I bought my two elements and a passport from online for a year or two. I lost the packages when I moved.The HDs act fine but they start to get weird lags and visual artifacts when playing 1080p videos 1-2 years in. At first i thought its beaause of my low-spec laptop but when i bought a new machine they have weird lags and visual artifacts when playing videos too so i start to worry that they are of bad quality or even fake. I only have the purchase record and the hard drives themselves to check the authenticity of purchase.
People say if the products have a working SN and can be registered online they are ok. But i have found a user reflects differently on this subject.
Apparently the SN checks out because the seller copied it from a valid product and faked the id of the knockoff with software. So i can’t trust SN verification.
I can’t take a look in the PCB since it will void my warranty. and its also an external HD so its not easy to open the case protecting the inside.
I dont know if DCX numbers apply to external HDs and if so where to look for them.
How do you check " Manufacturing Date" of the HDs without packages as it is recommended in the “safe buying guide”? I cant find anything like that on the cases.
My HDs are
WDBUZG0020BBK-CESN WD ELEMENTS PORTABLE 2TB BLACK CHINA
WDBYFT0020BBL-CESN MY PASSPORT 2TB BLUE CHINA
WDBU6Y0020BBK-CESN WD ELEMENTS PORTABLE 2TB BLACK CHINA
which match the product type and color of my HDs.
these are what are on the cases of my HDs.
I have also been advised to check the date of purchase of my HDs and compare it with the estimated warranty expiration date. If the date of purchase+promised warranty period roughly equals the warranty expiration date then it would suggest very likely my product is real since the seller cannot predict when i am going to buy and provide me with a fake HD that has its SN spoofed with a real one that has the same warranty expiration date as mine.
I then checked my warranty period: I have a WD ELEMENTS PORTABLE 2TB BLACK CHINA (WDBUZG0020BBK-CESN) which has a warranty that ends on 28-Mar-2025 (3year warranty for external HDs in China) and I bought it on 2022-02-26. and received it on 2022-03-08 where the transaction is confirmed to be complete. I am not sure if it is normal for the warranty to start 20 days after paying and receiving the product but the customer service i talk to say it is normal for HDs manufactured very recent prior to being put on sale.
In addition, my passport blue has very slow read and write rate. I tried twice using diskmark using the default setting it is the same.
in comparison my WDBU6Y0020BBK-CESN WD ELEMENTS PORTABLE 2TB BLACK CHINA has around 70mb/s.
they were both purchased at around the same time.
Is it possible either the blue passport is a knockoff or somehow sneaked past quality control?
