White Label HDD

[CookiesLikeWhoa]

Hello all!

I'm planning to add some HDDs to our NAS for a surveillance system. The system will hold approximately 1 months worth of recordings.

I was looking at getting some "white label" 4tb hdds off of Amazon. They are priced very reasonably but finding a lot of solid information about them seems to be difficult. STH had some who used them for a while but were not very conclusive about how good they were. It appears like they are rebranded wd reds but can be other drives as well.

Has anyone had any experience with these drives?


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[danb35]

I bought 6 x 6 TB white label disks in late April. Two of them failed initial burn-in testing and were replaced by the vendor. Two more were showing a few dozen bad sectors after testing, but that number didn't increase after another round of badblocks testing, so I went ahead and put them in the pool. They started failing SMART tests a couple of months ago and were again replaced by the vendor (advance exchange, free shipping both ways). Vendor's service is good, but I'm not trusting the disks any more--I replaced those two with Seagate NAS drives.

 

[philhu]

i bought 13x6tb wl drives, 7200 rpm in June

None have failed as of now, no bad blocks, but some report 6.2tb instead of 6.0tb

also, a few report 300 gb/s instead of 600 gb/s interfaces

I bought 2 extras at the time for spares

 

[CookiesLikeWhoa]

Thanks for the response guys. Much like what I've gathered about these drives...

Think it might just be worthwhile to get the WD Reds.

 

[Spearfoot]

Think it might just be worthwhile to get the WD Reds.

Agreed. Hard disks and fans are the only mechanical gizmos in our computers and therefore the most prone to failure. Why on Earth buy factory seconds or, even worse, used?

 

[Stux]

Some of these 'new' drives have 20,000+ hours on them.

 

[danb35]

Here's my thread discussing more of my experience: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/smart-results-are-these-drives-bad.43457/

 

[CookiesLikeWhoa]

Thanks for the link! Some more reading indicates that they're kinda like the 2 buck chuck wine you buy at Trader Joes. Sometimes you get something amazing, other times its garbage.

The larger/slower drives are cold storage drives from what I've read. Which wouldn't really bother me since its for surveillance, but they only have an endurance of 10 drive writes/year, and I would be doing a minimum of 12 a year.

 

[danb35]

IIRC, @Sakuru has had a good experience with them. I'm not going to rip out the four remaining ones (and if any more fail within the first year, I'll still pursue replacement from the vendor), but any replacements in the pool are going to be with name-brand drives. I'll find something else to do with the replacement drives, if it gets to that--right now, two of them are in my FN10 test box.

 

[Sakuru]

I have had 1 failure out of 8 drives. It started failing SMART tests, so I bought a replacement drive. Once I shut down my FreeNAS box the drive completely died. It no longer shows up in the BIOS of any computer I stick it into. That reminds me, I need to fill out an RMA on that thing

Also, the replacement I purchased appears to be a completely different model from the first 8. I think the first 8 were WD REDs and I think the replacement is a Seagate of some sort. It's about 300 GB bigger, which is odd. Oh well, I'm just glad that didn't happen the other way around.

 

[Ericloewe]

It's about 300 GB bigger, which is odd.

Maybe a defective head and they just cut that side in firmware, binning the drive one size down.

 

[Sakuru]

Code:

[root@nas ~]# for i in {0..7}; do smartctl -a /dev/da$i | grep -E "Serial Number|Firmware Version|User Capacity"; done
Serial Number:	WOL240336034
Firmware Version: 82.00A82
User Capacity:	6,000,527,425,536 bytes [6.00 TB]
Serial Number:	WOL240336032
Firmware Version: 82.00A82
User Capacity:	6,000,527,425,536 bytes [6.00 TB]
Serial Number:	WOL240337167
Firmware Version: 82.00A82
User Capacity:	6,001,175,126,016 bytes [6.00 TB]
Serial Number:	WOL240335941
Firmware Version: 82.00A82
User Capacity:	6,000,527,425,536 bytes [6.00 TB]
Serial Number:	WOL240336031
Firmware Version: 82.00A82
User Capacity:	6,000,527,425,536 bytes [6.00 TB]
Serial Number:	WOL240336033
Firmware Version: 82.00A82
User Capacity:	6,000,527,425,536 bytes [6.00 TB]
Serial Number:	WOL240336046
Firmware Version: 82.00A82
User Capacity:	6,000,527,425,536 bytes [6.00 TB]
Serial Number:	WOL240341741
Firmware Version: E1.01B.0
User Capacity:	6,301,233,340,416 bytes [6.30 TB]

 

[Ericloewe]

Code:

[root@nas ~]# for i in {0..7}; do smartctl -a /dev/da$i | grep -E "Serial Number|Firmware Version|User Capacity"; done
Serial Number:	WOL240336034
Firmware Version: 82.00A82
User Capacity:	6,000,527,425,536 bytes [6.00 TB]
Serial Number:	WOL240336032
Firmware Version: 82.00A82
User Capacity:	6,000,527,425,536 bytes [6.00 TB]
Serial Number:	WOL240337167
Firmware Version: 82.00A82
User Capacity:	6,001,175,126,016 bytes [6.00 TB]
Serial Number:	WOL240335941
Firmware Version: 82.00A82
User Capacity:	6,000,527,425,536 bytes [6.00 TB]
Serial Number:	WOL240336031
Firmware Version: 82.00A82
User Capacity:	6,000,527,425,536 bytes [6.00 TB]
Serial Number:	WOL240336033
Firmware Version: 82.00A82
User Capacity:	6,000,527,425,536 bytes [6.00 TB]
Serial Number:	WOL240336046
Firmware Version: 82.00A82
User Capacity:	6,000,527,425,536 bytes [6.00 TB]
Serial Number:	WOL240341741
Firmware Version: E1.01B.0
User Capacity:	6,301,233,340,416 bytes [6.30 TB]

6TB drives... Sounds like a five-platter 8TB drive with one defective platter. Each platter is roughly 1.6TB, leaving close to 6.3TB available.

