Another rma'd 4TB wd red hard disk died. Sending it off via post for RMA. Last round it seems.
They really just last about a years usage before needing to RMA.
From all the combined knowledge in this thread, and my own [un-educated] experience with 18 Red WD. I'm going to guess it's those reds.
I blew so much money on those drives and was absolutely ripped off by WD. *sigh*
I killed my credit card and wallet, when I discovered this thread two weeks ago, and decided to bite the bullet by making the swap to Toshiba/HGST.
It isn't just failing out of the blue, the Red drives seem to make an effort to hide problems and then simply just...fail. No SMART warnings whatsoever. The NAS will complain about the drive kicking a fuss, or that I will have unexplainable pauses when doing my transfers etc, but extended SMART testing will be totally fine. [Ironically, this sort of experience was exactly what warned me a drive was dying during pre-SMART days]
And then bam...one of them goes out of commission.
Now that I've swapped completely away from WD, I hope my now empty wallet and big credit card bill is worth the pain.