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WD Question Thread - Hard Drives, Dual Drive Setups, Storage Setup Optimization

nicklmg
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There are third party enclosures that allow two or more drives to be fitted in and it also has RAID control. You can search on the internet for such products or post here in the Storage section to see if any of the guys here has experience with such enclosures: http://linustechtips.com/main/forum/38-storage-solutions/

 

Western Digital has such a solution for Mac users (but it can be reformatted for other OSs as well as long as the computer has a Thunderbolt slot) - WD My Passport Pro: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=jyFRi6 It is basically a dual drive external drive that offers RAID0, RAID0, JBOD Span or just two separate drive option. 

 

Captain_WD.

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WD Green drives are not designed for RAID environments and are not recommended for them as they lack the features of a NAS/RAID-class drive (such as WD Red) that would enable it to work smoothly and safer in a RAID array. As I mentioned, the chance of a drive dropout is higher if it is not a NAS/RAID-class drive.

 

These drives have been reported to work good in NAS devices, though. Users have reported that if they are used for storage and mostly reading data rather than intensive writing, they perform good and stable.

 

Captain_WD.

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I was wondering (random question/thought on HDD) will there ever be a single HDD but split into 2 drives internally that is in RAID0?  Like two platters and two readers??

"45 ACP because shooting twice is silly!"

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WD Green drives are not designed for RAID environments and are not recommended for them as they lack the features of a NAS/RAID-class drive (such as WD Red) that would enable it to work smoothly and safer in a RAID array. As I mentioned, the chance of a drive dropout is higher if it is not a NAS/RAID-class drive.
 
These drives have been reported to work good in NAS devices, though. Users have reported that if they are used for storage and mostly reading data rather than intensive writing, they perform good and stable.
 
Captain_WD.

 

Just wondering. Got the drives for free but never put much work into upgrading them for a proper setup.  Thanks for answering my question. 

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I was wondering (random question/thought on HDD) will there ever be a single HDD but split into 2 drives internally that is in RAID0?  Like two platters and two readers??

Don't they already (mostly) do that? Modern HDDs have anywhere from 1 to 6 platters, and each platter has a head. I would assume that data is striped across all the platters to maximise throughput. (Although unlike in a RAID0, the heads cannot move independantly of each other to boost random IO performance.)

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I was wondering (random question/thought on HDD) will there ever be a single HDD but split into 2 drives internally that is in RAID0?  Like two platters and two readers??

 

Hey Nikolithebear,
 
It seems like a great idea, but it very hard to achieve. One of the problems is that the tracs on the platters are simply too fine to synchronize all the individual heads (even if one had is over cylinder X, there are absolutely no guarantee that another head would be hovering over that exact same position and not the one next to it. The cylinders are spaced ONLY several nano-meters apart. The design, quality and the manufacturing of the materials of the read/write heads, motor and the other parts simply don't allow such precision.  
 
It is possible to have an active read/write head follow a certain cylinder, but it would take each arm to have its own actuator, control processor, etc. and this would be MUCH more expensive compared to regular drives, very power-hungry and the risk of data corruption would be significantly higher.
 
This is why RAID was introduced. :) You never know what the future holds in the storage industry. 
 
Captain_WD.

If this helped you, like and choose it as best answer - you might help someone else with the same issue. ^_^
WDC Representative, http://www.wdc.com/ 

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WD Green drives are not designed for NAS devices that are used for constant streaming or continuous backups. 

They have been reported to work good for occasional backups in NAS devices as single drives. 

 

I would generally recommend WD Red over WD Green for NASs as they are designed for such environments and for 24/7 performance. 

 

Captain_WD.

If this helped you, like and choose it as best answer - you might help someone else with the same issue. ^_^
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It may be fast enough, but it depends more on the connection that you have between the NAS and your computer. 

 

For four drives I would consider either RAID 5 or RAID10. The first one gives you more usable space (about 3/4 of the total) and one drive failure tolerance. RAID10 gives you a better speed boost, two drive failure tolerance, but your usable storage space is less (about half of the total).

 

WD Red drives are indeed the ones designed to work in NAS/RAID environments. They would be the safest option. WD Black may work faster (they have higher rpm and are performance drives), but they lack the features of WD Red, making them more risky to use in RAID arrays.

 

Captain_WD.

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@Captain_WD WD 4 TB External Hard drive is 200$ , i went looking for 8 TB HD, found a WD My Cloud Mirror Personal Cloud Storage Network Drive which is 540$ , why can't i get a simple 8 TB WD External My Book Hard drive ? 

 

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Out of those three drives, I would recommend the WD Blue since its a mid-ground drive between performance and low-noise. WD Black drives are designed for ultimate performance, but tend to be louder than WD Blue. WD Blue is capable of running games and is great for general computing and storage. Games rely on storage only for their loading times and FPS and graphics stay unaffected. 

 

Regarding the RAID part, I would not recommend either of the drives for RAID arrays. I would suggest that you check out WD Red as it has additional features that enable it to work smooth and safer in such environments. 

 

Captain_WD.

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Oh, so the HDD can't use all of its heads at once. Ok. O.o

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Western Digital currently makes drives with up to 6TB storage space, so there are no one-drive external drives at the moment. You could take a look at the two-drive DAS drives that we offer and see if any of them suits your needs.



 

The NAS device that you are looking at is part of the NAS line which can be used as a personal cloud for accessing over the network and internet. 

 

Captain_WD.

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Oh, so the HDD can't use all of its heads at once. Ok. O.o

 

It does, but data can flow through one head at a time. As I said, the density of cylinders and data sectors is so big and the spaces between them are so small that currently it is very hard and impractical to align multiple read/write heads. This involves adding more hardware in the drive, increasing its weight and the output of heat and vibrations. The drive would become very expensive and thus impractical. multiple drives in RAID0 is the scaled alternative with far less risk of data loss involved and at a much reasonable price. 
 
Captain_WD.

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Western Digital currently makes drives with up to 6TB storage space, so there are no one-drive external drives at the moment. You could take a look at the two-drive DAS drives that we offer and see if any of them suits your needs.
 
The NAS device that you are looking at is part of the NAS line which can be used as a personal cloud for accessing over the network and internet. 
 
Captain_WD.

 

Service Unavailable

6 TB is not available in India Unfortunately 

 

 

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Service Unavailable

6 TB is not available in India Unfortunately 

 

Fixed the links :) You can check the 2x4TB options if you need 8TB storage space :)

 

Captain_WD.

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Fixed the links :) You can check the 2x4TB options if you need 8TB storage space :)

 

Captain_WD.

unfortunately the link is still broken , would love to get 6 TB HDD here, i already have 2X4 TB HDD my book , i need to attach 2 power adapter to them , buying an other 2 , there wouldn't be space to actually power them , that's my problem :(

post-21562-0-33590600-1421932981.jpg

 

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The best way is to uninstall the games and reinstall them on the other drive. This way you would avoid any problems such as data corruption, missing files, etc.

 

Another way to do that (it sometimes has problems with some of the games) is:

 

1. Go to Steam settings and add a game library for the other HDD or SSD you are moving games to. I made a D:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\ to mirror the steam install on C:

 

2. Copy the game folder in \common\ to the other drive, and then go back into \SteamApps\ and find the .acf for the game (looks like appmanifest_XXXXXX.acf) To find what acf is for your game, go to steam, go to your library, click "View store page" and when it loads the game's store page, right click and copy url... go into your browser and paste the link, the number at the end is the .ACF number. Now, move that .ACF into the /SteamApps/ folder on the other harddrive.

 

3. Once all files are copied over for your game folder and the .ACF for it, go into steam and right click your game > Delete Local Content. This will uninstall your game at the old location, aslong as you moved your files to the new drive, it shouldn't delete them.

 

4. Last, once it says to Install Game, click Install Game and choose the library location you added where the game now resides. It will "Discover" the files and not download anything.

 

Hope this helps,

 

Captain_WD.

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unfortunately the link is still broken , would love to get 6 TB HDD here, i already have 2X4 TB HDD my book , i need to attach 2 power adapter to them , buying an other 2 , there wouldn't be space to actually power them , that's my problem :(

 

What browser are you using? 

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First of all, that drive should have no problem fitting in your laptop.

 

I am currently using WD Black2 and I have to say I am pretty happy with it gives me so far (I've been using it for about 6 months). The SSD part works great, fast and I keep my OS, a couple of games and a couple of programs on it.

I use the HDD part mostly for media storage (movies, photos and music) and have a couple of additional programs and games installed there. It's already over 70% full and it's still functioning quiet and fast.

 

I wouldn't advise you to clone your old drive as it is highly recommended to have at least as big new drive as your old one. In order to unlock the 1TB HDD part, you would need to first install the OS and then use the web key. I would recommend a fresh install of the OS.

 

Captain_WD.

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What browser are you using? 

Chrome , as soon as i click , i get this link 

http://products.wdc.com/support/redirect.htm?redirect=http://wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1260&utm_source=http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/291871-wd-question-thread-hard-drives-dual-drive-setups-storage-setup-optimization/page-4&utm_medium=WD%20Question%20Thread%20-%20Hard%20Drives,%20Dual%20Drive%20Setups,%20Storage%20Setup%20Optimization&utm_campaign=WD%20Community%20Engagement%20Tracking&utm_content=http://wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1260&utm_term=Captain_WD

and then it redirects to 

http://wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1260

and it says service unavailable 

 

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The website must be experiencing some problems currently. My apologies. Try looking up WD My Book Duo and My Book Thunderbolt Duo.

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Hey Nikolithebear,
 
It seems like a great idea, but it very hard to achieve. One of the problems is that the tracs on the platters are simply too fine to synchronize all the individual heads (even if one had is over cylinder X, there are absolutely no guarantee that another head would be hovering over that exact same position and not the one next to it. The cylinders are spaced ONLY several nano-meters apart. The design, quality and the manufacturing of the materials of the read/write heads, motor and the other parts simply don't allow such precision.  
 
It is possible to have an active read/write head follow a certain cylinder, but it would take each arm to have its own actuator, control processor, etc. and this would be MUCH more expensive compared to regular drives, very power-hungry and the risk of data corruption would be significantly higher.
 
This is why RAID was introduced. :) You never know what the future holds in the storage industry. 
 
Captain_WD.

 

Thanks! :) I was curious!

"45 ACP because shooting twice is silly!"

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The firmware and the tuning of the two drives are different. WD Black is a performance drive, while WD Blue is designed for everyday usage and WD Black should outperform WD Blue. Some users base their accusations on the weight on the drives, but both drives are built with a single platter and thus their weight is similar. 

 

Captain_WD.

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About the "WD Black drives are relabelled Blue drives":

Most of the Black range seems to have 12-13ms access times (in HDTune), while the WD1003FZEX, a "black" drive, seems to have 15-16ms access times, and the WD10EZEX, a "blue" drive, has 15-21ms access times. (That is, some of the WD10EZEX blue drives acheive ~15ms access times, while others acheive only ~21ms access times.) (I just googled a bunch of HDTune graphs.) This leaves us in the odd situation where some, but not all, of this particular "blue" drive perform as well as their "black" counterpart of the same capacity, leading some buyers of the WD1003FZEX to think they've been ripped off. Ironically, WD may be getting bad PR for _improving_ their blue drive to the point where it was able to outstrip the equivalent black drive in this particular benchmark (assuming the improvement from 21ms to 15ms was the result of a firmware upgrade).

 

To be fair to WD, if someone cared about random access times, they should have gotten an SSD, not an HDD (not even a black one), and if they did get the WD1003FZEX, they got a longer warranty, in addition to a more consistent (across different drives) access time. ...and it doesn't seem like that big a deal for a drive to fall short at one synthetic benchmark. O.o

 

I'm guessing the higher access time on the WD1003FZEX comes from using a 1TB platter instead of 800GB ones. 1TB platter probably has a narrower track pitch, increasing the time required for the head to settle over a particular track. O.o?

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