[SOLVED] WD Elements Portable running too hot?

[Pollin]

I recently received a WD recertified WD Elements Portable drive (WD Elements 2620 2tb to be specific) as a replacement for another Elements I had to RMA. I noticed while transferring files onto this drive that it was hitting a peak of 54 celsius. Running an extended SMART test made it hit a sustained 52. It idles at roughly 35-40, which is in line with my returned Elements drive. It also only hit 54 degrees once, while under several hours of sustained write activity (writing over a terabyte of data to it that was on the old drive.) My old Elements also ran hot, but never got past 48 celsius. I figure these drives do run pretty hot normally, since the enclosure isn't ventilated or anything.

WD has been of no help, quoting the "operating temperature" of the device at me. I've seen plenty of people say that the "Operating Temp" refers to the ambient temp of the environment, not the drive itself. Do I need to be worried about this? WD's SMART data shows that the "worst" temperature recorded is still significantly above the threshold (it starts high and gets lower to indicate hotter temps) but since the threshold is zero I don't actually know if that's a correct value or if WD hasn't defined a max temp for it.

 

[hotaru.hino]

If you're doing this once in a while, I don't find it a problem. But if you're constantly doing it, then I would argue that approaching 55C is a little worrying. Though to be fair to WD, you're not supposed to use external drives as a primary drive.

 

[Pollin]

If you're doing this once in a while, I don't find it a problem. But if you're constantly doing it, then I would argue that approaching 55C is a little worrying. Though to be fair to WD, you're not supposed to use external drives as a primary drive.

Thanks for the answer! I'm not using it as a primary drive or anything. Backups and archival storage mostly, with occasional video files and such. I just had to transfer a large amount of data in a fairly short time. I wouldn't have had to move nearly as quickly but the drive that was holding the backups of the RMA'd drive started failing while transferring all the content back onto the new drive (ironic) so I had to pull as much off it as I could lest it continue to degrade or fail to spin up if I let it spin down.

 

[Pollin]

Just as a note for anyone who might stumble across this with the same issue: After talking with a level 2 WD technician, I was informed that the operating temp of the WD Elements Portable drive is -20 to 65 degrees celsius, and the non-operating/idle temp is 5 to 35 degrees celsius, which is the exact reverse of what their documentation specifies. (Which makes sense, as a max temp of 35 c as in the documentation is absurdly low) so if your drive is running a little hot, you have nothing to worry about!