[DEAD] WD reds 4/8TB $90/$200 via shucking - update, 8TB reds now $180, 4TB deal looks dead.

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marcoi

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Apr 6, 2013
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Gotha Florida
i just picked up two more from the local BB model MGBJRCK. They had more but the guy couldnt get to them since a delivery of pallets was blocking the area where the drives were. I probably go back tomorrow and get two more. :)
 

PigLover

Moderator
Jan 26, 2011
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Thank you to @Diverge for reminding me about BB price match in the other thread (WD 8TB external @ BB for $160). For BB.com orders they will price match their own sales price during the return period, which is 30 days. A quick call to BB Customer Service (1-888-237-8289) with my order numbers got me a refund of $30 for each drive ordered earlier this month. Took less than 10 minutes (5 of which was getting through their annoying IVR questions).

Thanks again @Diverge for the heads up.
 

klammore

Member
Jun 17, 2016
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So now they are limiting it to 2 drives per order now? Is there any issue with multiple orders? I had no issues when max QTY was 3 but I wouldn't be surprised if they started limiting multiple orders.
 

Churchill

Admiral
Jan 6, 2016
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So now they are limiting it to 2 drives per order now? Is there any issue with multiple orders? I had no issues when max QTY was 3 but I wouldn't be surprised if they started limiting multiple orders.


none. ORder multiple times. go for it. I did 3 batches
 

marcoi

Well-Known Member
Apr 6, 2013
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Gotha Florida
those ordering online, what drives are you getting? the newer 256mb cache or older ones. At the local bb they had 3 units on display, two with 256 which i purchased and 1 of the older 128mb model.
 

Churchill

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Jan 6, 2016
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I've had mixed results. Honestly 128mb of cache is FINE for the majority of data you are storing on these drives. If you are attempting to do Hadoop level of BigDATA then you'll want the 256mb drive. For AVERAGE NAS/SAN users 128mb cache drives are fine. People are making a mountain out of a molehill on that limitation.
 

PigLover

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Jan 26, 2011
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I've had mixed results. Honestly 128mb of cache is FINE for the majority of data you are storing on these drives. If you are attempting to do Hadoop level of BigDATA then you'll want the 256mb drive. For AVERAGE NAS/SAN users 128mb cache drives are fine. People are making a mountain out of a molehill on that limitation.
You are correct, except is not just the average. Probably more like 95%+ of the use cases for this drive 128MB cache is overkill.

Also, to be fair, if you are doing Hadoop you don't just want a bigger cache. You want a different drive. 5400 RPM drive won't do.
 

mmo

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Sep 17, 2016
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Besides the cache different, people might also look at the made in China v. Thailand thing. I think most of people will trust on Thailand one more than China.
 

Churchill

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Jan 6, 2016
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Besides the cache different, people might also look at the made in China v. Thailand thing. I think most of people will trust on Thailand one more than China.

I'm going with that being an urban myth more than having any truth. Gonna need some citation to show chinese drives failing more than thai drives.
 
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dragonme

Active Member
Apr 12, 2016
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on the whole china vs thia debate, and needing citations... I will channel some tommy boy....


" I can get a good look at a T-bone by sticking my head up a bull's ass, but I'd rather take a butcher's word for it. "

Ted Nelson, Customer: But why do they put a guarantee on the box?

Tommy: Because they know all they sold ya was a guaranteed piece of shit. That's all it is, isn't it? Hey, if you want me to take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed, I will. I got spare time. But for now, for your customer's sake, for your daughter's sake, ya might wanna think about buying a quality product from me.
 

Churchill

Admiral
Jan 6, 2016
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on the whole china vs thia debate, and needing citations... I will channel some tommy boy....


" I can get a good look at a T-bone by sticking my head up a bull's ass, but I'd rather take a butcher's word for it. "

Ted Nelson, Customer: But why do they put a guarantee on the box?

