot of issues to the point they have to get an addon card. from 2016 to relatively within this past year Asmedia has fixed the issues with their drivers for VR on 3.0 Chips as long as you are running the newest version of Windows and have updated the chipset drivers, USB drivers, and the Bios. A lot of people had issues since last summer when the Rift S was released and having problems into the new year, 4Years? to get a freaking driver right, let that sink in, that's just about half or over half a motherboards life cycle.
I feel like answering the question of 'would you buy it right now?' by saying that you would because the issues will be fixed soon sort of negates the point of the question lol. The state it is in RIGHT NOW is that it has potential, but is basically useless because of all the fails a user will encounter. Of course it becomes a better prospect when these issues are fixed!
The Errors may be caused in part due to data corruption from being copied too many times. As you are probably aware, every time you make a copy of a file, it's not a perfect copy a few 1's and 0's get moved around and normally that's not an issue due in part to the ECC Memory...so maybe check into the ECC Memory Buffer and see if it has a large enough capacity to deal with those large volume transfers, maybe try copying the files over as individual game folders instead of just a giant library of games..... there's a lot to test out really...
Problem is cables and plugs. Laptops and computers don't have plastic 'dongles' to protect plugs from the build up of dust, hair and dirt. Cables need to be of better quality. Why don't they have an 'exposed'/ accessible nvme2/ msata socket? A mSata/ nvme drive is tiny.
Did you tried linux for test? maybe some finicky in windows drivers from asmedia
These issues can be because of overheating controller on the motherboard or inside the drive itself by opening it you can pinpoint the cause and fix it and then seeing the improvements
Go ahead and point fingers. I had a 1st gen USB3 drive that would auto disconnect every time I had it plugged into an Intel USB3 port, regardless of motherboard and/or motherboard manufacturer. The only commonality was that they all had at least 1 Intel USB3 controller onboard. When I switched over to ANY non-Intel USB3 port, the drive worked perfectly fine.
Thunderbolt 3 + Thunderbolt 3 enclosure. Sure, TB3 enclosures cost more than USB 3.2 enclosures, but prices are dropping. For example, there's one on sale at Newegg right now for $70.
File copy errors may be due to Windows itself. Copying certain files, such as the NVidia driver package .exe file was producing errors copying to a normal USB 3.0 thumb drive and then running the .exe file on another machine. However, compressing the .exe file first (with 7-zip) to a .zip file, and the file transfer errors were eliminated.
Amazon has an external NVMe enclosure for ~$30 USD: "TDBT M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure with Heat Sink" which has excellent passive cooling. However, the speed is limited to 10 Gps.
Compressing the file means just copying the ::DATA$ stream instead of all the streams. Perhaps investigate if you have weird streams attached to files, could happen if you have Kaspersky Antivirus or some other weird software doing weird stuff to NTFS file system.
Could be other things as well, like an AV product stopping to scan your exe copy or such.
Generally speaking, exe files copy fine onto disks unless you got something weird going on.
For my desktop I got an 860 EVO 4 TB for $829 so when you showed me $700ish for 2 TB i kind of barfed regardless of the speed. The SLC buffer on it is so large it is functionally always maxing out SATA III so it’s still good enough in terms of speed. In addition I have that three layer MLC longevity and it helps me sleep at night even with a nightly back up to a HDD. My upgrade path can skip NVME entirely and jump straight into Optane if I so choose so the SATA III is not going to be a serious problem for a long time into the future.
The maximum upgradeability for the Asus rig attic arion it’s only 2 TB so yes you can upgrade it from one terabyte but only to a maximum of 2 TB that enclosure will only take a maximum of 2 TB just a heads up for anyone else watching this, asus rig strip arion 2TB max! .
You saved my ass a lil. I was about to waste time lookin for a 4tb one that doesn't exist lol. Good thing too since 4 tb is what I'm lookin for. 2TB aint gunna cut it I got like 200 games on my ps4 pro lolz. 1 3rd of which are games that take up close to 50 gigs each. Shoot DooM 2016 took up like 108 gigs. Nutso!
Think I'll go with samsung products. Seem to have the best over all quality and price. Perhaps often not as quite as fast as this WD product... But fast enough based on the math. You can't be TOO picky about speed lol. 3 seconds vs 5 seconds when it comes to some game's load times isn't exactly keeping me up at night lol. Sometimes 10 seconds on massive gamers that take a lot of time to load but meh... Can't be too picky about small stuff like this. It's just ridiculous at that point...
