My new WD My Book Essential 2TB (WDBAAF0020HBK-NESN) was operating at a temperature of 56 or 57 degrees C as reported by both CrystalDiskInfo and Everest. I turned my computer off for a while. Now I’ve turned it back on and the temperature is down to 48 degrees C after being on for about 15 minutes. Should I be concerned or is this normal for these drives?
The drive will also randomly stop responding. Whatever program that is trying to access it with freeze up. I’ve had Windows Explorer or WinRAR lock up for 20~35 seconds twice in just a couple of minutes before. Also when I download to the drive my download will randomly drop to a 0 KB/s transfer rate for 20~35 seconds. I tried removing all my other external drives and USB devices except my Logitech G500 mouse, but that did nothing to help.
I have the Virtual CD disabled and SmartWare is not currently installed on my system. When I did have SmartWare installed, I tested the drive using both the quick tests and it passed both. The drive’s firmware has also been updated to the latest version. I tried disabling Legacy USB support in the BIOS of my ASUS P5Q Pro Turbo motherboard, but when I did that none of my external drives showed up and my mouse no longer worked.
I am using Microsoft Security Essentials, but real-time protection is disabled. I’m not sure what to do about the hanging. I am unable to watch videos from the drive when it randomly cannot be accessed for up to 35 seconds.
Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions? Thanks!
Edit: I reinstalled WD SmartWare and did a Quick Smart Status and Quick Drive Test, both passed. After that, I went to Sleep Timer menu and changed the Turn off Drive setting to Never. This did not help.
If needed I can move my data, only 225GB right now, off my 2TB drive onto one of my old 1TB drives and reformat the drive to see if it helps. I assume that it would probably be best for me to do a full format overnight rather than a quick format? Are there any recommended settings I should use, such as cluster size, if I do completely reformat the drive?
Edit 2: I disabled USB Selective Suspend under Power Options then I turned off my computer and unplugged all USB devices except my mouse. Also, the hard disks are set to never go to sleep/turn off. I still have the same issue.
Edit 3: I don’t need an answer anymore. I just requested a refund for my hard drive and purchased a My Book USB 3.0 2TB from Amazon for $149. Hopefully this new drive does not have the same issue. I purchased the version that does not include WD SmartWare since I don’t need it and it uses up 674MB of storage on my current drive. I moved my data to an older 1TB drive.
