Elements 6TB - Am I Right? I Can't Believe It's This Flawed

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
1

Hi All,

I’m a long term WD products user, and due to my (previously) high opinion of WD products, without research I’ve bought a WD Elements Desktop 6TB XHDD to use on my Win10 system, and I have to say I’m shocked at what I’ve found - so shocked that I think I must have misunderstood things in a big way.

So could I ask the experts on here if I’m mistaken or are WD really selling something this flawed?

Am I right in saying:

  1. The Power push button - exists but does absolutely nothing in any circumstances. Basically, it’s an ornament. An ornament I’ve presumably had to pay for.

  2. This drive never ‘spins down / sleep’ to save energy or wear and tear - it will spin 24/7, 365 days a year if you leave it plugged in and connected.

  3. The only way to actually spin down / sleep the drive (other than turning the PC off), is to use the “Safely Remove Hardware” which of course makes the drive unavailable until you either unplug and plug it back in (power or USB3) or reboot Windows, or “Sleep” then wake Windows.

  4. WD Drive Utilities - will not work with an Elements XHDD despite Elements drives being WD products and a Drive – the two things you might think were the determining factors for the WD Drive Utilities to work. Why on earth would WD not want WD Drive Utilities to work with one of their drives???

If I’m right about all that (and I truly hope I’m not), could I ask two more question:

  1. If I remove this HDD from the enclosure (shucking) will it then spin down / sleep as it should or is failure to spin down / sleep actually in the firmware of the drive and therefore unchangeable?

  2. Would carrying out the well known 3.3v Molex hack as part of the shuck make the drive spin down / sleep?

Thanks for bearing with me.

Stay Safe All.

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SplittingDistant,

I have also just recently had an unpleasant experience with a WD Elements (10 TB) drive, but:

  1. The power on/off button on mine does work, but I have to hold it for about three seconds or more for it to work.
  2. Mine will also spin down, but it takes a long, long time before it will do so. I don’t know how long because at first I thought it never would and I just left it running while I went to do something else. When I came back, maybe an hour later?, it had spun down and cooled off a bit (from an outrageous 58 deg C! The temperature is my big complaint about my Elements, and I have researched the drive inside, as reported by SMART, and found that it is a known two dollar pistol, running way hotter than most drives, and is the cause of a complaint I have with WD.
  3. I don’t know.
  4. I don’t know

Extras:

  1. I don’t know myself, but people shuck Elements drives all the time and discuss on the Data Hoarders board at Reddit. You might find your answer there or you could ask the questions there. Just to take a guess, I suppose it might act like almost any hard drive.
  2. I don’t know.

Good luck,
Andy

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Hi Andy,

Thanks for the response.

I tried holding the power button in for over 20 seconds, and all I got was a sore finger - the drive continued spinning! It also wouldn’t start the drive either.

Regarding spin down - I left mine for 18 hours attached to my idle Win10 PC - the drive was still spinning at the end.

Although my drive doesn’t reach the crazy temperatures that yours does, it still runs considerably hotter than my other two XHDDs. Probably because the ■■■■ thing never spins down of course.

I’ve also discovered that the drive does not actually spin up every time the PC is rebooted - on about 1/3 of reboots it stays asleep and has to have the power cable removed and put back in to start and be ‘seen’ by Windows.

I also raised a ticket with WD Support about the spin down issues, but did not receive the courtesy of a reply.

Thanks for the tip about Data Hoarders on Reddit - but I’ve decided that WD and I will now part company. The Elements is being returned to Amazon, and replaced with a Toshiba drive and Inateck HD enclosure. Slightly more expensive, but quieter and does spin down when idle!

After this fiasco, WD won’t be seeing an more of my custom, that’s for sure.

Thanks Again,

SplittingDistant.