I would just upgrade to a ps5 but you know... Scalper prices... Console is still fairly new and doesn't have as many cool accessories and exclusives that I'd want on it yet... It's visual upgrade isn't that great. It's not like the visual jump from snes to n64 or anything lol. And if I just upgrade my ps4 pro with a 4tb sdd, It will be good enough for the next year or so before I upgrade to a ps5 and by then, maybe a ps5 pro model will be a thing and then I'll just get that in a year or two from now.
(Smart gamer) lololol.
The write/transfer speed is also halved
There's a am4 board that has tb3 which works with 2x2. It's a Intel chip on it and it's mini itx so if u need a portable windows machine with amd, you can get a 3900xt and the itx-tb3 mobo for like $1000 after tax. Boom tb3 on a portable mini itx windows workstation.
Wow once again a wonderful review by hardware canucks... Was there heat issues? What drive is underneath? Do these drives have buffers that once they fill up they crash and slower?
No heat issues or we would have reported. We think the drive within is a WD Black SN750 or similar but we could be wrong.
GOD DAMN whoever named these new USB standards. ABSOLUTELY NONSENSE!!
can u try it on linux ubuntu ...etc ?
Glad I waited. Just picked this up on Amazon for 260 bucks.
RIP your money
@@HardwareCanucks 🤣🤣🤣🤣 facts
If you buy this for games, you need your head testing. Just buy a good quality SATA SSD.
What if you don't have expansion space for another SSD? For example on a notebook?
@@HardwareCanucks1:33
Yes, these USB 3.2 drives (even normal ones, not 2x2) have issues with speed inconsistency. Mine is 10GB, but also inconsistent.
You ain't seen nothing till you experience TB3 drives. Ugh!
@@HardwareCanucks Yeah, at least I didn't get the transfer to die completely on mine! Just huge speed decrease.
The consumer conclusion is pretty obvious don’t buy 2x2 if it’s not compatible yet, but it would be fun to known what’s up. Any event viewer hardware failures registered? Or anything visible in USB Event Tracing for Windows tools? Have you checked LinusTechTip video on their NVME raid problems they seemed to claim due to kernels failing to process interrupts correctly if two interrupts are merged in the interrupt controller (which seems weird...). Linus team might have some ideas on how to debug storage I/O problems. If these are the first USB devices with two concurrent streams, and it’s not working, it would be very interesting to know why. Perhaps it’s interrupting much more often and closer than single stream devices - effectively testing the interrupt handling and drivers much harder than single stream devices.
Nice, bought one and I'm using it on my USB 2.0 ports. Super speeds.
Yo I've been away from this channel for a minute... but Eber you're looking fit dude.
Very well balanced opinions with honesty. Good source for knowledefe update!
I have the WD Black P10 4TB gaming external drive and it works far better than my Toshiba 500 GB. Havent had any issues with it so far and spent only 100 bucks on it.
thats a HDD tho not an SSD
Should've swearn thunderbolt was now a open standard? Or do it still not matter?
Saw the thumbnail and thought Lew was switching phones again 😂
Defect cable shielding.
did you try changing file system maybe large file size limits are not being copied
I would like the design a lot if it were a white case with black text.
I'm pretty sure the fastest m.2 drives are a fraction of those speeds. A Samsung 970 evo has a read/write of only 3500/2500MB/s. I think Crucial said they are coming out with a gen 4 that will be about twice that this year, but that is still less than half the speed of USB 3.2 gen2. I don't know if it is the flash or the controller that drives the flash, but there is a component of the tech that hasn't yet caught up to the speeds in which we can carry information.
Making your own thunderbolt 3 ssd enclosure is much faster and about the same price as this, without the problems. I threw in a Sabrent 2TB gen4 nvme ssd into a thunderbolt 3 enclosure I got on amazon for like $120 bucks and I am getting around 2400 MB/s sustained read/write, with none of the headaches. Assuming you do have thunderbolt available to you.
So is that "thunderbolt 3" better than that
I'd like to see an update on this in a year to see if the issues are fixed.
I bet the errors in copying are from a Windows issue. Are you copying the files using a program such as fast copy or teracopy?
9:45 so basically it could end up very well, or very badly like the Radeon Navi line of driver issues