Question WD easystore desktop backup 4tb power consumption?

There is typically a 20-30 watt surge when drives are initially powered on and spinning up, but then often only 5-10 Watts are required to maintain the needed spindle speed....

However, I consider most external drives to have far shorter lifetimes than internal drives (on average, there will always be outlier/exceptions)....as quite often the cable (AC Adapter or USB cable) fails, or the drive's internal USB adapter circuitry fails before the actual drive does...

If you wish to leave a drive powered on long term, I'd simply get a standard 2.5"/3.5" drive...; if you need the convenience of moving it around, or like to keep it 'air gapped' between backups, etc., Icy Dock makes excellent 5.25" external/front bay adapters that accept both 3.5" and 2.5" SATA drives, with individual power and eject switches for each.
 
Last edited:
Dec 23, 2016
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There is typically a 20-30 watt surge when drives are initially powered on and spinning up, but then often only 5-10 Watts are required to maintain the needed spindle speed....

However, I consider most external drives to have far shorter lifetimes than internal drives (on average, there will always be outlier/exceptions)....as quite often the cable (AC Adapter or USB cable) fails, or the drive's internal USB adapter circuitry fails before the actual drive does...

If you wish to leave a drive powered on long term, I'd simply get a standard 2.5"/3.5" drive...; if you need the convenience of moving it around, or like to keep it 'air gapped' between backups, etc., Icy Dock makes excellent 5.25" external/front bay adapters that accept both 3.5" and 2.5" SATA drives, with individual power and eject switches for each.
Hey thanks for the response. I've actually purchased this external hard drive already. The reason i'm asking is because i want to know how much i would expect it to cost keeping it plugged in and using it at max a couple hours a day. I had an older 1tb one, which ran my electricity bill way up. Tripled it. I'm not sure if it was a faulty unit or not. If it's 5-10 watts to maintain idle speed, is that per hour? So, if it's 10 watts per hour x 24 =240 watts @ .10 cents per kwh=0.024 cents. Is that correct?