WD HD reliability

Discuss and share your WD drive experience
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Moogle Stiltzkin
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Re: WD HD reliability

Post by Moogle Stiltzkin »

i have some wd reds NON SMR, and BEFORE there were these wd plus editions.

They seem to be operational still. so i think they are ok....

that said my most recent hdd purchases have been seagate ironwolf 4tb non pros.


Because the price were cheaper and i refused to support wd who pulled a stunt like trying to trick the consumer into buying rubbish smr drives that were marketed as NAS raid drives (something they still to date refused to acknowledge, other than create a plus line to indicate non smr hdd for nas). It's insulting to consumers and i voted with my wallet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChJFhcurWkM

But obviously if there is a too good deal or some technical reason making it hard to turn away then i'd go with that. otherwise, it's best to not to encourage more smr fiascos by these big corporations :S


oo and i hear that wd RMA process is easy to do. So there is that. I'm not too familiar with seagate rma processes.
Last edited by Moogle Stiltzkin on Tue May 18, 2021 6:53 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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P3R
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Re: WD HD reliability

Post by P3R »

jon96789 wrote: Tue May 18, 2021 9:01 am Getting back to the point, my three NAS devices have a total of 18 WD Red drives. Just in the past year alone, i had to replace six drives! Four 4TB drives and two 6TB drives. I would think the drives would last longer than what I am getting, especially on the TS-853A where three drives died.
TS-853A is a 5.5 year old model so assuming your disks are about 5 years old, that's not bad for a WD Reds. WD Red is (or at least was) low cost disks. It's essentially cheap desktop hardware but with a firmware optimized for NAS/RAID usage. You usually get what you pay for.

If you on average want more than 5 years out of your disks, then you should buy NAS Pro (Seagate Ironwolf Pro have much better specifications so is better value for money than WD Red Pro) or enterprise drives. Seagate Exos for example often offer much better value for money than the highly priced NAS Pro drives. On these disks you have the 5 year warranty to begin with and since they're technically of better quality they normally work longer than the low cost NAS drives. Per year with warranty a 5-year warranty disk usually cost less than 3-year warranty disks.
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!
P3R
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Re: WD HD reliability

Post by P3R »

Moogle Stiltzkin wrote: Tue May 18, 2021 9:22 am Because the price was cheaper and i refuse to support wd who pulled a stunt like trying to trick the consumer into buying rubbish smr drives there were marketed as NAS raid drives. It's insulting to consumers and i voted with my wallet.
Now that's a valid reason to avoid WD disks!
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!
Robert1989
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Re: WD HD reliability

Post by Robert1989 »

Can someone recommend reliable WD to me? I just bought a QNAP TS130 recently :o
elvisimprsntr

Re: WD HD reliability

Post by elvisimprsntr »

Robert1989 wrote: Tue May 18, 2021 5:16 pm Can someone recommend reliable WD to me? I just bought a QNAP TS130 recently :o
Avoid SMR drives (from any manufacturer) and you will be fine.

https://www.servethehome.com/wd-red-plu ... -with-cmr/
P3R
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Re: WD HD reliability

Post by P3R »

Robert1989 wrote: Tue May 18, 2021 5:16 pm Can someone recommend reliable WD to me? I just bought a QNAP TS130 recently :o
If you want the most reliable WD then get a WD Gold (but Seagate Exos and Toshiba MG are less expensive and excellent disks as well). If you wan't a reliable WD but can't afford a WD Gold then get a WD Red Pro (but Seagate Ironwolf Pro have better specifications and are at least as reliable so would give you better bang for the buck). If you want a low cost WD with normal desktop type reliability then get a WD Red Plus.

Even if they are now very cheap (as educated users don't want them) avoid WD Red 2-6 TB disks that have "EFAX" in their model name as they are based on SMR-technology that aren't good in NAS/RAID applications. You that have a 1-bay unit could actually use an SMR disk but you may want to upgade the NAS at some point to a multi-bay RAID model and then it would be sad not being able to reuse the drive without problems.

Also remember to always have backup copies on another system of all data that have any value for you.

