Finally dumped my PR4100!

After about 9 months with PR4100 and 3 months of OS5 torture, I finally gave up and moved to a Synology DS1821. Below is a quick summary over last 2 weeks, I’ll avoid anything which can be attributed to newer internals.

  1. Hard disks sleep consistenly (when plex server is stopped) and never come back on unless accessed. WD on the other hand found ways to keep waking up hard disks.
  2. HDDs rest at ~30C and go upto ~38 upon continuous writes for over an hour, WD rested at ~35 and went upto ~45 in similar conditions. Synology is set to quiet mode, WD’s temps went lower by a couple degrees on manually editing files through SSH but nowhere near Synology levels.
  3. There was a screeching sound occasionally coming out of HDDs while waking up in WD. I can still hear HDDs spin up in Synology but no screeching sound in over 2 weeks. Yes, it’s the same set of HDDs.
  4. Synology is quieter overall (running in quiet mode), also blends better with the furniture and doesn’t stick out due to bright blue LEDs and LCDs. Ability to turn off Synology LEDs is a welcome addition.
  5. Web UI and apps availability on Synology is at a different level altogether. There’s a web demo for DSM if anyone wants to try out but rest assured most, if not all software gripes over here don’t exist there.
  6. Customer support is at a different level. Over chat or phone, agents actually create a ticket which is followed up by someone who actually understands the issue and not by WD dimwits who keep asking you to reset the machine or keep quoting useless KBs. Obviously folks on both WD and Synology forums keep bashing their NAS but mostly the difference is like comparing issues of 3rd world countries to 1st world.

I was thinking of how to dispose of my unit, resale market for NAS is pretty much non-existent where I live. Thankfully, one of the biggest youtubers in my country has picked up off a local forum and I offered to ship the unit to him for a proper review. People should be aware of the ■■■■ WD is pulling and getting away with and if that prevents more newbies like me from getting conned, that’s compensation enough for me. I thought about repurposing this to a backup unit but with comparitively costlier HDDs getting decimated by WD’s horrible engineering with a risk of data loss was a major no-go.

Before I say adieu, thanks to everyone who tried to help me out over the last few months. I’m not even going to buy dog food going ahead, if it has WD in its name, shame on you WD. Hopefully mods on this forum won’t pull the shameless stunt of asking to send logs and then ghost, we regulars know of your shady tricks!

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So - - - - another loyal user bites the dust.

Sad.

I have lots of WD stuff. Three Nas-like units. 2 passport wireless. Countless WD external drives.

For me, the OS/5 is a third nail in the coffin for me.

Second nail was the Red Drive SMR debacle last year

First nail was the total lack of ongoing support for the Passport wireless line. No firmware updates for years and . . .they switched from HDD to SSD. . . .and the device got bigger (WTH!)

For future products. . . I am really liking the Samsung T5/T7 SSDs. . . bought like 4 of them.
I really like the Sandisk Connect wireless gizmos. (now owned by WD). I would kill for a newer improved version.

In the world of NAS. . . . I am seriously toying with loading OpenMediaVault on one of my NAS boxes.

Thanks for your work, dswv42. I want to install and use nextcloud on my pr4100. Do you think that is better to pass to openmediavault or stay with OS3 and starting a deploy here? If openmediavault could you say me where to find the guide to install?

Pierluigi

I don’t have any problem with ssh and Linux shell. Is there any guide in internet to find how to boot with usb key? Thanks.

I wish i checked this forum before buying the PR4100…

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