So I’m not new to data hoarding but I am when it comes to the ins and outs and doing it properly. I have a few WD external hard drives that have all worked perfectly fine for years, pretty consistent with each one. I just bought a new WD 4TB My Passport and noticed it was a bit slower but not a deal breaker. I checked CrystalDiskInfo and saw that it was actually 4800 RPM instead of 5400. I can live with it being slightly slower but it also takes a second longer to respond after not using it for a minute. With all my other drives I can leave for a few minutes and go right back in and play a video without any delay, but this new drive has a delay to it if I let it idle for even a minute. So I downloaded WD Drive Utilities and turned off the sleep timer, that fixed the delay issue but then all of my drives had their LED lights constantly blinking. Usually with my drives the LEDs only blink when in use, but I wasn’t using any of my drives and they were all blinking. They stopped blinking when I uninstalled the utilities app, but that brought back the sleep timer for the new drive and the delay is back.
So with the lower RPM than advertised and delay when idle, is it worth keeping this drive or should I return it? Or am I being too paranoid about these problems and the drive is fine?
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It’s SMR, it’ll be slow as hell and rearrange itself sometimes for days if you don’t let it sleep. But there is no choice for 2.5" drives, at least if you want a somehow large size (and even for many worthless smaller sizes nowadays).
Is that all it is? I just checked a list of CMR and SMR drives and my other Passport drives are also listed as SMR but run faster than this new one.
If you’re using Windows you can disable or increase the sleep timeout from the advanced power options in the old Control Panel power plan options.