PSA: Avoid WD Red 2TB-6TB EFAX HDDs

[DeadandBuried]

Source:
Buyer beware—that 2TB-6TB “NAS” drive you’ve been eyeing might be SMR
Western Digital admits 2TB-6TB WD Red NAS drives use shingled magnetic recording
Toshiba desktop disk drives have shingles too
Seagate ‘submarines’ SMR into 3 Barracuda drives and a Desktop HDD

WD and Seagate are both submarining Drive-managed SMR (DM-SMR) drives into channels, disguised as "normal" drives.

For WD REDs this shows as EFRX (standard drive) suffix being changed to EFAX suffix (DM-SMR) [...] The only clue you'll get about these drives being SMR is the appalling sequential write speeds (~40MB/s from blank) and the fact that they report a "trim" function.

Wow, way to do everything in your power to kill remaining confidence in hard drives, WD. UNless you're looking for archival drives, best to avoid them.

Edit: Avoid also:
Toshiba: DT02 – 5,400rpm – 4, 6 TB SMR (base for P300 Desktop PC Hard Drive Series 4TB and 6TB branded models)

Seagate:
Barracuda 2TB – 7,200rpm – SATA 6gig – model name – ST2000DM008
Barracuda 4TB – 5,400rpm – SATA 6gig – ST4000DM004
Barracuda 8TB – 5,400rpm – SATA 6gig – ST8000DM004
Desktop HDD 5TB – 5,900rpm – SATA 6gig – ST5000DM000
Exos 8TB – 5900rpm – SATA 6gig – ST8000AS0003
Archive v2 6TB – 5,900rpm – SATA 6gig – ST6000AS0002
Archive v2 8TB – 5,900rpm – SATA 6gig – ST8000AS0002

 

[Koenig168]

Good to know that WD Reds now use SMR. I wouldn't pay the WD Red retail price for SMR HDDs.

The quote about SMR HDDs having a sequential write speed of 40 MB/s is a post quoted by arsTechnica and not part of the article itself. In any case, this is suspect without any testing done.

Seagate Barracuda 8 TB (the one mentioned in the last part of your post) has a sequential write speed of 160 MB/s which is rather better than 40 MB/s.

The weakness of SMR HDDs is in random I/O which is why I put my active data on SSDs.

 

[007Mi6]

Does the Toshiba N300 and X300 use SMR disc?

 

[DeadandBuried]

Does the Toshiba N300 and X300 use SMR disc?

Seems to be only the P300 series.

According to the Geizhals price comparison website, Toshiba’s P300 desktop 4TB (HDWD240UZSVA) and 6TB (HDWD260UZSVA) SATA disk drives use SMR.

 

[wwenze]

Might need to test my 10TB

 

[Mystyque]

Source:
Buyer beware—that 2TB-6TB “NAS” drive you’ve been eyeing might be SMR
Western Digital admits 2TB-6TB WD Red NAS drives use shingled magnetic recording
Toshiba desktop disk drives have shingles too
Seagate ‘submarines’ SMR into 3 Barracuda drives and a Desktop HDD



Wow, way to do everything in your power to kill remaining confidence in hard drives, WD. UNless you're looking for archival drives, best to avoid them.

Edit: Avoid also:
Toshiba: DT02 – 5,400rpm – 4, 6 TB SMR (base for P300 Desktop PC Hard Drive Series 4TB and 6TB branded models)

Seagate:
Barracuda 2TB – 7,200rpm – SATA 6gig – model name – ST2000DM008
Barracuda 4TB – 5,400rpm – SATA 6gig – ST4000DM004
Barracuda 8TB – 5,400rpm – SATA 6gig – ST8000DM004
Desktop HDD 5TB – 5,900rpm – SATA 6gig – ST5000DM000
Exos 8TB – 5900rpm – SATA 6gig – ST8000AS0003
Archive v2 6TB – 5,900rpm – SATA 6gig – ST6000AS0002
Archive v2 8TB – 5,900rpm – SATA 6gig – ST8000AS0002

Thanks for the info.
Heng, just checked my WD Red drives, still EFRX.

