WD Red HDD naming convention makes SMR choices clearer

[[GSV]Trig]

That an offer, I'll have the 8 and you can have my old 2 and 4 lol

[jimborae]

Great so I've just found out that my 6TB Reds in my NAS are SMR. Not happy about that WD should offer a replacement programme for users that have been miss led by that douche move.

[Stu C]

Are people still buying Red drives rather than shucking from external products?

[jimborae]

I do a mixture of both depending on the use case. If it’s just unimportant movies, tv shows etc then that all goes on the media server which is predominantly shucked drives. If it’s important stuff then that goes on the NAS which has reds.

[[GSV]Trig]

I keep looking at shucking drives, keep getting some nice 12Tb deal pop up on Amazon, drives tend to be hit and miss though do they not?

[jimborae]

If you do your research then it’s fine. I just recently purchased 2x12Tb WD Elements external usb drives for £164 each WD’s online shop. They have CSR white label Red drives in them. Shucked them both this morning, took 10 mins. The warranty is a year less but for that price I can live with that.

[EasterEEL]

I did my research and purchased two WD RED NAS in Feb20 marketed by WD a suitable for NAS. However WD chose to hide the SMR technology and mislead me by not disclosing they were are sub optimal performance for my Qnap NAS.

[Spreadie]

Are people still buying Red drives rather than shucking from external products?

You'll only get white labelled Reds from MyCloud units and 8TB+ MyBooks or Elements. Even at that, anything 6TB and under will be SMR; be they Reds or Blues.

Strictly speaking, the 10TB+ EMAZ HDDs in external units aren't Reds, although there's practically no discernible difference - they're still helium-filled CMR drives.

[[GSV]Trig]

If you do your research then it’s fine. I just recently purchased 2x12Tb WD Elements external usb drives for £164 each WD’s online shop. They have CSR white label Red drives in them. Shucked them both this morning, took 10 mins. The warranty is a year less but for that price I can live with that.

You got a part number for them chap?

This the one?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-Elements...rs&sr=1-1&th=1

[jimborae]

Yes that’s the one but I got it directly from WD

https://shop.westerndigital.com/en-g...LG0120HBK-EESN

If you sign up to the mailing list you get 10% code so use that as well or if you’re eligible for student discounts or know someone who is then I think you can an even bigger discount code as that’s what I did.

[[GSV]Trig]

£185 for the 12Tb or £199 for the 14Tb, mmmm

[Xlucine]

Until you need to rebuild, at which time the SMR drive takes 10x as long and you're vulnerable to data loss for a whole lot longer, or the rebuild fails because the drive becomes so slow it's assumed bad.

How do you rebuild an array on a 1 bay NAS?

[jimborae]

How do you rebuild an array on a 1 bay NAS?

You don’t

[[GSV]Trig]

You do it from your backup..

[Apex]

I keep looking at shucking drives, keep getting some nice 12Tb deal pop up on Amazon, drives tend to be hit and miss though do they not?

https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/wd-...igital-3491031

[Apex]

£169 if you had student 15% discount - got 2 on order.