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

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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 11:15 am, edited 5 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.
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doktornotor
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Re: I Bought WD 4TB Red Drives (Chap. 1 of a Long Story)

Post by doktornotor »

GoetzVonBerlichingen wrote: Western Digital Corporation (WDC) should provide every one of their utilities as a bootable ISO.
Because there's a huge lack of bootable ISOs for Linux or FreeDOS... and because that's exactly what people do NOT want, mainly for the reason that there's nothing to boot the ISO from in the first place (no optical drive, no floppy). Plus - courtesy of junk like SecureBoot - booting similar stuff from anything external (USB included) is usually impossible without extensive messing with screwed up buggy (U)EFI settings. So, if anything, this should be provided in a memstick (USB flash disk) format. ISO seriously is useless for the purpose.
GoetzVonBerlichingen wrote: I still can not find any authoritative guidance about what WD5741 actually does. I do know that 2/3 of a recent batch of WD 4TB Reds I got had the WDIDLE3 timer set to "Disabled" and 1/3 had the timer set to "300 seconds."
It sets the timer to 300 seconds. It actually does something on those "brainfart" batches of drives where the timers were set to 8 seconds for absolutely unknown reason, causing the LCC counters to skyrocket to tens of thousands in weeks.
I'm gone from this forum till QNAP stop wasting volunteers' time. Get help from QNAP helpdesk instead.
Warning: offensive signature and materials damaging QNAP reputation follow:
QNAP's FW security issues
QNAP's hardware compatibility list madness
QNAP's new logo competition
Dear QNAP, kindly fire your clueless incompetent forum "admin" And while at it, don't forget the webmaster!
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 11:16 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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doktornotor
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Re: I Bought WD 4TB Red Drives (Chap. 1 of a Long Story)

Post by doktornotor »

GoetzVonBerlichingen wrote:
NASware 3.0 extends our promise by further optimizing WD Red for the NAS environment with added support for 6 to 8 NAS bays. WD Red now supports small NAS systems from 1 to 8 bays thanks to NASware 3.0, which further improves drive compatibility and reliability.
Yeah, they hugely improved compatibility and reliability by actually doing some testing on the Red drives before shipping, to reduce the DoA numbers. With that huge "effort", they put a Red "Pro" sticker on them and a price premium, of course. :roll: :x
I'm gone from this forum till QNAP stop wasting volunteers' time. Get help from QNAP helpdesk instead.
Warning: offensive signature and materials damaging QNAP reputation follow:
QNAP's FW security issues
QNAP's hardware compatibility list madness
QNAP's new logo competition
Dear QNAP, kindly fire your clueless incompetent forum "admin" And while at it, don't forget the webmaster!
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 11:17 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.
GoetzVonBerlichingen
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Posts: 162
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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 11:18 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.
wilsodg
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Re: I Bought WD 4TB Red Drives (Chap. 1 of a Long Story)

Post by wilsodg »

Got about 20 of these reds - 3,4,6TB capacities. 3 have been DOA and replaced. No issues at all on the operational drives - if they work on day 2 then they seem to be robust.

A word of warning.. fitting the 6tb model (probably 5 also) requires smaller screws. The screw type is a 6-32, and the normal length is 6.5mm. For the new WD 5/6 tb drives you will need screws no longer than 4.5mm.

This can be achieved by grinding down the long ones, or call QNAP support and have them send new ones. They charged me €5 for 50.
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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 »

wilsodg wrote:A word of warning.. fitting the 6tb model (probably 5 also) requires smaller screws. The screw type is a 6-32, and the normal length is 6.5mm. For the new WD 5/6 tb drives you will need screws no longer than 4.5mm
Thank you for that advice (and suggestion). My order for 11 of the WD60EFRX is shipped, it will take another day or two before the TS-EC1080 Pro will be shipped, and I'm curious as to what kind of screws are included in the latter. Rest assure, I'll let you know!
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
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Re: I Bought WD 4TB Red Drives (Chap. 1 of a Long Story)

Post by schumaku »

ToreBK wrote:..., and I'm curious as to what kind of screws are included in the latter.
This is the 6-32 delivered with newer QNAP NAS systems:
Screen Shot 2014-08-22 at 15.42.52.png
For reference, here the (current?) SFF-8301 - Specification for Form Factor of 3.5" Disk Drives - Rev 1.7 February 8, 2013
Threads
Size 6-32 UNC-28
Penetration 3.0 mm Min 3.8 mm Max
Note the (in my opinion odd) quality spec -28 ... should't this be -2B ? Ok, never used this historic system for new designs 25 years, except of aircraft bolts of course. :roll:
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pinster
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Re: I Bought WD 4TB Red Drives (Chap. 1 of a Long Story)

Post by pinster »

Brilliant post!

