I recently tried out a slug of WD RE4 drives in several configurations (NAS, external HDD, internal spare HDD). I'm really starting to dislike these things.
In the NAS they spin down with no activity then when you query the NAS there's a long delay while they spin up. I may be able to take the delay out with the NAS software. I haven't looked yet.
Internally as a second hard drive on the bench top machines the same thing happens. Then when you drop a customer drive in a dock, there is this long delay while you wait for the internal RE4 to come up to speed even though that's not where any data is going/coming. Even when you have the customer drive already spun up in a dock, any utility queries all drives when it starts and again - long delay.
So I figured I'd put a pair upstairs in the media "toaster" which is an inexpensive Nexstar dual 3.5" external enclosure that has two WD Black 2 TB drives I would like on the bench instead of on the media server in the living room. So I clone off the two 2TB WD Blacks onto two 2TB WD RE4s, drop the RE4s in the toaster - nothing! WTF? Dropped the RE4s back in a USB dock and then a SATA dock and they work fine in both. Back in the toaster nothing. Nothing under Linux using the toaster. Put the Blacks back in the toaster and they work fine. Hmmm........ Obviously it's a cheap Nexstar toaster, but I'd like to understand what is happening.
In the NAS they spin down with no activity then when you query the NAS there's a long delay while they spin up. I may be able to take the delay out with the NAS software. I haven't looked yet.
Internally as a second hard drive on the bench top machines the same thing happens. Then when you drop a customer drive in a dock, there is this long delay while you wait for the internal RE4 to come up to speed even though that's not where any data is going/coming. Even when you have the customer drive already spun up in a dock, any utility queries all drives when it starts and again - long delay.
So I figured I'd put a pair upstairs in the media "toaster" which is an inexpensive Nexstar dual 3.5" external enclosure that has two WD Black 2 TB drives I would like on the bench instead of on the media server in the living room. So I clone off the two 2TB WD Blacks onto two 2TB WD RE4s, drop the RE4s in the toaster - nothing! WTF? Dropped the RE4s back in a USB dock and then a SATA dock and they work fine in both. Back in the toaster nothing. Nothing under Linux using the toaster. Put the Blacks back in the toaster and they work fine. Hmmm........ Obviously it's a cheap Nexstar toaster, but I'd like to understand what is happening.
Last edited:
