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Not Dead Yet: WD Releases New 6TB 2.5-Inch External Hard Drives - First Upgrade in Seven Years
(www.anandtech.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
In my experience the drive fails more often than the adapter, but they do fail. Also, there is a good chance to recover data from a failed drive. With a soldered adaptor it's basically impossible. The worst part is that the externals are often used for backups.