Drive replacement options: WD RE4? and if not, why not?

Greetings All,

I am new to the forum and, sadly, another disgruntled WD ShareSpace customer. I have the 4 TB model. Like so many I had a RAID 5 (the foolproof RAID, eh?) array tank. First the #2 drive showed as ‘not installed’ and in the midst of trying to recover my data (I tried PUTTY, etc. to access the array, no use) the #1 drive also failed. Spilt milk now but my wife and Iconsult and lost our 10 years of accumulated files - much but not all of which was backed up elsewhere (I didn’t lose all our photos, thankfully - a bit retentive about that backup) bewcause I fell into the false security trap of RAID 5 on a ShareSpace: never again and enough sniveling.

Never mind trying to RMA in Viet Nam - that will be a whole other odyssey I’m sure.

What I want to know, since I’ve seen posts where folks say only Caviar Green drives will work, it’s all the units are designed for, etc., is that for real? After checking the specs I would much prefer to go with the WD RE4 whiuch seems to be more sturdily built and should handle the environment in the box. So, what’s the word? Has anyone gone this route and if so what happened?

Best and thanks in advance,

Hugh

Hello, yup only the Caviar Green is supported by the sharespace, you can check page 177 of the manual to verify that.

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/UM/ENG/4779-705006.pdf

Thx - pity