WD30EZRX Green drive compatibility?

[wardh]

Hi,

I am thinking of buying the TS-251 or TS-231 and are checking the compatibility of the hard drives.

The drives I have are:

2 x Western Digital WD30EZRX 3 TB Green drives.

1. Now since they are not on the compatibility list I understand they have not been tested but
should they still work. (A hard drive is a hard drive - all being SATA etc).

2. Is there any extra risks being a green drive?

3. Would QNap still support me? I am not voiding any warrenty in any way ?

Thanks,

Ward.

[Briain]

Hi

WD Green drives have had a lot of 'bad press' and are not recommended for use in any NAS (Qnap or other). There have been a lot of reports of premature failures on both this and many other NAS forums, so best to use them in USB caddies for backup purposes (for which they are likely ideal). Note that not only do Qnap recommend against their use in a NAS, but WD also firmly recommend not using them in any NAS (or any RAID environment, if my memory serves me well); check out the WD site and you will find that warning notice.

I am not sure why they have caused so many problems; WD have stated that it's to do with TLER, but I'm not so sure that makes any sense (other desktop grade drives - which also have no TLER set - don't seem to be a problem, so I don't see why WD Green ones would particularly suffer from that difference). I've also heard that they have head parking set to 8 seconds and thus that the LCC could be causing their premature failures, so using the WDIDLE3 tool to take them up to 300 seconds (which is what WD Red drives are set to) could maybe help, but these are just totally unconfirmed stories (though if you really do have to use them, it's maybe worth a shot, even though that utility is not really meant for the Green disks), and to be honest, I'd highly recommend that you instead go for something that is known to be good for use in NAS units (something like the WD Red disks, for example) and use these Green ones in a USB disk caddy (you get ones where you can just drop the bare disk into, so you only require one unit to use with several disks) for backup devices. Everyone should have backups of their NAS data, so they certainly wont be wasted.

Hope that helps
Bri

NB You wont void your Qnap warranty by using them, but likely you'll get little sympathy if they do fail (from Qnap or from other forum members) and I'd assume WD would not honour the disk warranty if you told them you'd been using them in a NAS environment. So it is entirely up to you if you want to risk it, but as long as you have a backup and don't care if they fail early, then no harm done in trying it (and do investigate that LCC; you can see it in the SMART statistics via the Qnap web interface; if it's clocking up the count, try that utility to change the time to 300s) but again, I'd strongly recommend using them for backup disks and getting 'decent' disks for your NAS, be that a Qnap or any other type of NAS.

NB2 A while back, WD Accidentally released a batch of WD Red disks with the head parking set to 8 seconds (as opposed to 300 seconds), so I checked my ones before fitting them. I downloaded the Ultimate Boot CD which included that WD utility in the list of toys that it comes with. If you really must use the Greens in a NAS, it's probably worth checking/changing them using that tool (even though it is most likely not meant to be used with WD Green disks); I most certainly can't guarantee that it will help, but that's likely what I'd at least try, if I was really forced to use the Greens in a NAS.

[pwilson]

Hi,

I am thinking of buying the TS-251 or TS-231 and are checking the compatibility of the hard drives.

The drives I have are:

2 x Western Digital WD30EZRX 3 TB Green drives.

1. Now since they are not on the compatibility list I understand they have not been tested but
should they still work. (A hard drive is a hard drive - all being SATA etc).

2. Is there any extra risks being a green drive?

3. Would QNap still support me? I am not voiding any warrenty in any way ?

Thanks,

Ward.

WD Greens are not suitable for NAS-use according to Western Digital. Upgrade to NAS/RAID certified drives as finances permit. I use WD Reds (aka NASware drives) here.

Western Digital does not recommend (nor warrant) WD Blacks, Blues and Greens for RAID use. Please review Western Digital Corporation document: Difference between Desktop edition (WD Blue, WD Green and WD Black) and RAID (Enterprise) edition drives.

When reviewing this document pay particular attention to:

Critical: WD Black, WD Green, and WD Blue hard drives are not recommended for and are not warranted for use in RAID environments utilizing Enterprise HBAs and/or expanders and in multi-bay chassis, as they are not designed for, nor tested in, these specific types of RAID applications. For all Business Critical RAID applications, please consider WD’s Enterprise Hard Drives that are specifically designed with RAID-specific, time-limited error recovery (TLER), are tested extensively in 24x7 RAID applications, and include features like enhanced RAFF technology and thermal extended burn-in testing.

[wardh]

Hi,

Great answers

Thank you both,
Ward.

[pwilson]

Hi,

Great answers

Thank you both,
Ward.

If you invest in an eSATA/USB3.0 Drive Dock, you can re-task those WD Greens as "Backup drives" for your NAS. This is a "good" non-RAID use of your non-RAID drives and something your should be doing regularly anyway, when running under RAID or not. (I paid <$50USD for my Dock).

How are you doing your frequent Backups now?

Use that eSATA/USB3.0 Drive Dock to backup to those WD Greens, and store at least one Backup off-site at all times. You can schedule your Backups to occur in the middle of the night while you are sleeping. (I use WD Reds for my internal drives, and my Backup drives, as this allows me to "re-task" a Backup drive as an internal drive when one of my Internal drives fails. This gives me immediate replacement, and I can use the "warranty replacement" drive as a "Backup" drive when it is returned by WD).