Heads up to NAS owners

[tthurman]

WD and Seagate quietly marking SMR drives as NAS drives.

I bought 4 - 6 TB drives back during Black Friday for cold storage (but still didn't want this shit) and only now find out that all of them are SMR technology.  Apparently during the WD/HGST merger it was mandated that HGST retain their manufacturing in separate facilities, and they don't play these silly games with the HGST brand, which is the best spinner going IMO.  If you looking for a NAS drive for dependable rebuilding/parity stripping, and lets be honest, who with a NAS isn't, then stay far away from this garbage.

I'll leave you to your own to figure out what country these SMR drives are shipping out from......

If you've ever rebuilt a degraded volume and had it fail, then you know what I'm talking about.  Rebuilding stresses every existing member disk to the max and represents the highest failure possibility from an already degraded volume.

I swore off WD a long time ago for other reasons, and upon giving them another chance get stiffed!

NEVER AGAIN!

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/wd-fesses-up-some-red-hdds-use-slow-smr-tech

What a bunch of DICKS

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/wd-lists-all-drives-slower-smr-techNOLOGY

https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/14/wd-red-nas-drives-shingled-magnetic-recording/

 

/rant

 

[Draco1962]

I understand and agree with your rant. What do you suggest as worthwhile alternatives? 

[tthurman]

Until the sneaky bastards at WD replace them with new and inferior parts, these:

https://www.newegg.com/hgst-hus726t4tale6l4-4tb/p/1Z4-001J-007X0

Everything I've read indicates they still report as HGST drives.  Mine are actually still branded HGST, but where built after the merger.  They are solid drives!

[Tom Speirs]

Im probably lacking knowledge in this area so sorry if I sound dumb but ironwolfs have been incredibly solid and fast for me and have been in use going on a couple years now in two boxes.

WD Gold (called something else now) when I needed critical mech also worked out great.

Rather than be completely negative its probably truthfully along the lines of you get what you pay for but I have not had to even reboot  my nases going on a couple now with the ironwolfs so am out of touch.

[Tom Speirs]

PS: I realize its cash just sitting there but having been there and bought the t shirt with the failures I never do less than raid 6 with a hotspare but honestly your still often screwed if you have to rebuild you just may have a chance of getting your data.

[tthurman]

The ironwolf drives get pretty good marks, so far, and the WD Gold's you refer to are what is now the HGST drives.  Honestly I'd seen enough of the old golds give it up to start worrying about them, which probably explains why WD moved to the HGST facility drives. 

I lost the hot spare feature when I started rebuilding with 4TB drives, but there's just one of those original seagates remaining, so I expect I'll be back to a hot spare as soon as it goes.  Luckily I bought 4 of the HGST's before the WD rebadge of them.

The thing is, I bought these Red "NAS" drives based on reviews and data from places like BackBlaze and the reality is the price on these wasn't cheap when you consider they are 5400RPM, but again I bought them for cold storage for snap shots of the NAS, not for the actual NAS.  I'm just taking extra precautions so as to remove as much potential for data loss as possible. 

 

 

 

[RIP-Felix]

I've not had issues with two 3TB Hitachi Deskstars and a 6TB ultrastar. Never given me reason to ever think one would fail, although I'm playing with fire having no RAID backup. I've had good luck with both Seagate and WD, but heard so many horror stories that I've been sticking to Hitachi (which I know are good).

But like Tom said, you get what you pay for. If you pay extra for an enterprise level NAS drive, you'll get a long warranty and maybe even free data recovery services. That's worth a bit extra, if the DATA is critical. I'd probably just stick to the ultrastars in some simple 3+1 Raid configuration. Although I was thinking of jumping into NAS with more reliable drives at some point for a home NAS/multimedia server. I just have been dreading the purchase of the hardware and setup of PLEX or what have you. For now, it's all on the HTPC.

[tthurman]

You guys are killing me, it's not as if I went out and bought "White Van" gray market hard drives

I own 12 Hitachi 4TB NAS drives, and yes, they are in fact awesome, but they are 7200 RPM and for something to back them up I didn't need that type of performance or power usage for an always on system like this.  These WD Reds checked all the boxes, but the latest revision was a bait and switch that they conveniently didn't advertise, but continued to market as "NAS" even though it no longer was PMR.

 

I'm going to use these to create a large spanned drive in Windows 10, so I can back up my NAS.  Going to 5400 was a concern, but I something I never would have considered had I known that it was 5400 RPM combined with inferior read/write speed on top of that.

Although I didn't buy these specifically for a NAS, I bought what I thought was NAS quality drives for the added assurance of long term dependability and better I/O performance.

