WD AE Drives - No Better Longevity

[sroberts]

The WD AE drives are targeted toward "cold" storage applications, but it seems they are meant to be kept online, in what I'd call a "luke warm", energy efficient state.

But do the AE drives offer an advantage in a true offline storage application, where the drive is removed and kept in a vault somewhere? Suppose in the year 2025 (if man is still alive), an AE drive and a non-AE drive were powered on - how would the AE's motor, circuitry, head, platter, etc. design offer a better chance that the drive will spin up and faithfully deliver data written 10 years earlier?

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there sroberts,

The idea of cold storage is to be accessed when needed.
In case you want to just take the drive out of the system and place it in a vault properly, I would say that any HDD will do the job.
The advantages that WD AE offers are not that much related to the components but to the optimization of the drive. More of which, you can see over here: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=fkqAk7

Apart from all this, no one could guarantee what will happen with a mechanical unit in a week, month or a year. That's why, you need to keep your important data stored on at least two places.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD

 

[sroberts]

Thanks Chris. So the answer is No - WE AD "cold storage" drives do not provide any unique advantage in a true cold storage/offline application. The marketing is unfortunate - maybe they should be touted as "green" drives instead.