WD RED Drives (WD10EFRX WD20EFRX WD30EFRX)

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doktornotor
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Re: WD RED Drives (WD10EFRX WD20EFRX WD30EFRX)

Post by doktornotor »

skimmer333 wrote:though im leaning towards the WD due to the cirping issue with the seagate (had returned 4 drives due to this, and they where on the latest firmware as well).
I kinda stopped following the issue, apparently they released a new firmware which was supposed to fix it - or maybe just hide the bad design a bit? Clearly not fixed with all affected models and drives. All this is just waiting for another IBM DeathStar-like fiasco to happen.

The state of HDD industry is pretty sad, with two manufacturers left, producing crappy "green" junk and abusing every opportunity to get more money out of their customers, incl. the Thailand flooding. Seagate apparently ripped enough off their customers to be able to acquire OCZ, Western Digital doubles last year's profits.

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Re: WD RED Drives (WD10EFRX WD20EFRX WD30EFRX)

Post by pitviper45 »

The 2TB drives became really hard to find all of a sudden. Does anyone know if this is just a supply demand issue or if there is a problem with the drive?
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Re: WD RED Drives (WD10EFRX WD20EFRX WD30EFRX)

Post by storageneeded »

Most places are out of stock for the 2TB and 3TB red drives right now. The few that claim to have stock are either charging a big price premium or, when you contact them, you find out they really don't have any are are saying 14 - 21 days for delivery. They're also not available in the WD Store which is a little odd as they're basically a consumer-grade product.

I too would like to know what's going on. It's most likely they're either having manufacturing problems or they stopped shipments intentionally for some other reason (like a known problem with the drives). It's a shame as the preliminary reviews are quite good.

In general I agree with doktornotor above about the state of the drive industry. It's really sad. What's even more sad is these are the same companies that make drives for mission critical applications like health care, aerospace, military, etc. With little competition remaining it seems like a rush to the bottom in a misguided effort to maximize profits. Even warranties are getting shorter.

Google co-authored a paper on drive reliablity with a university a while back and it was fascinating reading. Google is one of the largest users of drives in the USA so they're in a good position to gather high quality stastical data on reliability. Reading the paper does little to instill much confidence in even the "enterprise grade" drives. Some batches still have extremely high failure rates. And most companies outfit their RAID arrays with drives all from the same batch making the likelyhood of multiple-drive failures in a single array much more likely and the massive data loss that goes with it.
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Re: WD RED Drives (WD10EFRX WD20EFRX WD30EFRX)

Post by schumaku »

According to a trustwirthy source in teh HDD distribution channel: WDC resp. it's distributors in charge for certain markets simply underestimated the demand.

Rumours are always around. For example Hitachi (HGST) has lowered the focus (read: availability) on the 4 TB DESKSTAR 7K4000 and is pushing the (more expensive, but most likely almost similar) ULTRASTAR 7K4000. Some resellers (wrongly?) claim the Deskstar variant is no longer available ... however, I suspect again this depends son the importer/distributor again.
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Re: WD RED Drives (WD10EFRX WD20EFRX WD30EFRX)

Post by storageneeded »

schumaku wrote:According to a trustwirthy source in teh HDD distribution channel: WDC resp. it's distributors in charge for certain markets simply underestimated the demand.
Thanks for the comment. It's hard to know if that's just marketing spin or reality. Obviously WD isn't going to readily admit to manufacturing problems or halting shipments due to a drive problem if they can avoid it. Blaming it on their reseller's forecasts nicely gets them off the hook.

I have no idea how WD allocates their manufacturing, but the Red drives have been scarce since at least mid August and the dealers are not expecting more for at least 2-3 more weeks. So that's well over a month with apparently no drives shipping to anyone. That seems odd to me if it was just an issue of demand being too high.
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Re: WD RED Drives (WD10EFRX WD20EFRX WD30EFRX)

Post by AtroX »

amnm wrote: I am using Blacks at the moment
In which device are u using them? On the qnap-compabilitylist there's a note saying these are not recommended...
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Re: WD RED Drives (WD10EFRX WD20EFRX WD30EFRX)

Post by amnm »

AtroX wrote:In which device are u using them? On the qnap-compabilitylist there's a note saying these are not recommended...
I am using them in a TS-439 Pro II+ The note you are referring to says:

"The hard disk drives have passed QNAP lab's initial verification of compatibility.
However, the manufacturer has suggested not to use the desktop hard disk drives in business-critical RAID environments because the drives may not work correctly. Please check this link for more information."

I don't have any RAID on my NAS. While the Black are not meant to be a storage hard drives, I thought that they better suited my needs at the time I installed them before the release of the Red. Now I feel that the Red will be a better option, but I hope that they are also reliable with non RAID NAS.
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Re: WD RED Drives (WD10EFRX WD20EFRX WD30EFRX)

Post by redgoblin »

amnm wrote:I don't have any RAID on my NAS.
Sorry but oh yes you do! Your NAS, having only one (software RAID) controller, effectively runs all its HDDs as RAID drives. You're far from the first optimist to thus delude themself and if you'd done your homework you'd have already read that in this forum. :roll:
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Re: WD RED Drives (WD10EFRX WD20EFRX WD30EFRX)

Post by amnm »

redgoblin wrote:
amnm wrote:I don't have any RAID on my NAS.
Sorry but oh yes you do! Your NAS, having only one (software RAID) controller, effectively runs all its HDDs as RAID drives. You're far from the first optimist to thus delude themself and if you'd done your homework you'd have already read that in this forum. :roll:
I don't have any RAID on my NAS because I am running in the "Single Disk Volume" mode.
Now my question, will the Red drives still be better in my configuration or they are only better if I use RAID?
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Re: WD RED Drives (WD10EFRX WD20EFRX WD30EFRX)

Post by P3R »

amnm wrote:I don't have any RAID on my NAS because I am running in the "Single Disk Volume" mode.
Which only applies to the data partitions that you see in the admin interface.

