Sigh

Had a MyBook… died after 22 days.  Traded up to a EX2.  Brand new drive failed after 4 days.  Installed on the 8th, failed on the 12th.

The WDMyCloud program tells me all diagnostics are fine (Temp etc)… just that it will take 166:39:40 to rebuild the drive (if possible)…

This is the 2nd WD Green Drive that has failed within 30 days out of box.

I was told by WD support that EX2 does not need to be powered down…  Is this true?  The EX2 does not have a fan… (Even though MyCloud says it does.).

Very frustrated user

I havent shut mine down except for testing since I got it, about 7 months ago.  (Got it as soon as they came out.) As for the fan, I havent talked to any owners who DONT have a fan in their unit, mine sure does.  It rarely runs, but it’s in there.

You really need to be running WD RED drives as they are better equiped to deal with the heat & vibration of two drives running side by side.  By default if you purchase the EX2 preloaded from WD it will come with WD RED drives installed.

WD Tech Support didn’t say anything about needing a red drive.  In fact when I talked to them, I specifically talked about getting 2 green drives.

Where is there a fan in an EX2?  Awfully small… didnt see a fan when I loaded the drives.

I heartily second Vertech1’s advice to use a WD Red drive for the EX2 over a Green drive. The Green drives are not meant for 24x7 NAS usage. I too have never shut down my EX2 in the 7 months I have owned it (right from EX2’s product launch). The green drives though shouldn’t fail in just a couple days use - those drives were probably faulty to begin with. But if you plan on leaving your NAS on 24x7 and on having a worry-free NAS drives that won’t fail 6-12 months into the usage, I strongly urge you to get Red drives for the EX2. Yes, with red drives you’ll pay an extra few bucks but the long term reliability will be worth it…unless you are willing to take the chance of a premature abrupt drive failure. You will probably get a replacement green drive if it is still under warranty - but the disruption and potential loss of data is just not worth the headache.

As for the fan, yes there is a fan in the EX2. You can see it in this pic included in Aandtech’s review of EX2 →   http://www.anandtech.com/Gallery/Album/3435#9

And you can learn more about the EX2 fan’s usage that the user Twins answered, that this link takes you directly to →   http://community.wd.com/t5/WD-My-Cloud-EX2/Question-regarding-the-FAN-used-by-WD-My-Cloud-EX2/m-p/802561#M1442

OK - as an engineer, I am going to throw the dumb questions out there…

  1. Why would you put a fan behind the front cover where it cannot draw air through?

  2. I know what the thought process was for putting the fan at the bottom (to draw cooler air in over the drives)… but the bottom sits on shelves and floors and other places that does not have good air flow…

don’t know… wasn’t on the development team…

thanks for the pic by the way

Actually the fan is in the front, not at the bottom. But agreed, it would have been better if it was rear-facing…there are no vents at the front so air-flow is limited. But my guess for this design choice is to have as quiet a fan as possible - fans always come with the con of noise…so the designers probably weighed aainst the noise and decided to dampen it by sticking it on the front right against the front of the shell - not great air-flow but much better in the fan noise department. At least that’s my guess.

Talked to [Deleted - Trancer] from WD Tech Support tonight.  He assures me (as the last guy did as well) that the Green Drives were made for the EX2 and EX4 (he also stated that the Blue Drives are made to work in the EX series as well).  He stated the fact that I have a pair of Green Drives should not have made a difference.

I have 3 TB Raid 1 system.  I have 270Gb of data and the system has been trying to rebuild the Raid since Monday October 13 at 3:34 pm…  anyone guess what I will be doing tomorrow?

Only you can decide what’s the appropriate level of risk you are willing to take. Vertech1 and I have done our part by advising you against Green drives. Rest is up to you.

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