I Bought WD 4TB Red Drives (Chap. 1 of a Long Story)

Printers, HDDs, USB/eSATA drives, 3rd-party programs
GoetzVonBerlichingen
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I Bought WD 4TB Red Drives (Chap. 1 of a Long Story)

Post by GoetzVonBerlichingen »

QNAP's money. QNAP's house. QNAP's rules.

I am a little surprised that this Forum's administrators/moderators decided to start selectively deleting my posts beginning mid-October 2014. I was given no notice that I had violated some rule, nor a notice that my posts were being deleted. Readers should understand that the content you read has been selectively edited to ensure QNAP remains happy. It's almost as if this "Community Forum" is, in fact, intended to be a Potemkin village, and not a real community.

QNAP's money. QNAP's house. QNAP's rules.

E'er the helpful type, I elected to help them eradicate traces of me, and deleted the contents of this post on 31 October 2014.
Last edited by GoetzVonBerlichingen on Sat Nov 01, 2014 11:08 am, edited 6 times in total.
.
Several users who've volunteered their time and effort to provide assistance to QNAP owners via this Community Forum have chosen to no longer tolerate being ignored (被忽略) by QNAP ... concerning their requests regarding operation of the forum. QNAP owns, manages, and administers this forum in the manner they see fit.

Those that choose to contribute, must accept QNAP's stance, because with respect to administration/management, it's:

QNAP's money. QNAP's house. QNAP's rules.

It's my choice, however, whether to play along. Several of my posts were deleted out of hand -- with neither notice nor prior warning -- by a chicken-$hit moderator or administrator ... 'working' behind the scenes, and with no attribution. While no great loss <g> ... I'll join those that no longer contribute.
GoetzVonBerlichingen
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Some 'Meaningful' Specifications ... Caveat emptor (Chap. 2)

Post by GoetzVonBerlichingen »

QNAP's money. QNAP's house. QNAP's rules.

I am a little surprised that this Forum's administrators/moderators decided to start selectively deleting my posts beginning mid-October 2014. I was given no notice that I had violated some rule, nor a notice that my posts were being deleted. Readers should understand that the content you read has been selectively edited to ensure QNAP remains happy. It's almost as if this "Community Forum" is, in fact, intended to be a Potemkin village, and not a real community.

QNAP's money. QNAP's house. QNAP's rules.

E'er the helpful type, I elected to help them eradicate traces of me, and deleted the contents of this post on 31 October 2014.
Last edited by GoetzVonBerlichingen on Sat Nov 01, 2014 11:09 am, edited 11 times in total.
.
Several users who've volunteered their time and effort to provide assistance to QNAP owners via this Community Forum have chosen to no longer tolerate being ignored (被忽略) by QNAP ... concerning their requests regarding operation of the forum. QNAP owns, manages, and administers this forum in the manner they see fit.

Those that choose to contribute, must accept QNAP's stance, because with respect to administration/management, it's:

QNAP's money. QNAP's house. QNAP's rules.

It's my choice, however, whether to play along. Several of my posts were deleted out of hand -- with neither notice nor prior warning -- by a chicken-$hit moderator or administrator ... 'working' behind the scenes, and with no attribution. While no great loss <g> ... I'll join those that no longer contribute.
GoetzVonBerlichingen
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WD Red Drives, What I Actually Observed (Chap. 3)

Post by GoetzVonBerlichingen »

QNAP's money. QNAP's house. QNAP's rules.

I am a little surprised that this Forum's administrators/moderators decided to start selectively deleting my posts beginning mid-October 2014. I was given no notice that I had violated some rule, nor a notice that my posts were being deleted. Readers should understand that the content you read has been selectively edited to ensure QNAP remains happy. It's almost as if this "Community Forum" is, in fact, intended to be a Potemkin village, and not a real community.

QNAP's money. QNAP's house. QNAP's rules.

E'er the helpful type, I elected to help them eradicate traces of me, and deleted the contents of this post on 31 October 2014.
Last edited by GoetzVonBerlichingen on Sat Nov 01, 2014 11:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
.
Several users who've volunteered their time and effort to provide assistance to QNAP owners via this Community Forum have chosen to no longer tolerate being ignored (被忽略) by QNAP ... concerning their requests regarding operation of the forum. QNAP owns, manages, and administers this forum in the manner they see fit.

Those that choose to contribute, must accept QNAP's stance, because with respect to administration/management, it's:

QNAP's money. QNAP's house. QNAP's rules.

