5 ms·

I have some ~50 TB total in a NAS, all WD drives. I bought some 3 & 4 TB WD Red drives around 2014, and they have all been going 24/7 with absolutely no problem

I have some ~50 TB total in a NAS, all WD drives. I bought some 3 & 4 TB WD Red drives around 2014, and they have all been going 24/7 with absolutely no problems at all. I recently needed to expand (to the point I am at now) and bought & shucked 14 TB WDs, so I'm curious to see whether there will be any long term difference in terms of reliability between the "official" red drives and the shucked whitelabel drives.

nicolaslem 6y ago
Shucked drives are very often SMR so caveat emptor.
- MrFoof 6y ago
  SMR is very dependent on capacity and SKUs. The vast majority of SMR hard disks are 6TB capacities and below, and I'm only aware on one 8TB Seagate SKU that is SMR. Though I'm aware HGST shipped a 20TB SMR drive late in 2020. NAS Compares has a fairly good starting list of drives and whether or not they are CMR or SMR, though there may be more exhaustive lists out there: https://nascompares.com/answer/list-of-wd-cmr-and-smr-hard-drives-hdd/ https://nascompares.com/answer/list-of-wd-cmr-and-smr-hard-d... -- ----- In general, check the R/N of shucked white-label drives, and you should be able to quickly find a corresponding datasheet (hundreds of pages) from the manufacturer. For example, some 16TB WD Elements I'm in the process of testing after shucking are R/N US7SAR160, which are 16TB HGST Ultrastar DC HC550. These are SATA 6Gbps 7200rpm helium-filled CMR drives with 512MB of cache.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  SMR = shingled magnetic recording; comparison to conventional/perpendicular magnetic recording: https://www.synology.com/en-global/knowledgebase/DSM/tutorial/Storage/PMR_SMR_hard_disk_drives https://www.synology.com/en-global/knowledgebase/DSM/tutoria...
- andrewmunsell 6y ago
  I did verify the ones I bought are not SMR, that was a requirement before I bought them in the first place.
fletchowns 6y ago
> I bought some 3 & 4 TB WD Red drives around 2014, and they have all been going 24/7 with absolutely no problems at all. It may seem like they are running fine, but are they actually? Have you run a zpool scrub or equivalent? What happens with these old drives is that one dies and then you have to replace it, which is very hard on the other drives as the array is rebuilt. Then while the array is being rebuilt, another drive dies. It's better to replace drives when they are EOL (usually 4 years if running 24/7) rather than waiting until there is a problem.
- andrewmunsell 6y ago
  It's running in unRAID and I've seen no healthcheck/SMART issues, and the monthly parity checks have been 100% fine too.

nicolaslem 6y ago

Shucked drives are very often SMR so caveat emptor.

MrFoof 6y ago
SMR is very dependent on capacity and SKUs. The vast majority of SMR hard disks are 6TB capacities and below, and I'm only aware on one 8TB Seagate SKU that is SMR. Though I'm aware HGST shipped a 20TB SMR drive late in 2020. NAS Compares has a fairly good starting list of drives and whether or not they are CMR or SMR, though there may be more exhaustive lists out there: https://nascompares.com/answer/list-of-wd-cmr-and-smr-hard-drives-hdd/ https://nascompares.com/answer/list-of-wd-cmr-and-smr-hard-d... -- ----- In general, check the R/N of shucked white-label drives, and you should be able to quickly find a corresponding datasheet (hundreds of pages) from the manufacturer. For example, some 16TB WD Elements I'm in the process of testing after shucking are R/N US7SAR160, which are 16TB HGST Ultrastar DC HC550. These are SATA 6Gbps 7200rpm helium-filled CMR drives with 512MB of cache.
pbhjpbhj 6y ago
SMR = shingled magnetic recording; comparison to conventional/perpendicular magnetic recording: https://www.synology.com/en-global/knowledgebase/DSM/tutorial/Storage/PMR_SMR_hard_disk_drives https://www.synology.com/en-global/knowledgebase/DSM/tutoria...
andrewmunsell 6y ago
I did verify the ones I bought are not SMR, that was a requirement before I bought them in the first place.

fletchowns 6y ago

> I bought some 3 & 4 TB WD Red drives around 2014, and they have all been going 24/7 with absolutely no problems at all. It may seem like they are running fine, but are they actually? Have you run a zpool scrub or equivalent? What happens with these old drives is that one dies and then you have to replace it, which is very hard on the other drives as the array is rebuilt. Then while the array is being rebuilt, another drive dies. It's better to replace drives when they are EOL (usually 4 years if running 24/7) rather than waiting until there is a problem.

andrewmunsell 6y ago
It's running in unRAID and I've seen no healthcheck/SMART issues, and the monthly parity checks have been 100% fine too.