 

[danb35]

...and just had a fifth disk fail a SMART self-test last night. The price is attractive, but I can't trust these.

 

[taylornate]

Agreed. Hard disks and fans are the only mechanical gizmos in our computers and therefore the most prone to failure. Why on Earth buy factory seconds or, even worse, used?

A used but known-good drive is worse than a factory second known to have some sort of problem? I understand the hesitation to use used drives, but this seems a bit silly. All your drives become used after you power them up the first time. At what age do you decide they are riskier than a factory second and replace them all?

 

[Spearfoot]

A used but known-good drive is worse than a factory second known to have some sort of problem? I understand the hesitation to use used drives, but this seems a bit silly.

Used drives are a mystery. They may have only been spun up on alternate Sundays by a little old lady in Pasadena. Or they may have been spinning 24x7x365 for years in an overheated cabinet. How do you know?

Used drives typically don't come with any warranty at all, or at best will have a 90-day or 1 year warranty by the seller... and if you're lucky the seller might still be in business after that long and might honor the warranty.

The facts are that you don't know how many times a used drive has been dropped, nor what temperature extremes it has been subjected to, and I understand the more technically astute unscrupulous sellers are capable of resetting the SMART data -- so you don't even know for certain how long the drive has been powered up.

Drives I purchase new not only have the manufacturer's warranty - typically 3 or 5 years - but I know personally how they have been handled and operated. Doesn't seem silly to me prefer them over used drives.

 

[taylornate]

Used drives are a mystery. They may have only been spun up on alternate Sundays by a little old lady in Pasadena. Or they may have been spinning 24x7x365 for years in an overheated cabinet. How do you know?

Used drive typically don't come with any warranty at all, or at best will have a 90-day or 1 year warranty by the seller... and if you're lucky the seller might still be in business after that long and might honor the warranty.

The facts are that you don't know how many times a used drive has been dropped, nor what temperature extremes it has been subjected to, and I understand the more technically astute unscrupulous sellers are capable of resetting the SMART data -- so you don't even know for certain how long the drive has been powered up.

Obviously I would not advocate buying used drives from an unscrupulous seller--that isn't worth talking about. But, how about from Newegg, with a bunch of reports from people who have already bought drives from the lot? Different situation, right?

Drives I purchase new not only have the manufacturer's warranty - typically 3 or 5 years - but I know personally how they have been handled and operated. Doesn't seem silly to me prefer them over used drives.

Like I already said, I completely understand preferring new over used and I'm not going to try to convince anyone to buy used. What I don't understand is regarding used as worse than factory seconds that have frequent reports of failure and no official manufacturer.

 

[Spearfoot]

All your drives become used after you power them up the first time. At what age do you decide they are riskier than a factory second and replace them all?

TL;DR: I replace them when they fail or show signs of imminent failure, especially an increasing number of bad sectors.

Most (all?) manufactured goods have a bath-tub shaped logistics curve, meaning there is a higher failure rate when the item is new and first placed into service, after which the failure rate drops to a much lower value during the operating life of the gizmo until finally it increases again as the item simply begins to wear out.

I buy new hard drives from authorized dealers (e.g., Amazon, NewEgg, B&H, etc.) and hope that I experience any of the early failures during the seller's 30-day exchange period. In fact, I had one of seven 2TB HGST UltraStar drives arrive DOA a year ago and promptly exchanged it; all seven drives have run flawlessly ever since and I hope to obtain years of add'l troublefree service from them. I burned the drives in using the procedure described in this thread here on the forum. The oldest drive I have in service is a 2TB WD Green with a little over 38,000 hours on it. That's over 4 years; not too bad for a drive that's only guaranteed for 2.

Note that Amazon and NewEgg are little better than eBay these days... you have to make certain you're buying from Amazon or NewEgg, both of whom are authorized dealers, and not some fly-by-night third party who likely is not an authorized dealer at all. Apart from Amazon/NewEgg usually offering a better price, this is especially important for warranty purposes as most manufacturers will not guarantee merchandise purchased from Joe's Burgers & Hard Drives.

 

[taylornate]

I'll check out that thread on burn-in--thanks.

I got my used drives from Newegg (not a third-party through Newegg), but there was still no manufacturer warranty. But, for the price, who needs one?

The bath-tub shaped curve is one thing I saw mentioned in support of buying used. Another is that they were enterprise-grade drives, whereas if I bought new, I certainly wouldn't have sprung for that. And they were a damn good value. 2TB HGST Ultrastar 7200 RPM for $30. I bought the max of 15 and they were all around 20-30k hours and 20-30 restarts (except for one that was 200-300 restarts).

 

[Spearfoot]

The bath-tub shaped curve is one thing I saw mentioned in support of buying used.

Yes, provided you don't buy them just before the failure rate goes up as the device ages...

Another is that they were enterprise-grade drives, whereas if I bought new, I certainly wouldn't have sprung for that. And they were a damn good value. 2TB HGST Ultrastar 7200 RPM for $30. I bought the max of 15 and they were all around 20-30k hours and 20-30 restarts (except for one that was 200-300 restarts).

That's a good price on an enterprise-class drive, but they do have 2-4 years of runtime on a model warranteed for 5 years... You might make out like a bandit if they hold up. Perhaps you will report your experiences with them after you've put them in service? Inquiring minds want to know! :)

Good luck!