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Nice write-up. Thanks

I have been running into a frustrating issue over the past few days with my WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra and was hoping someone here might have seen something similar. I set up an automated workflow on my PC that pulls audit batches and domain metrics through dapascore and dumps the exported reports directly onto a shared network folder on the drive. It works fine for the first ten to fifteen minutes, but as the sync progresses, the drive completely drops the SMB connection out of nowhere, causing the transfer to hang with an I/O timeout error. What makes it stranger is that while the network share becomes totally inaccessible on Windows, the WD web dashboard still reports the drive status as healthy and online. Alongside the dropped connection, I have noticed that once the transfer stalls, the drive activity LED stays pinned solid, and attempting to remap or disconnect the network drive in File Explorer just freezes the window until I power cycle the unit. Has anyone experienced their My Cloud choking on continuous background writes like this, or could this be related to aggressive sleep state settings or how the latest firmware handles concurrent socket connections? Any advice on how to keep the connection stable without having to constantly reboot would be greatly appreciated.

Realizing you’ve just wiped out some important from your main backup drive is really frustrating. When you accidentally deleted a bunch of files when cleaning up the drive for making more free space. Crucially, the data is usually still physically sitting on the drive until new files happen to overwrite those exact sectors. In this situation the best option to recover your data is to use a reputable tool like Softaken Data Recovery Software or any other. It deep scan your drive and shows you the recovered data preview those you can store at different drive on your windows 10.

For general use, speed, storage, and price are my main tipping points. Putting the OS and apps on a fast SSD greatly improves performance—everything opens instantly. I recommend a hybrid setup: a 1TB SSD for the OS and daily apps, plus a 4TB HDD for larger files, backups, or media storage. It offers speed where needed and cheap capacity for other storage. Check your motherboard for available slots and ensure your power supply has a SATA cable if adding a 3.5-inch HDD. Hope this helps with your upgrade!

Full gist is here: Dell OEM HGST HUH721212ALN600 4Kn to 512e conversion with WDCKit on Linux · GitHub

Sorry for reviving an old topic if that’s annoying to anyone, but I recently needed to use a Dell-branded WD/HGST 12 TB drive in an existing USB enclosure that did not seem to handle 4Kn sectors correctly. Enclosures that explicitly advertised 4Kn support were around $100 and not in the form factor I wanted, so converting the drive to 512e seemed like the best option. There wasn’t much clear information about converting an OEM drive from 4Kn to 512e, and I couldn’t determine beforehand whether the conversion would work or leave the drive unusable. It ultimately succeeded, so I wanted to document the result for anyone with the same model. This was a single experiment, not a guarantee: changing sector size is destructive, erases the usable disk layout, and could potentially render a drive unusable. Verify everything independently and proceed entirely at your own risk. I’ll add a link to the detailed writeup in a separate reply in case external links trigger the spam filter. The short version is: I converted a Dell-OEM HGST Ultrastar DC HC520 12 TB SATA drive—model HUH721212ALN600 , firmware LEEMT614 —from 4096-byte logical sectors (4Kn) to 512-byte logical sectors with 4096-byte physical sectors (512e). I used the unchanged Linux version of Western Digital’s WDCKit 2.23.0.0 while the drive was connected directly by SATA. I did not modify WDCKit or flash different firmware. Note that Western Digital officially lists OEM drives and Linux distributions as unsupported for this proc

Best suggestion to decide between HDD and SDD everydat storage is Choose an SSD (Solid State Drive) for your operating system, apps, and daily tasks, and an HDD (Hard Disk Drive) for cheap bulk storage. This help you to solve your doubt to manage.

You can monitor long term HDD and SSD health by tracking SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) data using built-in operating system tools.

Did you do recent Windows update? Sounds like: TECHCOMMUNITY.MICROSOFT.COM Accessing a third-party NAS with SMB in Windows 11 24H2 may fail | Microsoft... Changes to SMB security in Windows 11 24H2 release preview may prevent access to third party NAS appliances or other devices.

Hi everyone, What methods do you use to monitor the health of WD HDDs and SSDs over time? I’m particularly interested in how people track drive temperature, power-on hours, SMART information, bad sectors, SSD wear, and…

Hi everyone, What methods do you use to monitor the health of WD HDDs and SSDs over time? I’m particularly interested in how people track drive temperature, power-on hours, SMART information, bad sectors, SSD wear, and other indicators that may help identify a storage problem before it becomes serious. Do you rely primarily on WD software, operating-system tools, or third-party utilities? It would be useful to hear which monitoring practices have worked well for different storage setups. Thanks!

solved my problem