Replacement for WD60EFRX

[NASbox]

I have a WD60EFRX that is starting to throw a few errors. I looked and it seems that this model has been replaced with the substandard WD60EFAX SMR drive. I've seen a couple of WD60EFRX drives online for about $350CDN which is crazy expensive for that drive.

My local choices seem to be:
-Use a WD80EFAX (8TB CMR) and waste 2TB of space for $290CDN
or
-Use a Toshiba N300 HDWN160XZSTA (6TB CMR 7200RPM) for $230CDN (Anyone know if this drive runs a lot hotter than the WD80EFAX? I've got a couple of Toshiba 4TB drives that meke great plate warmers ;)

I guess I could also buy a WD Ultrastar 14TB DC HC530 for $520CDN to upgrade one of my backup drives and take the WD80EFRX that I have been using for a backup drive, wipe it and use it for a replacement after taking a new backup. The backup drive has been around for about 2 years, but has spent most of it's life sitting on a shelf.

I should mention that the array is an 8 x 6TB WE60EFRX in RAIDZ2, that is used as a backup server/media library and file storage in home. I do backups by doing zfs sends to a single drive ZPOOL in a hot swap bay that I mount, run a backup script, scrub and dismount.

Recommendations?

 

[sretalla]

Have a look at the WD Purple line... not sure if there's a 6TB, but if there is they are all CMR.

 

[NASbox]

Have a look at the WD Purple line... not sure if there's a 6TB, but if there is they are all CMR.

Hi @sretalla I heard that they were not suitable for data storage: (just one article)

Data Recovery from QNAP NAS (WD Purple X 2) | Data Recovery Ireland

We recently recovered data from a QNAP TS-253 Pro. This is a popular two-bay NAS device which uses the QTS operating system. This particular NAS was using two WD Purple (WD20PURX) S-ATA disks

datarecoveryireland.ie

When recording video (especially where most of it will never be watched), a corrupt frame or two likely doesn't matter (exception:Murphy's law states it will be a key frame at the beginning of the incident at the only time when the suspect's face is in clear view and several seconds gets trashed).

My fear is the drive will keep dropping off the array due to errors.

Or am I missing something?

 

[sretalla]

I run 16 of them in my primary NAS. No problems over a year in.

There's nothing in the specks to indicate a preference for data drops (which ZFS would handle even if that were a thing).

 

[NASbox]

I run 16 of them in my primary NAS. No problems over a year in.

There's nothing in the specks to indicate a preference for data drops (which ZFS would handle even if that were a thing).

Good to know... thanks for passing that along. May I ask which model numbers and how you use your NAS?
Does it do a heavy workload or sit idle most of the time? Is the speed decent?

The WD Purple Surveillance Hard Drive (2TB 3.5" SATA 6Gb/s 64 MB Cache 5400 RPM -WD20PURZ) is only $90CDN.
The WD Purple Surveillance Hard Drive (4TB 3.5" SATA 6Gb/s 64 MB Cache 5400 RPM -WD40PURZ) is only $130CDN.
Are you sure that WD hasn't changed the small Purple drives to SMR? These prices are almost the same as the WD Blue SMR drives.

I would think SMR would work well for surveillance since it would be mostly sequential writes.

 

[diedrichg]

Are the WD Easystore external drives available for purchase and would you be okay with shucking the drives? You'd save a ton of money.

 

[NASbox]

Are the WD Easystore external drives available for purchase and would you be okay with shucking the drives? You'd save a ton of money.

I'm not sure? Do you know what model drive is inside? Is it rated for 24/7 use? Can I find specs? I am assuming it would be a cheap desktop drive, but I don't know. I think they need a minor modification or a jumper or something as well. I guess that's not a big deal as long as I can file reliable instructions about what to do.

 

[sretalla]

I would think SMR would work well for surveillance since it would be mostly sequential writes.

If you had only 1 camera, sure... those drives support a large number of cameras each, so multi-stream IO is a priority... not great with SMR.

Are you sure that WD hasn't changed the small Purple drives to SMR?

Have a look at this post and the subsequent one from @Yorick https://www.ixsystems.com/community/threads/list-of-known-smr-drives.83993/post-586157

Does it do a heavy workload or sit idle most of the time? Is the speed decent?

I have a varied workload of streaming video and backups. I wouldn't say it's heavy, but those drives are not the bottleneck for anything. They are rated for 24x7 writing, but can cope with less than that and reading is fine.

May I ask which model numbers and how you use your NAS?

I use 3 different models...
8x WDC WD40PURZ-85T (5400 RPM) I assume the 6TB (if they exist) would also be 5400 RPM.
4x WDC WD101PURZ-85 (7200 RPM)
4x WDC WD121PURZ-85 (7200 RPM)

 

[Yorick]

Do you know what model drive is inside?

The WD Elements 8TB has a HGST He8, Helium. The WD Elements 10TB is the WD Red Plus Air model. The 12TB and 14TB I am not 100% sure, but I think it's HGST Helium again. The 2-6TB models have WD SMR drives (might be Red SMR), avoid like the plague.

EasyStore is the same as Elements, just a name specific to Best Buy.

 

[NASbox]

Thanks @sretalla thanks for the info re purples... I'll keep that in mind when I look at expanding if the pricing works... not too attractive at this moment.
@Yorick the large WD Elements/EasyStore don't seem to be easily available in my local market.

I'm thinking my best bet might be to get a bigger backup drive, and use my 8TB Red backup drive (has about 1000 Hrs on it so it's nicely burned in) as a replacement for the 6TB Red that I can't replace with a CMR Red at a reasonable price. I'll eventually replace the whole array with 8TB as required, or when I need to grow the pool.

Does anyone know anything about this drive:

WD Ultrastar 14TB DC HC530 SATA HDD 3.5-inch Helium Platform, 7200 RPM, SATA 6Gb/s (0F31284)
At the moment the pricing on this is incredible.... I'm just wondering if there is a reson that this drive is $100+CDN cheaper than comparable drives. Being sold by reputable local chain and has a 5Yr warranty ... called an enterprise drive.

As long as it doesn't run super hot.... I'll slap it in a metal carrier and zfs zend backups of my important datasets to it.

 

[Yorick]

Helium drives, those are great. 7200 rpm means it’ll be louder than 5400 rpm, but Helium means it’ll be cooler and quieter than air.

Western Digital Launches Ultrastar DC HC530 14 TB PMR with TDMR HDD

www.anandtech.com

 

[Michael Wenyon]

The WD Elements 10TB is the WD Red Plus Air model.

The WD Red Plus Air is the new model (for ZFS), no? I don't see them available for sale outside of a case yet.

 

[Yorick]

I don't see them available for sale

I think they are? WD101EFAX == Air, WD100EFAX == Helium. Here's the Air model: https://www.amazon.com/Red-10TB-Internal-Hard-Drive/dp/B083JXTH5L

I am using the "Red Plus" moniker only so the post will remain semi-relevant past August 2020. Anything CMR and "Red" will be relabeled "Red Plus" at that point (or some point thereafter, depending on WD's timelines), so to keep the confusion to a ... okay that horse has left the barn. Acknowledged, and WD have only themselves to blame. %$&%**%s.

Edit and full disclosure: I just bought another three WD drives for my home setup. I love their 5400rpm drives for low noise and low temperature, I hate with the passion of a thousand burning suns their greedy-ass move to make Red drives SMR. I will continue to buy their stuff, and, I'm feeling salty about what they did.