Types of Drives Inside a Western Digital External Drive Enclosure

Drive Types

The drive inside could be a different type based on the make and model of the enclosure.

• SATA or native USB interface
• Helium or Air
• SMR or CMR
• Drive Rotation (RPM)
• All enclosures ship with a Western Digital drive.
• Drive capacity is guaranteed.
• Model, technology, data interface, power use, rotation speed, or cache size is not guaranteed.
  
  Need more help?
  • Answer ID 25459: Steps to Check if a Drive is 512 or 4k on Windows and macOS
  • Answer ID 50697: Steps to Determine if an Internal Drive uses CMR or SMR Technology
  • Answer ID 29458: WD Red Internal HDD SMR and CMR Network Attached Storage (NAS) Drive Information

Warranty

Opening a single-drive external enclosure will void the warranty.

Need more help?
Western Digital Warranty Policy

Performance

Interface, cache, and rotation speed of the drive does not affect the performance.
Check drive specs on product data sheets.

Need more help?

• Answer ID 5043: USB Interface Standards and Theorectical Speeds
• Western Digital: Product Support Pages