The three major HDD manufacturers are selling slower drives, without telling us

[Egg-Roll]

5 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

Changing specs without disclosing is pretty much deception...

No deception as pointed out by mr moose would require something known (assuming based on past is not knowing) to have changed w/o listing the change and keeping it as is. Even if they listed CMR before putting in SMR, if they stopped announcing the platter tech when they released SMR units it is still 100% legal, one might be successful in court with this case however unless stated in the law they don't have to announce a change or the fact they removed something from the spec sheet to introduce a different tech.

WDs actions reminds me of Toyota (and ultimately all of the automotive sector) in the link below, however once caught they at least announced it accordingly. Will they remove it? No, but then again a SMR drive isn't going to kill you, and keeping decent backups is always a smart thing to do CMR or SMR.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/toyota-reaches-12-billion-settlement-to-end-criminal-probe/2014/03/19/5738a3c4-af69-11e3-9627-c65021d6d572_story.html

[jagdtigger]

2 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

assuming based on past is not knowing

We do know that SMR wont play nice with raid, they siletnly swhitched nas drives to smr. Deception, end of story.

[Dabombinable]

Looking at the datasheets, It's actually pretty obvious that for example an EFRX Red drive is a lower tier product than the EFAX drives simply by looking at the transfer speeds and cache:
 

Spoiler

For exclusively media storage, or in a scenario where it's being used as a separate drive the SMR models seem fine (my use case - my RAID 0 array isn't affected by the drive's type). However comparing their performance (and the lack of EFAX in stores) to their Ironwolf counterpart and with the slightly higher price tag - I can't justify getting a Red EFRX over an ST4000VN008.

Spoiler

 

[Dabombinable]

12 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

We do know that SMR wont play nice with raid, they siletnly swhitched nas drives to smr. Deception, end of story.

*some versions of RAID

BTW, you'll more than likely find that the Red line has been using SMR since well before the problems (which seem to be due to the drives having bad firmware more than anything else) started appearing.

[Egg-Roll]

1 hour ago, jagdtigger said:

We do know that SMR wont play nice with raid, they siletnly swhitched nas drives to smr. Deception, end of story.

Except it's not deception. Read the spec sheets they have no minimum guarentee in speeds or compatiablity with any RAID

https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library/en_us/assets/public/western-digital/product/internal-drives/wd-red-hdd/data-sheet-western-digital-wd-red-hdd-2879-800002.pdf

 

It states

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 compatible drives available for NAS enclosures

They are not talking about platter tech here but firmware, if your RAID hardware fails to work nicely with a SMR drive it is not WDs fault.

 

Quote

Reliability: The always-on environment of a NAS or RAID is a challenging one. And desktop drives aren’t typically designed and tested under those conditions. WD Red drives are.

This includes better quality components (not platter tech) and firmware optimization

 

Quote

Error recovery controls: WD Red NAS hard drives are specifically designed with RAID error recovery control to help reduce failures within the NAS system. Desktop drives are not typically designed for RAID environments.

All firmware.

 

Hence no deception done.

 

1 hour ago, Dabombinable said:

BTW, you'll more than likely find that the Red line has been using SMR since well before the problems (which seem to be due to the drives having bad firmware more than anything else) started appearing.

I'm currious how deep that rabbit hole goes. Some of the old SMR drives could be failing now which might explain the massive amount of people realizing it. That said, those people are likely throwing in Reds where Pros or better belong, in which case serves them right for not buying the right drive. If one of my drives die because I abuse it (sorry to my 2-3 Toshiba/Hitachis that have died, not peacfully) I'm not going to go out and bash them because I missused it... Hell I'd praise them for building a better drive than advertised, esp if it lasts longer than it should.

[Egg-Roll]

So... someone at Data Horders thought this with a search history was a "good idea"... It wasn't

https://issmrdrive.com/ (note: Search history may not be SFW)

 

[leadeater]

3 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

*some versions of RAID

It mostly just affects ZFS due to the way it works, Copy On Write and also likes to manage where data get placed on the disk but DM-SMR intercepts that. Some issues have been noted outside of ZFS but those instances are very limited, almost everything is ZFS related.

 

WD Red is for small NAS systems, no OEM/ODM small NAS's run ZFS that I know of, so I wouldn't be surprised if they never bothered to check if the new revision worked with ZFS at all.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

6 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

Looking at the datasheets, It's actually pretty obvious that for example an EFRX Red drive is a lower tier product than the EFAX drives simply by looking at the transfer speeds and cache:
 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

No, that's not a conclusion you can drive from the datasheets. First, the h

Larger cache is there to compensate the user of SMR. It's not in itself a signal of better performance overall. Second, "up to 180" isn't really meaningfully higher than "up to 175". If anything, that tells you that design choices were made so as to try and keep performance equivalent between the two, and since that implies higher cache for the A version, it's not surprising that it can have a higher peak transfer in some selected scenarios (say, writing a small file to it). We don't even know if the average is remotely comparable. As said above, though, probably the A design was tuned to reach a comparable speed in a weighted average of common operations. 

 

I don't see any basis to conclude that A is higher tier than R, and certainly WD meant for them to be the same tier, namely basic Red lineup. 

[Dabombinable]

1 hour ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

No, that's not a conclusion you can drive from the datasheets. First, the h

Larger cache is there to compensate the user of SMR. It's not in itself a signal of better performance overall. Second, "up to 180" isn't really meaningfully higher than "up to 175". If anything, that tells you that design choices were made so as to try and keep performance equivalent between the two, and since that implies higher cache for the A version, it's not surprising that it can have a higher peak transfer in some selected scenarios (say, writing a small file to it). We don't even know if the average is remotely comparable. As said above, though, probably the A design was tuned to reach a comparable speed in a weighted average of common operations. 

 

I don't see any basis to conclude that A is higher tier than R, and certainly WD meant for them to be the same tier, namely basic Red lineup. 

My Seagate and WD drives have all been able to hit or exceed their listed speed - even the extremely old ones from the 90's. So yes, that is a conclusion I can safely make. Also, SMR is inherently slower to write to and with the WD drives - the models people have found to be SMR are,  shock and horror,  the ones WD lists with the lower speeds and cache.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

14 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

Also, SMR is inherently slower to write to and with the WD drives - the models people have found to be SMR are,  shock and horror,  the ones WD lists with the lower speeds and cache.

No, you mixed that up: the A model, with 256mb of cache, is the SMR one... 

[mr moose]

There is nothing wrong with the up to speed listed on hdd's so long as that speed can be regularity obtained under ideal conditions.   The alternative is to have no rating at all then you won't even be able to have a guess at how well the drive will perform in your particular system.

 

No one should give the marketing department the green light to design there own performance figures.  just like mileage,  they give you the best it can do under the best conditions you'll ever see (you know you'll never likely ever reach it let alone get better than it).  Once you demand they give you real world figures then they can start deciding themselves what defines a real world figure.  It would be easy for them to pretend  ZFS is not real world for these drives, because they aren't marketed for them and they can get a slightly better speed rating to market from using only synology boxes only.

 

 

 

 

[Egg-Roll]

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

There is nothing wrong with the up to speed listed on hdd's so long as that speed can be regularity obtained under ideal conditions.   The alternative is to have no rating at all then you won't even be able to have a guess at how well the drive will perform in your particular system.

 

No one should give the marketing department the green light to design there own performance figures.  just like mileage,  they give you the best it can do under the best conditions you'll ever see (you know you'll never likely ever reach it let alone get better than it).  Once you demand they give you real world figures then they can start deciding themselves what defines a real world figure.  It would be easy for them to pretend  ZFS is not real world for these drives, because they aren't marketed for them and they can get a slightly better speed rating to market from using only synology boxes only.

Nah I would never expect my drives to even once hit their up to speeds. My WD80EZAZ drive has a 255MB/s with 7200rpm, obviously my drive is 5400 rpm That doesn't mean I expect 190MB/s as that should be my up to (sounds about right, even comparing to WD Reds shown above) speeds. I do expect to see around 100mb/s continuously as a minimum, that said when I was testing my 2 new drives (MAZ), they frequently hit 180MB/s during the surface test using USB 3.0.

 

Your line about Marketing brought Dillberd to mind

A few more

Spoiler

 

However even with Synology some of their setups are too big for normal reds... Normal Reds have such a small market (mostly for home, and really small businesses) and with the price difference being minimal I can see people now shifting away from them even more. Which I think is the ultimate goal of WD's 

[leadeater]

Managed to find a YouTube video looking at a Seagate SMR Barracuda disk, quite a few different tests including ZFS. Surprisingly it actually works rather well, further increasing my suspicion that WD just did a bad job on their ones.

 

 

[Dabombinable]

34 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Managed to find a YouTube video looking at a Seagate SMR Barracuda disk, quite a few different tests including ZFS. Surprisingly it actually works rather well, further increasing my suspicion that WD just did a bad job on their ones.

 

 

As I said, I use my 2x SMR 2TB drives in RAID 0 without any problems for 438 days (I know that, because the HDD was put in RAID with my other drive as soon as it arrived).

[mr moose]

5 hours ago, leadeater said:

Managed to find a YouTube video looking at a Seagate SMR Barracuda disk, quite a few different tests including ZFS. Surprisingly it actually works rather well, further increasing my suspicion that WD just did a bad job on their ones.

 

 

I watched that the other day, the bloke clearly knows a lot of shit,  Think I'll be watching him a bit more closely over the next few months.

 

It was interesting to see a definitive example of a consumer drive with SMR not doing exactly what everyone was claiming a NAS drive with SMR drive would do  in a raid (a ZFS at that).   It makes me wonder how many people are going to learn not to draw conclusions until they have enough data?

[Egg-Roll]

 

 

17 hours ago, leadeater said:

Managed to find a YouTube video looking at a Seagate SMR Barracuda disk, quite a few different tests including ZFS. Surprisingly it actually works rather well, further increasing my suspicion that WD just did a bad job on their ones.

 

 

Maybe it's the NASware improperly done, I do find it interesting tho, I did see this video before you posted it as well. The one thing I would disagree on however depending on the situation is the gaming aspect. Simply because a delay caused by SMR could hinder on your playing time (think new game release and wanting to play same day), the real question is will it or won't it. He could have easily gotten the only drive on the planet (unlikely) that works perfectly fine.

Note: I personally download games while playing as long as they are not online based multiplayer.

 

It's good to see everyday use SMR is going to be fine (including in a NAS setup), but imo it still has no right being in one. I'm still waiting on the video to be released by that other person with the rebuilds. Till then I still hold that SMR doesn't belong anywhere but consumer or cold storage setups.

 

12 hours ago, mr moose said:

I watched that the other day, the bloke clearly knows a lot of shit,  Think I'll be watching him a bit more closely over the next few months.

 

It was interesting to see a definitive example of a consumer drive with SMR not doing exactly what everyone was claiming a NAS drive with SMR drive would do  in a raid (a ZFS at that).   It makes me wonder how many people are going to learn not to draw conclusions until they have enough data?

The issue is no one would put a Barracuda into a NAS with important information(except for Fluxiton in the comment section ), so the only NAS data they have is WD, and like I said above it could be a firmware issue clashing with software because everyone is trying to hide SMR...

 

Also Toshiba has released a list of SMR drives:

https://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/ap-en/company/news/news-topics/2020/04/storage-20200428-1.html

I do find it interesting that both Seagate and Toshiba both won't be using SMR in their NAS drives, while WD is willing too. Genuinely think they are trying to kill the non-pro line now...

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Egg-Roll said:

Genuinely think they are trying to kill the non-pro line now...

Probably, it's been too popular for their own good, making the money rain, because of how good they were and basically nobody gives a damn about "should only use in 8 bays or less" when it works perfectly fine in about as many as you could possibly connect, recommended limits be damned. I'm also willing to bet the consumer and small business NAS market is on a big decline as SSDs have gotten much cheaper and larger and more people use online services so the only people left buying these drives is home data hoarders.

 

Why would a business buy a NAS now when they are likely using Office 365 or Google Suite which includes so many capabilities. I know I don't recommend NAS's to them anymore unless they have onsite servers and need them so a NAS is used for a backup target.

 

Cheap NAS disks are going to die, and probably sooner than we all think.

[GDRRiley]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

 only people left buying these drives is home data hoarders.

video production places are. You can't move 2tb+ of shooting in a day to the cloud easily. As I've looked at new cameras I've accepted I'll need to finish my nas and toss in lots of 6-10tb drives as video projects are such data hogs.

[Dabombinable]

15 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Probably, it's been too popular for their own good, making the money rain, because of how good they were and basically nobody gives a damn about "should only use in 8 bays or less" when it works perfectly fine in about as many as you could possibly connect, recommended limits be damned. I'm also willing to bet the consumer and small business NAS market is on a big decline as SSDs have gotten much cheaper and larger and more people use online services so the only people left buying these drives is home data hoarders.

 

Why would a business buy a NAS now when they are likely using Office 365 or Google Suite which includes so many capabilities. I know I don't recommend NAS's to them anymore unless they have onsite servers and need them so a NAS is used for a backup target.

 

Cheap NAS disks are going to die, and probably sooner than we all think.

As long as I'm able to buy some before that happens. Gotta have something that'll outlast my RAID array drives, and maybe the F3 (vibrations are pretty noticeable from it, despite the low RPM and noise).

[leadeater]

12 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

video production places are. You can't move 2tb+ of shooting in a day to the cloud easily. As I've looked at new cameras I've accepted I'll need to finish my nas and toss in lots of 6-10tb drives as video projects are such data hogs.

Are they buying WD Reds though? We don't buy anything like that for ours, we go with 7200 RPM NAS disks.

[Egg-Roll]

2 hours ago, leadeater said:

so the only people left buying these drives is home data hoarders.

Like Linus and me  Tho TBH while I'm sure there is still a business to be had with those who don't shuck, however once you exceed the need for 3+ drives you'll be looking into alternatives, and the market is prob not big enough to support 3 major brands with several offerings, plus with larger drives becoming cheaper to make it doesn't make much sense to have lower capacity drives too.

 

2 hours ago, GDRRiley said:

video production places are. You can't move 2tb+ of shooting in a day to the cloud easily. As I've looked at new cameras I've accepted I'll need to finish my nas and toss in lots of 6-10tb drives as video projects are such data hogs.

For your case Pros and such are likely a better move. Even shucking the enterprise grade drives dummied down are prob a better option, just be mindful of the 3.3v issue.

Word of warning avoid 6TB externals from WD and anything from Seagate since they are all consumer grade(shucking), and WDs can now be SMR which while are clearly not bad for write once read many I still don't like them mix and matched.

 

 

[GDRRiley]

55 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Are they buying WD Reds though? We don't buy anything like that for ours, we go with 7200 RPM NAS disks.

maybe not reds as they are 5400/5900RPM but I'd assume NAS rated.

10 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

For your case Pros and such are likely a better move. Even shucking the enterprise grade drives dummied down are prob a better option, just be mindful of the 3.3v issue.

Word of warning avoid 6TB externals from WD and anything from Seagate since they are all consumer grade(shucking), and WDs can now be SMR which while are clearly not bad for write once read many I still don't like them mix and matched.

When I do need to do it I plan on shucking 8-10tb drives. I've only got 18 bays free so I don't want to go with small drives.

noted.

[mr moose]

3 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

 

The issue is no one would put a Barracuda into a NAS with important information(except for Fluxiton in the comment section ), so the only NAS data they have is WD, and like I said above it could be a firmware issue clashing with software because everyone is trying to hide SMR...

 

 

Yeah, except if you go back into earlier comments in this thread you'll see quite a few people stamping their feet that they have to know if their drive Is SMR using the excuse that the reds failed in a NAS.  They were absolutely blaming SMR and using that assumption to demand it be listed on barracudas for domestic use because they were absolutely convinced the performance difference was so large.      I made the mistake of asking fro evidence to that which of course resulted in nothing but people assuming I am a shill,  dam I wish I had that shill money rather than just being a reserved critical thinker.

[Egg-Roll]

  

1 hour ago, GDRRiley said:

When I do need to do it I plan on shucking 8-10tb drives. I've only got 18 bays free so I don't want to go with small drives.

noted.

If you want to avoid 5400RPM drives I wouldn't shuck from WD branding of externals since they are clocked down rpm wise. Instead try snatching up a few of these if you find a good deal on them:

https://shop.westerndigital.com/en-ca/products/external-drives/g-technology-g-drive-thunderbolt-3-hdd#0G05378-1

Now I have absolutely no idea how to open one, but they are WD owned and issued so it should hold WD enterprise (Gold apparently) drives inside.

Currently in Canada a 10TB is $400 (reseller website not amazon) which isn't bad considering the WD variant at 5400RPM is 80 less on amazon.

 

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

Yeah, except if you go back into earlier comments in this thread you'll see quite a few people stamping their feet that they have to know if their drive Is SMR using the excuse that the reds failed in a NAS.  They were absolutely blaming SMR and using that assumption to demand it be listed on barracudas for domestic use because they were absolutely convinced the performance difference was so large.      I made the mistake of asking fro evidence to that which of course resulted in nothing but people assuming I am a shill,  dam I wish I had that shill money rather than just being a reserved critical thinker.

I still don't think they belong in NAS drives. Whether or not they were the cause has yet to be seen. People will point and blame thats a everyday thing anywhere, because they can never be wrong, never... I've known about SMRs for a while I knew the issues of them, I personally thought they would never hit anything under 8TB because logically it didn't make sense to me to shrink a small drive even more for a 1-2 watt savings.

[GDRRiley]

Just now, Egg-Roll said:

 If you want to avoid 5400RPM drives I wouldn't shuck from WD branding of externals since they are clocked down rpm wise. Instead try snatching up a few of these if you find a good deal on them:

https://shop.westerndigital.com/en-ca/products/external-drives/g-technology-g-drive-thunderbolt-3-hdd#0G05378-1

I hadn't planed on WD. It isn't happening now as I don't have enough clients nor the need to drop 5-8K on increasing production values