Something that I just ran into and thought that I'd share.
I just bought a new WD 1TB Black drive. I was surprised when I installed it and saw that it was running 36 degress C as I was replacing another WD 1TB black drive that I had bought a year earlier that was suspicious. That drive runs about 4 degrees hotter when idling and upto 8+ degrees hotter when under a full load.
The serial numbers are:
WD1002FAEX-00Z3A0 versus WD1003FZEX-00MK2A0.
Both drives have the same specs as far as I know even though I did find this information on benchmarks:
http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/hdd.php?hdd=WDC+WD1003FZEX&id=6265
http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/hdd.php?hdd=WDC+WD1002FAEX
To summarize those two links. There are some big differences from one batch of serial #s to another and it appears that one is at the mercy of what your vendor is selling I guess. 🙁
I was replacing this drive as Windows 7 gave me some bogus notifications that the NTFS file system was corrupted and not usable in the event log. Yet, after saying it was 'unusable' there were no problems. But to be cautious I thought that I'd replace it and/or avoid a major PITA with a complete reinstallation.
Anyone know of any issues with bad batches and/or design changes in the past year with WD disks?
Perhaps this is the difference between a 'brown box' and a 'retail box'???
Off topic and no relevance.
My WD 2TB Green runs about 6 degrees C cooler after tweaking for idling load/unload. But of course it takes twice as long to sping up.
I just bought a new WD 1TB Black drive. I was surprised when I installed it and saw that it was running 36 degress C as I was replacing another WD 1TB black drive that I had bought a year earlier that was suspicious. That drive runs about 4 degrees hotter when idling and upto 8+ degrees hotter when under a full load.
The serial numbers are:
WD1002FAEX-00Z3A0 versus WD1003FZEX-00MK2A0.
Both drives have the same specs as far as I know even though I did find this information on benchmarks:
http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/hdd.php?hdd=WDC+WD1003FZEX&id=6265
http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/hdd.php?hdd=WDC+WD1002FAEX
To summarize those two links. There are some big differences from one batch of serial #s to another and it appears that one is at the mercy of what your vendor is selling I guess. 🙁
I was replacing this drive as Windows 7 gave me some bogus notifications that the NTFS file system was corrupted and not usable in the event log. Yet, after saying it was 'unusable' there were no problems. But to be cautious I thought that I'd replace it and/or avoid a major PITA with a complete reinstallation.
Anyone know of any issues with bad batches and/or design changes in the past year with WD disks?
Perhaps this is the difference between a 'brown box' and a 'retail box'???
Off topic and no relevance.

My WD 2TB Green runs about 6 degrees C cooler after tweaking for idling load/unload. But of course it takes twice as long to sping up.