 

[Noirkw]

I have 2x WD 10TB reds acting as my parity in my unRAID NAS and they are EFAX, they are working perfectly though. Thankfully my array is all 10TB Ironwolfs. I think all new RED non-pros are EFAX now

 

[uncle_josh]

https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/16/toshiba-desktop-disk-drives-undocumented-shingle-magnetic-recording/

“The Toshiba P300 Desktop PC Hard Drive Series includes the P300 4TB and 6TB, which utilise the drive-managed SMR (the base drives are DT02 generation 3.5-inch SMR desktop HDD).

“Models based on our MQ04 2.5-inch mobile generation all utilise drive-managed SMR, and include the L200 Laptop PC Hard Drive Series, 9.5mm 2TB and 7mm 1TB branded models.

“Models based on our DT02 3.5-inch desktop generation all utilise drive managed SMR, and include the 4/6TB models of the P300 Series branded consumer drives.”

The company also told us which other desktop drives did and did not use SMR:

MD07ACA – 7,200rm 12TB, 14TB CMR (base of X300 Performance Hard Drive Series branded models

MD04 – 7,200rpm – 2, 4, 5, 6TB CMR (base for X300 Performance Hard Drive Series branded models

DT02 – 5,400rpm – 4, 6 TB SMR (base for P300 Desktop PC Hard Drive Series 4TB and 6TB branded models)

DT01 – 7, 200rpm – 500GB, 1,2,3 TB CMR (base for P300 Desktop PC Hard Drive Series 1/2/3TB branded models)

Sent from 今天工作不努力, 明天努力找工作 using GAGT

 

[luei74]

Get caught then called drive-managed DM-SMR

 

[Soccer Ball]

Thanks for the info.
Heng, just checked my WD Red drives, still EFRX.

How to check before buying? Cause I looking to buy HDD

 

[Mystyque]

How to check before buying? Cause I looking to buy HDD

Ask to see the drive lor, the model number should be on the label. Like this one is EFAX.

 

[t258jgn]

Heng ah....

WD Ultrastar / Toshiba NAS N300 / Toshiba Nearline not SMR

 

[Pocoyoz]

seagate-backup-plus-portable-5tb

The Seagate Backup Plus Slim, on the other hand, starts off between 125 and 135 MBps and ends up between 60 and 80 MBps. Worryingly, we have drops down to 10 MBps frequently. It can be seen that the firmware tries to avoid these slow write scenarios as much as possible (almost a hour of sustained sequential writes), but, the amount of traditional PMR space in the platters eventually runs out and the drive is forced to record to the shingled space. This results in the drop of the instantaneous write rates to 10 MBps periodically.

Seagate-Innov8-8TB 2016

but WD one OK oh

 

[DeadandBuried]

Might need to test my 10TB

I have 2x WD 10TB reds acting as my parity in my unRAID NAS and they are EFAX, they are working perfectly though. Thankfully my array is all 10TB Ironwolfs. I think all new RED non-pros are EFAX now

WD 10TB not affected, so far it's only the 2-6TB drives. 8TB and up are supposedly still normal drives.... Of course, this may change in the future

 

[Pocoyoz]

can smr drive be used for torrenting?
reddit thread says it's a bad idea

 

[Soccer Ball]

Ask to see the drive lor, the model number should be on the label. Like this one is EFAX.

Cham, online purchase cannot see.

Tradepac here I come

 

[watzup_ken]

Did not bother to check my Seagate drives in my NAS. If they die, then I will just switch to SSD going forward. While these manufacturers are not making much from mechanical drives nowadays, I agree this is a dumb move to erode confidence in mechanical drives further. They feel they can cut cost this way and force people to pay for more pricey drives for better quality/ performance, but basically making people more adverse to their products at a quicker rate.

 

[Slpy]

i guess the general public might not know/care.
like for my case, i know how to diy, but i dont have the time to go into micro details on which is the best, thus i went with WD red for storage, which have been marketing themselves for NAS

but this got me jumping for a while, luckily my red is EFRX

 

[Ark Law]

No Ultrastar/rebadged WD Gold, no talk

 

[vaxvms]

wow lan so many SMR ...online jialat

go SLSsee liao say mai ah beng TL lolxxx