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Might want to replace that disk once more. The WD Blue will run too hot and probably destroy itself within a month or so. Get a WD Green (don't forget to run the idle3 patch) or a WD Red instead.

Gordon wrote:Might want to replace that disk once more. The WD Blue will run too hot and probably destroy itself within a month or so. Get a WD Green (don't forget to run the idle3 patch) or a WD Red instead.

Doh. I hope not. I thought since this is only secondary backup and will only be doing any actual job once a week I'd go with something cheap (I'm running red disks in my primary nas). You got experience with blue in B3 yourself?

/Daniel

No experience of my own, but it is the original recommendation from Excito that you should not install drives that rev higher than 5400 RPM. I'm pretty sure Johannes did thoroughly investigate this, as one of the remarks he did make on this subject is that the B3 mainboard will in fact survive if a disk burns itself up.

Darn.
Well, now when the disk is bought, installed, partitioned and has a lot of files copied over to it, I won't change it. I guess it'll be a scientific experiment, seeing how long it'll live. Guess I'll schedule a weekly SMART scan. What are the best tool to monitor HD temperature?

/Daniel

DanielM wrote:Well, now when the WD Blue disk is installed I won't change it.

Just check the power consumption on the new drive compared to the original. The WD Green I have from a B3 has the model number WD10EARS. AFAICT the max power consumption on that drive is 4.1 Watt. A 500 GB Blue might be either 6 W or 3.3 W at max - but only 2.5 W when idle - depending on your model number. Besides, it would surprise me if there wasn't a bit of safety margin for power dissipation from the box.

So, again, while I want to emphasize that I'm no expert, moving from 4.1 W at max power to 6 W doesn't seem very extreme to me. Sure if you're hobby is torrenting 24/7 from your bubba and you harddrive runs at max power consumption all the time, the device might fail sooner than expected, but I would expect that casual usage would keep that drive idle and below 4.1 W most of the time.

WD Green spec: http://products.wdc.com/library/SpecShe ... 800026.pdf

WD Blue spec: http://products.wdc.com/library/SpecShe ... 771436.pdf

Again, I'm no expert. Did I mention, I'm no expert? Just winging it here. Really! <:)

fredrikj wrote:WD Blue spec: http://products.wdc.com/library/SpecShe ... 771436.pdf

Thanks! I've got the WD5000AAKX, so it's speced at 5.6/6.0 watts. Which as you say doesn't feel like very much. Also the B3 doesn't feel hot (even now that I'm running first synchronization of some 100 GB of data).

/Daniel

It's not the amount of power, but the heat generated. My WD Red usually runs at around 42 degrees Celsius, which is out of the comfort zone already, and may peek towards 50. The thing here is that the B3 is a completely closed box. There is no ventilation inside it. When heat builds up it has nowhere to go other than to the outside of the box where it is supposed to dissipate into the air. Which is slow, unless you have some sort of mechanical ventilation moving the air more rapidly around your B3. But that would still not make the situation ideal for the drive sitting inside.

(since it looks like I'm still admin in this forum I took the liberty to split out this discussion to a thread of it's own so we won't hijack MouettE's thread)

Wouldn't the laws of physics say that the amount of energy in (electricity watts) would equal the amount of energy out (heat)?

/Daniel

Well, there is of course some electricity leaving the disk as well, for communicating with the system that accesses the disk, but I suppose that the difference in Wattage between two disks would translate into additional heat generation.

Of course even 6 Watts is not a lot and if you would hold a light bulb with the same power indication (e.g. from a bicycle headlight) in your hand it would only feel slightly warm. The trouble here is that the heat dissipation depends on the mechanical design of the B3 enclosure and of course the CPU and other electronic components generate heat as well. And then there are external factors such as ambient temperature and air circulation which may vary from season to season (probably do).

It is effectively a question of balance. Can you loose heat at the same rate (or higher) as you are generating it? If the answer is no, than heat will build up until eventually something goes bust.

Gordon wrote:It is effectively a question of balance. Can you loose heat at the same rate (or higher) as you are generating it? If the answer is no, than heat will build up until eventually something goes bust.

Ah, of course. Makes sense. I've checked with hddtemp a few times today (while doing some file copying) and the temp seems to be quite steady around 43°C except for when I lit the fireplace two meters from the device because my wife was cold and it rouse to 44°C. Seems acceptable to me, but I'll keep a close eye on it.

My parents (where it's going to be place once I've configured it up) have got rooms that they aren't warming up during the winter, maybe I should put it there

/Daniel

Hi.
Just for the record: The drive has been running 24/7 for five months now without any problem. Currently it's (according to hddtemp) 43°C.

/Daniel