WD 8TB helium drives

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Terry Kennedy

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Jun 25, 2015
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I might be shucking some external drives if the street price is lower than retail for their 16TB My Book Duo. 2 x 8TB for $550 retail? Not bad.
The drives in there may or may not be SATA drives. On their smaller external drives, WD started using drives with onboard USB instead of SATA. Good for their manufacturing costs, bad for people who want to shuck drives. The WD product page does say "User serviceable enclosure - Ready to upgrade your drives to expand storage capacity? With the simple push of a button, pop open the enclosure and insert new drives with ease. No tools required." So at least you should be able to pop it open and look without voiding the warranty, and it would also seem that if you keep the enclosure, you have a method to RMA the drive if it fails.
 
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izx

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Jan 17, 2016
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Not that I really want to buy WD drives, but are they PMR or SMR?
PMR; 7-platters hence the He.

If you compare the WD label with the HGST label, the enclosure and current specs are the same, although the WD is not 7200rpm but "Intellipower". I'm guessing they're just "de-rating" the HGST firmware on the first RED versions.
 

Stereodude

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Feb 21, 2016
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Something has to be different otherwise everyone buying the HGST drives would just switch to the WD version since it's so much cheaper. Intellipower = 5400 or 5700 RPM right?
 

Whatever

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Jan 27, 2015
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5400 RPM for the "normal" RED.

The WD RED PRO are supposed to be 7200 RPM drives.
 
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Aluminum

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Tempted to buy 4 of these duos...would make a decently fast 32TB of space in a raid10 zfs.

Would be a little higher than my usual @ ~$35/rawTB but I can get a lot more storage with just 1 HBA in a normal size case.
 

Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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Wonder if the specs like URE really match the HGST HE8 ??
I don't see the data sheet yet but very interested, great very low power bulk storage with half decent performance.
 

izx

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Something has to be different otherwise everyone buying the HGST drives would just switch to the WD version since it's so much cheaper. Intellipower = 5400 or 5700 RPM right?
5760, IIRC from when someone recorded the sound and analyzed the spectrum. This is most likely a preview drive label or even a rendered image, the production label could be different. Mechanically, they would use a lower-speed motor with lower power (and lower-life bearings, say), use an actuator mechanism rated for fewer hours, etc. But the platter quality and helium filling mechanism should be the same.

What I sort of meant is that if this label makes it into production as shown, there's a very good chance that the initial batch of drives are Hitachis with the firmware tweaked to reduce motor speed and cost savings primarily from higher volume. You bet WD will find ways to deviate to reduce their manufacturing cost in the longer term. The published specs in any case will be different from day one (MTBF, URE, etc.), in line with their other consumer drives. Us, guess which version will be on the HCL for enterprise systems/devices ;)


Wonder if the specs like URE really match the HGST HE8 ?
Like I said above, they MAY match internally for the initial batch of drives, but you bet the published specs will derate the enterprise values to whatever is standard for the consumer RED line. And in the near future, WD will find ways to actually cut down on the build quality so that the published specs are closer to reality than the HGST He8 heritage. Don't assume you're getting a rebadged enterprise drive, you most likely won't. :)

The Duos quick open is very interesting, because you can easily shuck (legit!) AND keep the 2-year warranty. In all likelihood, if one fails and you tell WD support you verified it by connecting to another computer, they will send you a replacement drive instead of replacing the entire enclosure+2 drives.[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]
 

Stereodude

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The Duos quick open is very interesting, because you can easily shuck (legit!) AND keep the 2-year warranty. In all likelihood, if one fails and you tell WD support you verified it by connecting to another computer, they will send you a replacement drive instead of replacing the entire enclosure+2 drives.
Doesn't that presume they still have a SATA interface on them? I wouldn't put it past WD coming up with some proprietary interface to keep people from "shucking" them. Then when you want to upgrade it you have to buy special drives from WD with the same interface at a price premium.
 

izx

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Doesn't that presume they still have a SATA interface on them? I wouldn't put it past WD coming up with some proprietary interface to keep people from "shucking" them. Then when you want to upgrade it you have to buy special drives from WD with the same interface at a price premium.
It does, and WD is one sneaky corp. However, the manual says

Important: Only use WD Red™ or WD Green™ hard drives to upgrade the capacity of your My Book Duo device. Also, both drives must be new, and have the same capacity for RAID configurations. Using any other hard drive or mixed drive capacities voids the warranty for your My Book Duo device
And from what I see of the 12TB pricing ($450) vs two 6TBs ($500), I'd say they've taken shucking into account and are compensating with slightly lower warrant and somewhat higher sales volume for the externals. The 6TB REDs have been around for what, 2 years almost a this point? So the prices should eventually converge, but in the first few months, $275 for a warrantiable shucked 8TB vs $350 for retail internal would make the former appealing.
 

kroem

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Aug 16, 2014
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So, who's going to be the lucky one to buy and try?

I'm out of competition, not in 'merica etc :D
 

izx

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I wanted to start with 3 8GB Seagate SMR drives for a snapraid backup application in the summer, looks like those are around $225 now. Wondering if these are worth it for $50 more per shucked...
 

mackle

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Nov 13, 2013
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What new tech makes people more nervous - SMR or He?

When I'm thinking of building out an array they both give me a slight pause, even if it's only highlighting the usual worries you'd have (such as a number of drives from the same batch failing together)
 

Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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SMR is a pretty crap technology, just for archive for now.
He is datacenter proven. Would not hesitate at all to deploy He. (At least is hgst version)
 

Terry Kennedy

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Jun 25, 2015
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What new tech makes people more nervous - SMR or He?
I would definitely prefer He over SMR. He is a technology that only changes things inside the drive, while SMR needs lots of host support to get decent performance. AFAIK, there has not been any leakage issue with He drives, and if they didn't leak by now they probably aren't going to leak.
 

izx

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What new tech makes people more nervous - SMR or He?
What the guru said above :)

Conventional (air) six-platter drives are a proven technology, now you have seven platters inside a different medium. AFAIK, the He's primary purpose is to reduce spinning drag/friction, so, theoretically, even if it leaked out, the drive shouldn't just die right away. The Reds are also ~5700rpm compared to 7200 in the HGST enterprise versions.

I'd be much more nervous about SMR in any kind of distributed hardware parity array because of the glacial rebuild times; the technology itself is okay if you understand the limitations on most OS's going in. As I mentioned, with 8TB PMR drives becoming affordable, the price on the 8TB SMRs seems to carry a significant premium right now.