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My bad, I was confused too Red pro: CMR, "remains the same" Red plus: the new CMR SKUs that were previously sold under the same models as CMR and mixed SMR SK

by ev1 5y ago

My bad, I was confused too Red pro: CMR, "remains the same" Red plus: the new CMR SKUs that were previously sold under the same models as CMR and mixed SMR SKUs Red: used to be CMR now SMR as far as I can tell

squarefoot 5y ago
To shed some light on the matter (goto the last line for a Tl;Dr explanation): CMR:good for everything, and NAS+RAID use. You want this one pretty much for everything. SMR: good for light desktop work, very risky for NAS+RAID use. Older plain Red drives are CMR and therefore good, but check that their model string contains EFRX and not EFAX because WD at one point silently started shipping SMR drives labeled as WD Red, and the only difference was the model string, which contains EFRX for CMR (good) drives and EFAX for SMR (bad) ones. Be aware however that WD uses the model number in a very inconsistent way, for example there are new WD Red Plus models who have the EFAX designation, still are CMR drives, therefore good. Use it as indicator for older models, while newer models can be sorted out using their commercial name. Therefore, as of today: WD Red: those are mostly/all SMR drives. Avoid them. WD Red Plus: those initially were the old CMR WD Red ones, simply relabeled to show the difference. Good for everything. Newer ones have a different model string now which should imply some improvement besides a plain relabeling. They're still CMR and good. Those are what I'm currently using on my home NAS. WD Red PRO: those are high end CMR drives with better performance and durability standards than the Plus ones. Good for everything and indicated for heavy load situations. More costly however. Further details: https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library... https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library... https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library... Yes, Plain WD Red drives are marketed as NAS drives; just ignore them. Tl;Dr: Avoid plain WD Reds, use Plus for low cost desktop or Home/SOHO NAS hardware, and Pro for more intensive uses.
- userbinator 5y ago
  According to their model number decoder, the difference between --R- and --A- is the former is 5400RPM with 64MB of cache, and the latter 5400RPM with 256MB of cache. Unfortunate that they didn't change the part number to denote CMR vs SMR, and most people would rightly think that 256MB of cache is better than 64MB (but in this case it could be being used to hide the additional latency of SMR), so I think this is definitely in the area of deception.
- squarefoot 5y ago
  For some reason the URLs I posted were truncated and it's too late to edit them. They were pointers to the WD Red hard drives .pdf data sheets at WD site. To find them, just search for "WD Red Data sheet".

by ev1 5y ago

squarefoot 5y ago

To shed some light on the matter (goto the last line for a Tl;Dr explanation): CMR:good for everything, and NAS+RAID use. You want this one pretty much for everything. SMR: good for light desktop work, very risky for NAS+RAID use. Older plain Red drives are CMR and therefore good, but check that their model string contains EFRX and not EFAX because WD at one point silently started shipping SMR drives labeled as WD Red, and the only difference was the model string, which contains EFRX for CMR (good) drives and EFAX for SMR (bad) ones. Be aware however that WD uses the model number in a very inconsistent way, for example there are new WD Red Plus models who have the EFAX designation, still are CMR drives, therefore good. Use it as indicator for older models, while newer models can be sorted out using their commercial name. Therefore, as of today: WD Red: those are mostly/all SMR drives. Avoid them. WD Red Plus: those initially were the old CMR WD Red ones, simply relabeled to show the difference. Good for everything. Newer ones have a different model string now which should imply some improvement besides a plain relabeling. They're still CMR and good. Those are what I'm currently using on my home NAS. WD Red PRO: those are high end CMR drives with better performance and durability standards than the Plus ones. Good for everything and indicated for heavy load situations. More costly however. Further details: https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library... https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library... https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library... Yes, Plain WD Red drives are marketed as NAS drives; just ignore them. Tl;Dr: Avoid plain WD Reds, use Plus for low cost desktop or Home/SOHO NAS hardware, and Pro for more intensive uses.

userbinator 5y ago
According to their model number decoder, the difference between --R- and --A- is the former is 5400RPM with 64MB of cache, and the latter 5400RPM with 256MB of cache. Unfortunate that they didn't change the part number to denote CMR vs SMR, and most people would rightly think that 256MB of cache is better than 64MB (but in this case it could be being used to hide the additional latency of SMR), so I think this is definitely in the area of deception.
squarefoot 5y ago
For some reason the URLs I posted were truncated and it's too late to edit them. They were pointers to the WD Red hard drives .pdf data sheets at WD site. To find them, just search for "WD Red Data sheet".