Originally published at: OSMC teams up with Western Digital - OSMC
Hi everyone, On Sunday, we released the OSMC August update and we hope you’re enjoying it. We know that a lot of users are attaching external drives to their Raspberry Pi to use for external storage. Western Digital have launched their new ‘Pi Drive’ today and gave us a promotional offer to share with our…
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I assume that this product has no connection with the PiDrive offered under a now closed, but fully funded Kickstarter offering, the details of which can be found at: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2073955313/pidrive-low-power-msata-ssd-for-the-raspberry-pi/description … or has it?
Just curious!
Just follow up the two links, and you’ll see there are significant differences:
1TB v 128GB
connection cord v direct connect to the GPIO bus pins
Derek
The two projects are not at all related. Before launch I mentioned to WD that there already was a Pi Drive, but they said this would not be an issue
Sam
Thanks for the replies Sam & Derek… I guessed that was probably the case, but as I have already backed (and paid for) the Kickstarter offering, which does appear to be a more compact solution, I think I will just wait patiently for it to arrive!
Are there any plans for larger capacity Pi Drives? I’m currently on a 3TB Toshiba which will be out of space b the end of the year 
I’ll ask them when we next have a chat
Sam
Great to see you guys going in to bat for all of us. Do you know if there is any chance of the deal being available in Australia?
Unfortunately it is only available for UK and US residents now
Sam
It looks like Western Digital have published a design for a case for the Pi Drive:
Sam
Does this offer some benefit over normal external drives? I got a 4TB drive w/ enclosure for $109.
Not particularly…
Sam
Congratulations on the deal with WD! Absolutely fantastic, this definitely helps to spread OSMC as a brand 
I didn’t really understand what you get exactly, for that money (and it is not for sale in my country anyway) but it seems you can reach the same easy setup by simply buying a Y-Cable for a few dollars or Euros.
But of course it is not as fancy as the WD offering. I like the case as well.
I don’t want to stray too far ‘off-topic’ here, but has anyone else also gone for the Kickstarter offering, and what is the general opinion of it?
It looked to me like a fairly compact solution.
Do you have a 3d printer Sam?
I would be interested in buying one of these cases but can’t persuade my wife that i need a 3d printer to make my own 
Western Digital, bit too noisey for me, ill stick with seagate.
I have had a bad experience with Seagate drives. 3 of my 6x 3TB drives failed and I read that this was not uncommon.
Today I read that they have implemented backdoors: VU#903500 - Seagate and LaCie wireless storage products contain multiple vulnerabilities. At least it seems unintentional.
Sam
Seagate are known for being terrible, shame on you for purchasing them in the first place 
HGST NAS Deskstars are the ones to go for.
Reliable at a reasonable price.
https://www.hgst.com/products/hard-drives/nas-desktop-drive-kit
I have 4 x 3TB in my server.
No problems so far. (Pretty good if you’re on a budget, I think.)
Seagate Expansion 4TB USB 3.0 3.5" Desktop External Hard Drive STEB4000100
And don’t care about your data.