It's my choice, however, whether to play along. Several of my posts were deleted out of hand -- with neither notice nor prior warning -- by a chicken-$hit moderator or administrator ... 'working' behind the scenes, and with no attribution. While no great loss <g> ... I'll join those that no longer contribute.
scubajwd
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Re: I Bought WD 4TB Red Drives (Chap. 1 of a Long Story)

Post by scubajwd »

Thank You for all your effort on this; I did read end to end your WD 4TB Red Trilogy as it were;
I just bought a WD 4TB "Red:" drive a few days back and have it in "single disk" test mode
in one of my file servers before I replace all 8 in my two newer Qnap file servers
Please keep the community posted if any of your new "reds" drop out..BTW, I'm running
4.0.5 on all my boxes and keep them as cool as possible in my server room
TS-269 Pro
TS-653 Pro
GoetzVonBerlichingen
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Re: I Bought WD 4TB Red Drives (Chap. 1 of a Long Story)

Post by GoetzVonBerlichingen »

QNAP's money. QNAP's house. QNAP's rules.

I am a little surprised that this Forum's administrators/moderators decided to start selectively deleting my posts beginning mid-October 2014. I was given no notice that I had violated some rule, nor a notice that my posts were being deleted. Readers should understand that the content you read has been selectively edited to ensure QNAP remains happy. It's almost as if this "Community Forum" is, in fact, intended to be a Potemkin village, and not a real community.

QNAP's money. QNAP's house. QNAP's rules.

E'er the helpful type, I elected to help them eradicate traces of me, and deleted the contents of this post on 31 October 2014.
Last edited by GoetzVonBerlichingen on Sat Nov 01, 2014 11:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
.
Several users who've volunteered their time and effort to provide assistance to QNAP owners via this Community Forum have chosen to no longer tolerate being ignored (被忽略) by QNAP ... concerning their requests regarding operation of the forum. QNAP owns, manages, and administers this forum in the manner they see fit.

Those that choose to contribute, must accept QNAP's stance, because with respect to administration/management, it's:

QNAP's money. QNAP's house. QNAP's rules.

It's my choice, however, whether to play along. Several of my posts were deleted out of hand -- with neither notice nor prior warning -- by a chicken-$hit moderator or administrator ... 'working' behind the scenes, and with no attribution. While no great loss <g> ... I'll join those that no longer contribute.
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Briain
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Re: I Bought WD 4TB Red Drives (Chap. 1 of a Long Story)

Post by Briain »

Hi

Interesting read! :)

Several years ago, I tried doing some research before buying a batch of disks (6 for me and another 8 for a customer) and found it difficult to obtain any real information about the differences between desktop and enterprise grade disks. I eventually opted for Samsung HE103 (1 TB enterprise disks) based on my great experience with the desktop variants I'd fitted to various NAS units (including my own ReadyNAS NV+). After asking a few questions via emails to Samsung, I was quite surprised when a Samsung engineer called me one day, and even more surprised to hear he was based in Edinburgh and thus only about 5 miles away! One question I asked was a out the weight difference quoted for the two disks which - from memory - was about 10 grams; I asked if this was down to enhanced mechanics and he indicated that was his understanding, but at the time, he couldn't obtain any written information to back that up (these were quite new at the time). Anyhow, we had an interesting chat and debated a few issues, but I suspect that with all disk manufactureres, the full information never escapes the design and testing departments due to the fierce competition between the various vendors.

In general, one thing I often wondered was whether enterprise disks applied more energy to reduce seek times (which I've always thought would make sense; lots of corporate customers demanding small files scattered across a disk would require the head to swiftly move to different parts of the platters) and when I read your post, I was wondering if that could have an impact on wear and thus be a contributing factor in the difference between load/unload count failure statistics between WD Red and WD SE disks (SE being fed higher currents and the head mechanism experiencing greater acceleration stresses), but that the WD RE shows 600,000 would kibosh that line of thinking unless they've specifically engineered that model to cope better than the others. Of course, there are no clues in the specifications (and the seek noise for all three is 3 dB above ambient noise, but that doesn't tell us anything useful as a small increase in acceleration performance might not make that much more noise).

It would be great (and extremely interesting) if the disk manufacturers released white papers explaining the differences between the models and their thinking behind many aspects of the design, but as I alluded to above, my suspicion is that the disk manufacturers have always operated in a culture of corporate secrecy and release the very minimum of information that they are obliged to release. If anything, it looks as though this is getting worse rather than better as specification sheets are 'dumbed down' into little more than you'd expect to see from a press release of an as yet unreleased new product.

Back to the Samsung disks and all these 14 disks I installed a few years ago are still going strong. 4 of my ones have been sitting in a TS-659 (my music server Qnap) and I've still two spares sitting in their boxes. Now that disks are available in such large capacities, I'm pondering moving from a RAID 6 Intel based NAS to one of the current ARM Qnaps with two good disks in RAID 1 (and leaving them spinning 24/7). I have always been weary of WD since the Green/Black/Blue issues (and have trust issues after reading the explanations given by WD) but having fitted a good few WD Red disks to customer Qnaps, I've been quite impressed. That said, this load unload issue (and the issue with disks being set with different parameters) makes me wonder if they're quite as trustworthy as they could be. I plan to look closely at the specs for the desktop and enterprise Hitachi disks before taking a decision, but it seems there are very few negative posts about these disks, so either almost nobody is using them, or they are just very good.