I'd been really confused with this whole thing, this absolutely seals it for me.

One question though! Seems the later, as you point out, WD40EFRX now come with Nasware 3.0 which purportedly "sanctions" 1-8 bay set-ups, however the Qnap supported list specifies that the tested drive was the same model but with Nasware 2.0. The firmware you list is different to that on the supported list. Are these you are using the newer Nasware 3.0 ones?

I also don't believe the first word that these are no good in 8 bay, however if I can get "sanctioned" versions I'm thinking that has to be a good thing, right?

I've also seen most stores advertise the 1-5 bay, presumably Nasware 2.0, drives. Various googling seems to suggest that 2.0 to 3.0 isn't simply firmware but a different drive? I'm confused again!

EDIT

So the 5 & 6TB versions are new and only come with Nasware 3.0. The marketing blerb seems to say these have some vibration additions and at least one review suggested the drive is calibrated differently. So the only surefire way to get Nasware 3.0 is to buy the 5 or 6, or trawl and find someone with fresh stock prepared to sell effectively the same drive in a newer version before they sell all the old ones.
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 11:19 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.
pinster
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Re: I Bought WD 4TB Red Drives (Chap. 1 of a Long Story)

Post by pinster »

I'm just as sceptical around the whole 1-5 and 1-8 bay "sanctioning" nonsense, marketing fluff though I think it is I'm prepared to go with it so long as it doesn't undermine what I'm trying to do. In this example I was, after much calling and support ticket-raising, able to locate a stock of WD40EFRX labelled "NasWare 3.0". Of all the "usual" suspects only one was prepared to actually go check the stock they had, respond in a reasonable time-frame and actually help me. Well done CCL!

So, having established that I could get my hands on the, as yet really un-proven "improved" NasWare 3.0 devices for the same price as other NasWare 2.0 stock - I thought I may as well have those.

I'd have been MUCH more sceptical if I'd had to fork out a premium for something else, again marketing-gumf lead, in order to have some peace of mind around the suitability of drive for my application. For me there would have to be a) People having issues quite widely with the NasWare 2.0 drives b) People not having issues with WD Pro/Re c) Some actual science providing an explanation why the premium was required for this borderline 3 drive increase - not just marketing weasel words.

Certain things are fact, like TLER being better where hardware RAID is concerned - one simply doesn't need to be having single bit errors throwing disks out of a large array willy-nilly. However, when it comes to mutterings about vibration and so on, as you've said GvB, there needs to be some proof / science behind it to part me from my money.

Put simply I think the whole thing is a bit of a nonsense, I suspect it is all marketing twaddle at best and at worst a deliberate and flagrant attempt to differentiate products perfectly able to perform the same task based on little more than technobabble. The cynic in me tells me to assume that actually the lower end drives were deliberately created in such a way as to be unsuitable, with this latest incarnation of the WDxxEFRX featuring "NasWare 3.0" an effort to climb down from the initial position whilst maintaining "face", hidden behind some façade of corporate duty to improve products. [1]
Please discuss this with WDC. And then enlighten all of us. Do let them know that 'confusion' doesn't engender brand-loyalty. Performance does. And that is why the 3TB/4TB Red drives have proven (to play on words a bit) to be so popular.
I intend to at least try and find out what the difference are between these two identical model numbered drives, I'll post what I find out.

[1] I suppose that will be proven or not based on what can be given as fact as the difference between them. Should this be firmware only then shame on WD, though I suspect they won't have been so daft as to allow a firmware upgrade to somehow miraculously allow the drives to cope with additional vibration when they seem to have indicated the drives are factory altered from the earlier version. This is also a shame, if the whole thing was twaddle from the start, as all it will mean is that whatever improvement NasWare 2.0 drive owners may have seen from the new firmware simply won't be released to them in order to prove a point.
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Re: I Bought WD 4TB Red Drives (Chap. 1 of a Long Story)

Post by Briain »

GoetzVonBerlichingen wrote: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.
I'm surprised at that happening, but I think it is a great shame (and I am being polite) that you have decided to replace all of your posts with the above message. This will not cause Qnap (or moderators) any grief, but to have savagely vandalised (for that is what you have done) the community forum in this way is IMHO highly inappropriate. The only grief you will now cause is to other forum members, who might be searching for a problem resolution, and might now stumble across a similar topic - that you had helpfully answered - to find all the above (which they won't care about). For the record, I rather enjoyed reading your story on WD Red and it is a great shame that you have acted in this way (you could have just put the snotty message about it in your signature, thus achieving the same result, without also vandalising our community forum).

I do hope you come back and read this thread, then maybe consider who your actions will have impacted.
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