If you have more than one disk in the NAS, the system partitions are always running in a RAID-configuration.
RAID have never ever been a replacement for backups. Without backups on a different system (preferably placed at another site), you will eventually lose data!

A non-RAID configuration (including RAID 0, which isn't really RAID) with a backup on a separate media protects your data far better than any RAID-volume without backup.

All data storage consists of both the primary storage and the backups. It's your money and your data, spend the storage budget wisely or pay with your data!
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Re: WD RED Drives (WD10EFRX WD20EFRX WD30EFRX)

Post by amnm »

P3R wrote:
amnm wrote:I don't have any RAID on my NAS because I am running in the "Single Disk Volume" mode.
Which only applies to the data partitions that you see in the admin interface.

If you have more than one disk in the NAS, the system partitions are always running in a RAID-configuration.
Thanks for the clarification. Where can I find more information about this?

I have a four bay NAS with two hard drives installed. Which RAID is being used, Raid 0 or Raid 1? Will that change if I install a third hard drive? Also if I decide to remove hard drive 2 will that have any implication on accessing my full data on drive 1?

Thanks again.
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Re: WD RED Drives (WD10EFRX WD20EFRX WD30EFRX)

Post by schumaku »

amnm wrote:I have a four bay NAS with two hard drives installed. Which RAID is being used, Raid 0 or Raid 1?
...or JBOD, or two single HDD volumes - how shall we know how your NAS is configured, lack of a crystal ball please? DDisks Management >> Volume Management >> Current Configuration: Logical Volumes

(yes, wrong wording - there are no logical volumes...) just volumes)
amnm wrote:Will that change if I install a third hard drive? Also if I decide to remove hard drive 2 will that have any implication on accessing my full data on drive 1?
Provide your NAS details - impossible to answer.
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Re: WD RED Drives (WD10EFRX WD20EFRX WD30EFRX)

Post by amnm »

schumaku wrote: ...or JBOD, or two single HDD volumes - how shall we know how your NAS is configured, lack of a crystal ball please? DDisks Management >> Volume Management >> Current Configuration: Logical Volumes
(yes, wrong wording - there are no logical volumes...) just volumes)
Thanks for your reply, but I think you are missing my point because I stated that in my previous post. I am running in the "Single Disk Volume" mode and I am not planing to have and RAID.

What I have been told is that even if I run in the "Single Disk Volume", the system's partition (not the data partitions) will be running in RAID because I have more than one hard drive installed. Hence come the question, which RAID will be used by the NAS for the system's partition if I have two hard drives and whether the RAID will change if I install more drives.
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Re: WD RED Drives (WD10EFRX WD20EFRX WD30EFRX)

Post by P3R »

amnm wrote:Where can I find more information about this?
I'm not aware of any officiall documentation of the design but schumaku have explained it here in the forum.
I have a four bay NAS with two hard drives installed. Which RAID is being used, Raid 0 or Raid 1?
RAID 1 for the system partitions.
Will that change if I install a third hard drive?
No.
Also if I decide to remove hard drive 2 will that have any implication on accessing my full data on drive 1?
It shouldn't, at least not if you are careful and remove all shares created on drive 2 and any other existing dependencies to it.

Of course removing disk 2 would at the same time remove the disk redundancy for your system partitions, thus making the system totally vulnerable to a disk failure and at the same time make your 4-bay NAS effectively a single bay unit. :cry:

Personally I doubt you gain any stability by removing a disk, you only make the NAS less useful. When disks start failing, your single disk configuration will give you all sorts of problems anyway. I would make sure external backups of all data are in place and be happy as long as the current configuration works.

In the future, buy Qnap approved disks and consider using a fault tolerant RAID-configuration (RAID 1, 5, 6 or 10).
Last edited by P3R on Tue Nov 27, 2012 8:29 am, edited 2 times in total.
RAID have never ever been a replacement for backups. Without backups on a different system (preferably placed at another site), you will eventually lose data!

A non-RAID configuration (including RAID 0, which isn't really RAID) with a backup on a separate media protects your data far better than any RAID-volume without backup.

All data storage consists of both the primary storage and the backups. It's your money and your data, spend the storage budget wisely or pay with your data!
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Re: WD RED Drives (WD10EFRX WD20EFRX WD30EFRX)

Post by amnm »

P3R wrote: Of course removing disk 2 would at the same time remove the disk redundancy for your system partitions, thus making the system totally vulnerable to a disk failure and at the same time make your 4-bay NAS effectively a single bay unit. :cry:
Thanks for the clarification. I think it is clear now.
Actually I will add a third hard drive (3TB RED) to the NAS, but in the process I wanted to replace one of the other two drives. I wanted to make sure that the data on the remaining drive will not be affected.
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