Good luck!
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!
jon96789
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Re: WD HD reliability

Post by jon96789 »

P3R wrote: Tue May 18, 2021 3:38 pm
jon96789 wrote: Tue May 18, 2021 9:01 am Getting back to the point, my three NAS devices have a total of 18 WD Red drives. Just in the past year alone, i had to replace six drives! Four 4TB drives and two 6TB drives. I would think the drives would last longer than what I am getting, especially on the TS-853A where three drives died.
TS-853A is a 5.5 year old model so assuming your disks are about 5 years old, that's not bad for a WD Reds. WD Red is (or at least was) low cost disks. It's essentially cheap desktop hardware but with a firmware optimized for NAS/RAID usage. You usually get what you pay for.

If you on average want more than 5 years out of your disks, then you should buy NAS Pro (Seagate Ironwolf Pro have much better specifications so is better value for money than WD Red Pro) or enterprise drives. Seagate Exos for example often offer much better value for money than the highly priced NAS Pro drives. On these disks you have the 5 year warranty to begin with and since they're technically of better quality they normally work longer than the low cost NAS drives. Per year with warranty a 5-year warranty disk usually cost less than 3-year warranty disks.
The TS-853A may be a 5.5 year old model, but I purchased it about 30 months ago. Another hard drive just failed on me yesterday. It showed 150 days of use.
P3R
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Re: WD HD reliability

Post by P3R »

jon96789 wrote: Thu May 20, 2021 10:45 am The TS-853A may be a 5.5 year old model, but I purchased it about 30 months ago.
Well nobody can know that before you tell us but then you're seeing an abnormally high failure rate even for WD Reds. But if all disks are 30 months or less then you should still have a warranty on them so it may be annoying but shouldn't have become very costly yet.

I'm not here to defend WD but there must be a reason for the very high failure rate that you have.

Maybe it's becuase you switch the NAS on and off frequently? The constant thermal stress that causes may be a problem for WD Reds? I wouldn't know as I keep my NASes up all the time.

Or maybe you buy from extreme low cost sources that don't use proper packaging?

Or maybe you've bought all your disks at the same time and that package fell of a truck during shipping?

Or maybe you live on a ship and the constant vibrations from the engines kill your disks?

Or maybe you're simply a very unlucky guy?

The bottom line is that WD Red typically have decent desktop-like reliability so on average last +3 years. They don't have very good to excellent reliability because as I said, you usually get what you pay for and if you on average want +5 years you need to step up on the quality ladder.

I can understand if you don't don't want WD Reds any more so then read the second part of my post with recommendations on alternatives when it's time to buy replacements.
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!
holger_kuehn
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Re: WD HD reliability

Post by holger_kuehn »

Well in total I own 36 WR Red disks. Most of them are 4TB EARX drives from before SMR days. Some of them date back maybe 8 years or so. From all those drives I had to RMA maybe two drives, within 6 moth of purchase. Nowadays I'm using them as cold storage three of them for one piece of backup. I know these disks are well over their lifetime, but 3 to 1 should still be possible. I'm switching them now.

All in all I can not complain with the lifetime I get from those older days. A different story are the newer 14TB drives. They may hold as long, but performance and RPM are exceptionally bad, so I've switched to Seagate Exos X18. Those had been at 318€ vs 450€ for Reds 14TB or even 500€ for Ironwolf Pro 16 TB at the time. Those Exos get me around 400 MB constantly, with WD Red I've seen only 90 MB at times, see viewtopic.php?f=356&t=160522. And the specs are worse nontheless.
NAS (production): TS-1635AX FW: QTS 5.1.4.2596 build 20231128
NAS (backup): TS-1635AX FW: QTS 5.1.4.2596 build 20231128
QTS (SSD): [RAID-1] 2 x 2TB Samsung Evo 860 M.2-Sata
Data (QTier): [RAID-6] 4 x 4TB Samsung 870 QVO Sata
Data (HDD): [RAID-6] 7 x 18TB Exos
RAM: 8 GB (QNAP shipped)
UPS: CyberPower CP900EPFCLCD
BACKUP: 10x4TB WD Red using a USB 3.0 Dock
Usage: SMB with rclone (encrypted)

NAS: TS-873U-RP FW: QTS 5.1.4.2596 build 20231128
Data (SSD): [RAID-10] 4 x 1TB Samsung Evo 860 Sata
RAM: 8 GB (QNAP shipped)
UPS: CyberPower PR2200ELCDRT2U
BACKUP: 4TB Synology DS214 FW: DSM 7.0.41890
Usage: SMB, Backup Domain Controller
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