8TB WD_BLACK D10 has S.M.A.R.T. issues, high temp, and slow(ish) speeds

My 8TB D10 is plugged directly into a 2019 iMac 5k running Catalina, and is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). While it’s a cool piece of tech, I’ve only had it a couple months old and I’m already seeing what seem to be significant S.M.A.R.T. issues in the following metrics:

Throughput Performance: raw=96 value=132 threshold=54 status=53.4%
Spin Up Time: raw=540 value=150 threshold=24 status=71.6%
Seek Time Performance: raw=18 value=128 threshold=20 status=60%
Temperature (Celcius): raw=58 value=103 threshold=0 status=51.5%

In terms of temp, it’s hard to believe that it’s running at 58 degrees while not transferring files, in a room that’s 22, with free airflow around drive—max suggested temp is 55 with the absolute max of 60 and mine has gotten up to 64 in a cool room! I know it’s a 7200 drive, but this cannot be good for the drive—any idea what’s going on with this?

Also, my write/read speeds are about 150 and 215 MB/s—not bad, but not what the drive is capable of. Any ideas about what’s slowing it down? This was true out of the box, and it hasn’t changed as the drive has filled up to 60% capacity currently. The speeds were the same when I ran it before and after encryption with FileVault 2 (native Mac) so I’m sure that’s not the issue.

So appreciate any help you can offer—not sure if I got a bad drive or if something else is going on here.

Thanks!

William

PS: tried to upload text file of report but it will only allow photo…

Temperature should definitely be lower. Since I’m not familiar with the black external drives, going by the pictures, it appears to have an exhaust fan in the rear, right? Have you tried moving it somewhere else where it gets good airflow? Is there enough space around the drive so that it heat can dissipate away from the case?

150 - 215 MB/s is pretty good for a hard drive. However, you are not going to get the maximum rated 600 MB/s SATA III transfer speeds due to the nature of a mechanical drive. If you were able to place a SSD drive in the enclosure, then you would probably get close to SATA III transfer speeds, which would all depend on the quality of the SSD drive and if the controller inside the enclosure is capable of those speeds.

Thanks. Yes, there’s great airflow around the drive, and there are intake vents all along the top on both sides. But I think maybe the exhaust fan isn’t blowing—which would explain the high temps, and possibly the S.M.A.R.T. errors and even the speed. I know others are routinely getting close to 250/250 MB/s speeds, so I’m not expecting more than that.

I feel no air at all from the rear vent, and so perhaps I’ll experiment with some matches and see if there’s any exhaust pressure at all on the flame or smoke. Maybe it needs to be RMA’ed for a drive with a working vent. I did notice how there are a lot of complaints about the drive’s noise, and mine is quiet, except for the typical “scratching” sound of reads/writes.

Appreciate the input, and if anyone who has one can tell me whether they can easily feel air from the exhaust fan, that would be great!

Thanks, William

I had to RMA one drive, as it was getting numerous performance errors. Now I have two brand-new ones, sitting side-by-side with the exact same orientation, airflow, etc.—and one still runs substantially hotter than the other. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to have a drive that always runs hotter than the recommended temperature in a cool room…

Hi, did you ever figure it out ?
I’m having the same temperature issue !
It’s seems like it’s always at 58 even when nothing is being copied or processed!!

There is no answer from me or WD. WD has stated on their website that ALL of their external drives have an upper-limit temperature of 35C. Yet, this and every WD exceeds that. Even the information on this specific drive lists 35C as the maximum.
Yet, WD continues to decieve people by putting in a fan that will not come on until the drive hits an unbelievable 63-65C!!!
If you don’t care about how long this drive lasts then buy it. Otherwise, expect to be shelling out more $$$ shortly after the warranty runs out.

After watching a shucking video and seeing the poor ventilation design, the WD_BLACK D10 case looks like an “Easy-Bake Oven” for hard drives.

The stupidest aspect of these external designs is that they are built to stand vertically. Hard drives fare very badly when they fall over, even when they’re not running.