WD40EFRX - LoadCycleCount issue is back?!

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redgoblin
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Re: WD40EFRX - LoadCycleCount issue is back?!

Post by redgoblin »

Déjà vu time: Is it just me or are successive versions of NASware progressively undermining the Red's whole raison d'être by reintroducing self-repair features uncannily like those that rule out WD Blacks/Greens/Blues? I for one have no intention of buying Reds if potentially-warranty-invalidating tweaks are necessary just to make them do what they really ought - simply let the RAID-controller get on with its job!

To this end, BTW, I've been vainly googling for an objective (i.e. marketing-hype-free) official history of NASware's development - either as a set of snapshot tech specs or as one or more stepwise revision logs - and wonder if anyone here can please point me at something useful like that ...
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Re: WD40EFRX - LoadCycleCount issue is back?!

Post by schumaku »

The self-unload is not a repair feature - just a silly default. No clue what is riding WDC's product management and engineering. And interestingly, the (in my opinion wrong setting) is in place on a part of the production only.

NASware 3.0 : It's all marketing ... no so long ago most users had not been aware there is an embedded system running on firmware on a HDD. Those few engineers who have the insight are under NDA and can't and won't talk.
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storageman
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Re: WD40EFRX - LoadCycleCount issue is back?!

Post by storageman »

The fact that REDs have no vibration control gives me a problem and I would not use them in the business world.
Qnap have removed all desktop drives from the racks for this reason.
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Re: WD40EFRX - LoadCycleCount issue is back?!

Post by P3R »

storageman wrote:The fact that REDs have no vibration control...
Really? They are at least marketed with the feature "3D Active Balance Plus", that WD claim reduce vibrations...
Qnap have removed all desktop drives from the racks...
Qnap have done what? Please explain what happened.
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: WD40EFRX - LoadCycleCount issue is back?!

Post by schumaku »

No off-topic postings please ... WD Red are not desktop drives, and vibrations don't cause unloads (and a subsequent load leading to the LCC increase...) AFAIK.
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storageman
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Re: WD40EFRX - LoadCycleCount issue is back?!

Post by storageman »

schumaku wrote:No off-topic postings please ... WD Red are not desktop drives, and vibrations don't cause unloads (and a subsequent load leading to the LCC increase...) AFAIK.
I disagree. I have a history of customers with stability issues in high end racks with Reds. These issues were resolved when we moved to enterprise drives.
WD describe them as NAS optimised drives but given the 3 year warranty they are more like desktop than enterprise drives.

Schumaku, check the compat lists, you will not find any desktop drives in the racks, Reds or Deskstars.
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redgoblin
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Re: WD40EFRX - LoadCycleCount issue is back?!

Post by redgoblin »

@ schumaku: Thanks for that. FTR, my self-repair '5' (if really incorrect) came from adding '2' (the Red hype claim [see NASware tab],
Intelligent Error Recovery
With built in intelligent error recovery controls, NASware also prevents hard drives from being dropped off the RAID due to extended error recovery. This feature provides more availability and less down time when rebuilding the RAID.
) and '2' (the reappearance of our 'old friend' TLER which I've always understood as unilaterally taking time out to fix/repair things like bad sectors).

@ storageman: On its plus side, NASware 3.0 is credited with achieving the 5-8 bay limit improvement - maybe (my best guess) by varying the rotational speed in such a way as to allow the much-vaunted self-adjusting bearing balls to more optimally realign themselves (akin to a washing machine centralising the centre of mass of an awkward spin load but w/o, of course, being allowed to resort to spin-reversal as an anti-stiction shock tactic).
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Re: WD40EFRX - LoadCycleCount issue is back?!

Post by schumaku »

All this more or less intelligent error recovery is what each and every HDD vendor has implemented ... obvious WD does no longer do error recovery attempts taking more time than acceptable by NAS RAID systems - thus there is no TLER (which is nothing else but disabling some recovery attempts taking more time...). Marketing blush...
storageman wrote:I disagree. I have a history of customers with stability issues in high end racks with Reds.
High LCC? Probably not ... this is the subject :geek:

Hey storageman ... we both know these consumer NAS drives are made for "desktop" NAS. In a rack, depending on what else is running and rattling, the complete rack becomes one big enclosure woth a complete changed vibration characteristics. When looking at the newer rack mount NAS model compatibility lists, we still see NAS drives (WD Red Pro, certainly on smaller NAS units), or Seagate Enterprise NAS drives STx000VN0001 (classified as Enterprise drives).
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storageman
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Re: WD40EFRX - LoadCycleCount issue is back?!

Post by storageman »

schumaku wrote:All this more or less intelligent error recovery is what each and every HDD vendor has implemented ... obvious WD does no longer do error recovery attempts taking more time than acceptable by NAS RAID systems - thus there is no TLER (which is nothing else but disabling some recovery attempts taking more time...). Marketing blush...
storageman wrote:I disagree. I have a history of customers with stability issues in high end racks with Reds.
High LCC? Probably not ... this is the subject :geek:

Hey storageman ... we both know these consumer NAS drives are made for "desktop" NAS. In a rack, depending on what else is running and rattling, the complete rack becomes one big enclosure woth a complete changed vibration characteristics. When looking at the newer rack mount NAS model compatibility lists, we still see NAS drives (WD Red Pro, certainly on smaller NAS units), or Seagate Enterprise NAS drives STx000VN0001 (classified as Enterprise drives).
Can't see anything to disagree with here.
Really, I'm not knocking Reds, we use 1000s, they're fine in the right place.
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Re: WD40EFRX - LoadCycleCount issue is back?!

Post by scorpydude »

I really don't know what the issue is here. I have the drives you guys mention in this thread and haven't done the "fix" or even the latest firmware (just whatever came on it). SMART still reporting OK despite millions or LCC. Been using them for years now.
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