Bri

NB Sorry for any major typos; at the moment, I've no time to proof read the above ramblings and will thus have to do so later (and knowing me, there will be a good few). :ashamed: :D
TS-119, 1 X Seagate ~~ TS-219, 2 X Seagate (R1) ~~ TS-453A, 2 X 3 TB WD Red (R1) ~~ TS-659, 5 X 1 TB Hitachi Enterprise (R6)
APC Smart-UPS 750
SpankyMcS
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Re: I Bought WD 4TB Red Drives (Chap. 1 of a Long Story)

Post by SpankyMcS »

Hi, great analysis, thanx for your time...

Following the links for WDIdle3 I found that it was for the RE2-GP drives, so further looking found http://support.wd.com/product/download. ... 01&lang=en which is for the WD Red ie WD40EFRX drives.
I have downloaded but not run yet to test.

Again thanx for the insights :)

Spanky
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itsmarcos
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Re: I Bought WD 4TB Red Drives (Chap. 1 of a Long Story)

Post by itsmarcos »

Hi - many thanks for sharing your analysis and the excellent and clear write-up.

Your analysis helped me dismiss the purchase of an Se drive. Although, the specs and the warranty are appealing the heat issue held back my decision. Your post definitely sealed the case. The NAS I wanted to install it is not in a properly ventilated room where the ambient temperature might rise upto 40 degrees during summer.

Still skeptical though on the quality of the REDs - might go for a HGST NAS drive (specs)

Primary

QNAP TVS-951N [latest QTS 5.0.x]
- disk 1: WDC Red WD80EFZX
- disk 2: WDC Red WD80EFZX
- disk 6: Samsung SSD Evo 500GB, SSD Cache
- disk 7:Samsung SSD Evo 500GB, HybridMount Cache
- External disk: WDC Red WD60EFRX
Dead one
QNAP TS-253B [4.4.x] - now dead


Remote backup
QNAP TS-219 P+ [latest 4.3.x]
- disk 1: HGST Deskstar 7K3000 HDS723030ALA640 3TB
- disk 2: WDC Red WD40EFRX
ihartley
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Re: I Bought WD 4TB Red Drives (Chap. 1 of a Long Story)

Post by ihartley »

I think you mde a number of errors:
1. SE drives are probably placed in different environments than other drives, so their "known failure rate" might be very different
2. You bought all of your drives from one batch/supplier, which significantly skews any statistics
3. Unlikely shipping caused an issue - drives are designed to stand xxxG whilst running, let alone parked

I DO value your posts. But in reality, and backed by a Google study, drives just, er, well, fail. Buy REDs if you want for extended warranty (I would). But don't expect magic from them. The fixing and torque of the screw is probably just as important as whether it's 10^14 or 10^ error.
GoetzVonBerlichingen
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Re: I Bought WD 4TB Red Drives (Chap. 1 of a Long Story)

Post by GoetzVonBerlichingen »

QNAP's money. QNAP's house. QNAP's rules.

I am a little surprised that this Forum's administrators/moderators decided to start selectively deleting my posts beginning mid-October 2014. I was given no notice that I had violated some rule, nor a notice that my posts were being deleted. Readers should understand that the content you read has been selectively edited to ensure QNAP remains happy. It's almost as if this "Community Forum" is, in fact, intended to be a Potemkin village, and not a real community.

QNAP's money. QNAP's house. QNAP's rules.

E'er the helpful type, I elected to help them eradicate traces of me, and deleted the contents of this post on 31 October 2014.
Last edited by GoetzVonBerlichingen on Sat Nov 01, 2014 11:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
.
Several users who've volunteered their time and effort to provide assistance to QNAP owners via this Community Forum have chosen to no longer tolerate being ignored (被忽略) by QNAP ... concerning their requests regarding operation of the forum. QNAP owns, manages, and administers this forum in the manner they see fit.

Those that choose to contribute, must accept QNAP's stance, because with respect to administration/management, it's:

QNAP's money. QNAP's house. QNAP's rules.