I'm mostly posting this to vent my frustration and prevent anyone else here from getting burned like I did.  Evidently quality has started south at WD.  I recall back in the 2000's when Seagate was the "go to" drive, only to fall on hard times and get kicked around, I guess it's WD's turn!

 

Quote

What is SMR and Why Should NAS Drives Avoid it in their HDDs?

As mentioned, Shingled media recording (SMR) HDDs take advantage of disk write tracks being wider than read tracks to partially overlapping write tracks and so enable more tracks to be written to a disk platter. This means more data can be stored on a shingled disk than an ordinary drive. This serves as hugely useful for archive and cold storage use and has been popularized in that area for a while. However, typically SMR drives are not intended for random write IO use cases because the write performance is much slower than with a non SMR drive. Therefore they are not recommended for NAS use cases in most industries, as they feature significant random write workloads. For a while now, data storage enthusiasts have been wondering why some of their WD Red NAS drives have been failing with their RAID/ZFS arrays and/or exhibiting signs of slower performance. It turns out that many of these HDDs actually use shingled magnetic recording (SMR) instead of perpendicular (conventional) magnetic recording (PMR/CMR) technology.

 

Quote

Why Would WD Red Use SMR on their NAS Hard Drives?

While SMR allows for greater areal density (i.e., higher drive capacity), it’s inherently inferior to PMR/CMR based on the way it writes data. The fact that WD is stating that these capacities of WD Red (2,4,6TB) use Drive Managed SMR is better than we first thought, it is still off that it is not a factor presented in their datasheets and technical literature. As Synology explains, “rather than writing each magnetic track without overlapping, SMR overlaps each new track with part of the previously written track, much like shingles on a roof.” The result is slower performance and, as evidenced by recurring complaints on r/DataHoarders, problems with RAID arrays. Tom’s Hardware compares this blip in info sharing to an SSD manufacturer selling a drive with cheaper NAND (e.g. QLC) and not disclosing it. It isn’t clear whether Western Digital will update its marketing materials to show that its 2 TB – 6 TB Red NAS are SMR drives. Back in 2016 we performed speed test on Seagate SMR Archive drives and found them to be good as a standalone drive, but unsurprisingly lacked the robust group utility of RAID use overall:

 

[RIP-Felix]

It may be a dumb question, but can you not return them?

If not, your really making me question the whole "white van" thing.

[tthurman]

Not now.  I bought them last year on one of the "Black Friday" sales that seemed to start weeks in advance of the actual day and continue on until they outstayed their visit.  These were back-ordered due to demand and by the time they arrived other things had greatly taken priority of my time.  They've been sitting a big box that is used for bulking shipping twelve drives, something that looks like could survive some incredible abuse.  I actually just opened them the day I started this thread think it was four retail boxes, when in fact it was 4 OEM style drives suspended in a shock resistant array of foam.

It is what is is at this point and given everything else that has occurred in the same time period, it's small potatoes anyway!

[RIP-Felix]

Too bad. Hopefully they turn out to be reliable for you anyway.

[Draco1962]

Lawsuit vs. Western Digital wants to end any use of SMR in NAS drives

[tthurman]

Serves the shady bastards right, pulling a bait and switch like that.  Last WD products I'll buy!

[tthurman]

Quote

"Blame is on WD. They should have created a new brand, offered it at a cheaper price and explained the reason why."

What WD did instead was have a new more expensive line - WD Red Pro - that still uses CMR and has a 5 year warranty (plus supposedly better shock protection for up to 24 disk NAS)

Then they started silent replacing the old CMR Red drives with performance-crippled SMR ones, without reducing prices or indicating a difference - and still advertising the Red line as suitable for up to 8 disk NAS/RAID. SMR and CMR drives in the same array can cause the entire RAID array to fail, as it times out waiting several seconds for the SMR disk to respond.

It is stone cold false advertising.

 

https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library/en_us/assets/public/western-digital/product/internal-drives/wd-red-hdd/product-brief-western-digital-wd-red-hdd.pdf

Quote

Desktop drives aren’t purpose-built for NAS. But WD Red drives with NASware technology are. Our exclusive technology takes the guesswork out of selecting a drive. WD Red drives are for small NAS systems, and our unique algorithm balances performance and reliability in NAS and RAID environments. Simply put, a WD Red drive is one of the most compati-ble drives available for NAS enclosures. But don’t take our word for it. WD Red drives are a reflection of extensive NAS partner technology engagement and compatibility-testing resulting in a leading compatibility list for NAS systems.

WD40EFAX

Oh lookie, now discloses "SMR"

NAS drive not even listed as NAS compatible

 

And the "Old Version"

https://www.amazon.com/Red-4TB-NAS-Hard-Drive/dp/B00EHBERSE

Shady!

[RIP-Felix]

 

[tthurman]

https://blog.westerndigital.com/wd-red-nas-drives/

Now they conveniently changed the description on their website.

I bought my drives late last year direct from WD Store.  Didn't think much about it back then, but I never even got an order confirmation email. 

I just logged in and opened a support ticket so I could bitch at them for their misleading bs!

These have been out there much longer than people are aware.

[RIP-Felix]

19 hours ago, tthurman said:

I just logged in and opened a support ticket so I could bitch at them for their misleading bs!

I would hope they offer you replacements. It's the only decent thing to do. Otherwise, they deserve all the spank the legal system can manage.  And I hope it leaves a mark!

[Draco1962]

 

 

[tthurman]

On 6/25/2020 at 2:43 PM, RIP-Felix said:

I would hope they offer you replacements. It's the only decent thing to do. Otherwise, they deserve all the spank the legal system can manage.  And I hope it leaves a mark!

Two days now, no response to my support ticket.  I have to say I'm at least a bit surprised, but then again maybe not so much.  A WD rep responded to my Amazon review, telling me to contact them directly so they could work towards a solution, but left no contact info. 

We'll, I did through their support channel, and with my order number, but I suppose 48 hours isn't long enough to expect a reply.   I'm done with WD, but will put forth the effort to complete questionnaires, apply for and lobby for every action taken against them for blatantly screwing me and thousands of others over.

 

Looking like I'll be giving the IronWolf lineup a try here soon.  Anybody interested in some really shoddy POS 6 TB drives on the cheap?  Guaranteed to be done resilvering by the time you return from vacation, well, maybe

[RIP-Felix]

14 hours ago, tthurman said:

A WD rep responded to my Amazon review, telling me to contact them directly so they could work towards a solution, but left no contact info.

Standard MFG response to every negative review (especially on Newegg). They just go down the list & copy/paste the same prescribed message hoping everyone watching thinks they're being supportive. I count the number of these responses and if it's more that 1/3rd of the page, I find another product. I do read the review a bit just to see if the person making the complaint seems to have any computer experience. Many times it's just ignorance and misplaced blame from having to learn how to install something themselves. However, there's another (more sinister) reason MNF. do this. Plenty of times it's seasoned enthusiasts or pros reporting legit issues that should be mentioned. Sometimes these are just workarounds and tips that are annoying, but not necessarily deal breakers. There is no need for a MNF response, but they do it anyway. Why? To give everyone else the idea that this helpful response was a fluke, or defective product. That's a deceptive tactic, but legal because they didn't explicitly say it - the customer assumed it! Companies hire statisticians who come up with strategies like this all the time.

14 hours ago, tthurman said:

Looking like I'll be giving the IronWolf lineup a try here soon.  Anybody interested in some really shoddy POS 6 TB drives on the cheap?  Guaranteed to be done resilvering by the time you return from vacation, well, maybe

They're still fine for discrete PC use, if you can use them (they're not SAS, right?). Throw a huge steam library on them any you should be fine, especially if you can accelerate them with an SSD like Intel optane.

[tthurman]

Fine?  Usable perhaps, but I didn't spend $600 dollars on NAS drives without reason.  I need to be able to write to these, and more than just occasionally.  Just think how long it will take with 256 cache when I'm dumping a 24 TB image to them!

 

As for their response, or lack thereof, most articles I've seen indicate they are working with customers to exchange them, although I can say I'm seeing it. 

 

Some law firm or firm(s) is/are going to get a shit ton of cash from WD as a result of this, which when combined with the fallout in the market will prove to be a costly mistake for WD far beyond any money they were going to realize from stiffing their customers.

 

[RIP-Felix]

Yeah, but you're not likely to get much from it. I recently got my $12.34 from some data breach that took place like 8 years ago. It's a lunch, so it ain't nothing.

[tthurman]

Oh I'm sure I'll get like $10 and change, like most of the others.  There was one time back in 2003, or so, where ATI had got busted price fixing or something, can't really remember now.  Anyway I was part of it due to my X800 XT PE card, so of course I sent it in my claim.  I got like $170 bucks from it, couldn't believe it!

Generally speaking I 100% agree with you, this one's just probably going to be a big pay day for the ambulance chasers though, while a huge loss for WD on many levels notwithstanding the financial aspects.