It's my choice, however, whether to play along. Several of my posts were deleted out of hand -- with neither notice nor prior warning -- by a chicken-$hit moderator or administrator ... 'working' behind the scenes, and with no attribution. While no great loss <g> ... I'll join those that no longer contribute.
aeonf242
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Re: I Bought WD 4TB Red Drives (Chap. 1 of a Long Story)

Post by aeonf242 »

I've been trying to get a couple of NAS's drives working with WD red 4TB and have failed each time.
I'm currently trying to get them to be recognised by a TS269L with no success!
psikey
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Re: I Bought WD 4TB Red Drives (Chap. 1 of a Long Story)

Post by psikey »

I've had 4 x 3TB Red's in my TS-469Pro and now using 4 x 4TB Red's in it. I had one of the 4TB Red's fail early on which was replaced within 5 days by WD (replacement came with a white label, not having the RED coloured section) and no problems since. My 4TB RED's did all come from one retailer but were purchased over a 3 month period.
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ToreBK
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Re: I Bought WD 4TB Red Drives (Chap. 1 of a Long Story)

Post by ToreBK »

Thank you so much for your hard work, good thinking and this kind gesture of sharing your thoughts with the community. I not only read your WD40EFRX Trilogy with great interest, I even found it quite entertaining!

As I indicated in this QNAP Forum post, I too had some problems accepting WD's recommended limitations for Red's on more than 5-bays NAS boxes. It just didn't make sense to me, although I didn't think it through nearly as much as you obviously have!

I'm about to purchase yet another 8-bay NAS, and I will populate it with the WD50EFRX which now apparantly is delayed until 2Q14. I'm just hoping I will not have the same nightmare experience I had when 5 of 20 WD30EFRX failed on TS-869 Pro :shock:
TBK-NAS1: QNAP TS-419P+ QTS 4.1.1 Build 20141003 (4 x 3 TB Seagate Barracuda XT ST33000651AS) RAID10
TBK-NAS2: QNAP TS-869 Pro 3 GB RAM QTS 4.1.1 Build 20141003 (8 x 3 TB Western Digital Red WD30EFRX) RAID10
TBK-NAS3: QNAP TS-869 Pro 3 GB RAM QTS 4.1.1 Build 20141003 (8 x 3 TB Western Digital Red WD30EFRX) RAID10
TBK-NAS4: QNAP TS-EC1080 Pro QTS 4.1.1 Build 20141003 (10 x 6 TB Western Digital Red WD60EFRX) RAID10
External Disks: 2 x STBV3000200 Seagate® Expansion Desktop 3TB USB 3.0 Drives
UPS: 4 x PowerWalker VI 850 LCD Line-Interactive UPS
Spare Drives (cold): 2 x Western Digital Red WD30EFRX + 1 x Western Digital Red WD60EFRX
Serving: My Home Cinema
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ToreBK
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Re: I Bought WD 4TB Red Drives (Chap. 1 of a Long Story)

Post by ToreBK »

How are those REDs holding up? I'm considering QNAP TS-EC1080 Pro 10-Bay with WD60EFRX, I wonder if you could be forum's Guinea-pig? :)
TBK-NAS1: QNAP TS-419P+ QTS 4.1.1 Build 20141003 (4 x 3 TB Seagate Barracuda XT ST33000651AS) RAID10
TBK-NAS2: QNAP TS-869 Pro 3 GB RAM QTS 4.1.1 Build 20141003 (8 x 3 TB Western Digital Red WD30EFRX) RAID10
TBK-NAS3: QNAP TS-869 Pro 3 GB RAM QTS 4.1.1 Build 20141003 (8 x 3 TB Western Digital Red WD30EFRX) RAID10
TBK-NAS4: QNAP TS-EC1080 Pro QTS 4.1.1 Build 20141003 (10 x 6 TB Western Digital Red WD60EFRX) RAID10
External Disks: 2 x STBV3000200 Seagate® Expansion Desktop 3TB USB 3.0 Drives
UPS: 4 x PowerWalker VI 850 LCD Line-Interactive UPS
Spare Drives (cold): 2 x Western Digital Red WD30EFRX + 1 x Western Digital Red WD60EFRX
Serving: My Home Cinema
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schumaku
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Re: I Bought WD 4TB Red Drives (Chap. 1 of a Long Story)

Post by schumaku »

GoetzVonBerlichingen wrote:... What's up with WD providing S/W needing physical access to their drives in any format other than a bootable CD-ISO?
Look here, they do since last year -> http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=619&sid=201&lang=en

The Linux 32-bit build of the WD5741 Version 1 utility does run on for me on a TS-x69, copy to a share, and make it executable:

[/share/Public] # chmod 777 wd5741x32

List the drives:

[/share/Public] # ./wd5741x32 -d?
or
[/share/Public] # ./wd5741x32

Apply the update to disk N -> wd5741x32 -dN

[/share/Public] # ./wd5741x32 -d5
WD5741 Version 1
Update Drive
Copyright (C) 2013 Western Digital Corporation

WDC WD40EFRX-xxxxxxx xx.xxxxxx Drive update not needed
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