Tommy: Because they know all they sold ya was a guaranteed piece of shit. That's all it is, isn't it? Hey, if you want me to take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed, I will. I got spare time. But for now, for your customer's sake, for your daughter's sake, ya might wanna think about buying a quality product from me.

CITATION NEEDED. We aren't talking about blinker fluid for the rotary girders here.
 

BLinux

cat lover server enthusiast
Jul 7, 2016
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damn it... kept waiting for the sale to end, but went in for another 8 while i was dining near a Best Buy store. the employees wouldn't let me buy more than 2 at check out though... so i ordered online.
 

BLinux

cat lover server enthusiast
Jul 7, 2016
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well, this is getting to be a PITA and interesting.... 3 of my qty=2 orders were for pickup at the same store... they just cancelled 2 of my 3 orders. i have 1 order that will be shipped.
 

dragonme

Active Member
Apr 12, 2016
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@BLinux

You need to be doing more thinking out of the box....

For example... when I was in the service our rugby team would visit the Guinness brewery in Dublin every year when we played a tourney there.... at the end of the tour.. your museaum ticket was good for a free pint... what is better than a free pint... 10 nearly free pints.. we would go through the place offering shinny US quarters for kids ticket stubs... and bobs your uncle..

Go to Best Buy.. case out some kid wandering around.. hand them 2 drives and the cash to buy them... give em $5 bucks for their trouble.... hehe
 

dragonme

Active Member
Apr 12, 2016
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@Churchill

Tough crowd ... hating on the Tommy...


Seriously though. I think it will take some time before any meaningful statistically relevant numbers start comming in to vet the differences in mfg facilities.

I would place a much higher significance on the components and the design vs the mfg facility. Provided the quality of the internals are the same.. I doubt that there is much difference between a Chinese robot and a Thai robot.. other than the Thai robot probably doesn't have to go to communist party re-education camps and probably has better human rights and wages... but thats just a guess...

Keeping in mind the obvious difference in the 128k vs 256k.. so someone has to wonder.. ok what drives did these really come from.... my guess is that the 2 facilities probably make 2 different models that that if/ when the mechanicals package doesnt pass spec.. like vibration probably... and hence not suitable as a true nasware drive.. they slapp on a different sticker and cripple the firmware to make a single drive external backup disk and sell-em cheap to cut mfg losses from rejects.

I can hold a drive and tell if its a desktop vs enterprise ... I had a desktop drive that was so out of ballance once it almost walked off the table when plugged in....
 

BLinux

cat lover server enthusiast
Jul 7, 2016
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@Churchill

Tough crowd ... hating on the Tommy...


Seriously though. I think it will take some time before any meaningful statistically relevant numbers start comming in to vet the differences in mfg facilities.

I would place a much higher significance on the components and the design vs the mfg facility. Provided the quality of the internals are the same.. I doubt that there is much difference between a Chinese robot and a Thai robot.. other than the Thai robot probably doesn't have to go to communist party re-education camps and probably has better human rights and wages... but thats just a guess...

Keeping in mind the obvious difference in the 128k vs 256k.. so someone has to wonder.. ok what drives did these really come from.... my guess is that the 2 facilities probably make 2 different models that that if/ when the mechanicals package doesnt pass spec.. like vibration probably... and hence not suitable as a true nasware drive.. they slapp on a different sticker and cripple the firmware to make a single drive external backup disk and sell-em cheap to cut mfg losses from rejects.

I can hold a drive and tell if its a desktop vs enterprise ... I had a desktop drive that was so out of ballance once it almost walked off the table when plugged in....
i'm not one who believes the thailand vs china has a difference other than the cache. but a couple of points:

1. the WD RED drives inside these have WD RED labels on them. I don't think they're slapping on a lesser label on these...

2. of the 18 drives I've picked up, a combination of Thailand and China ones, none have shown to vibrate more than others. grant you, my sample is small but at least I've noticed no difference.

3. I don't think "vibration" is a really great metric to gauge quality of drive. I've had ancient 15K RPM Seagate Cheetahs run for over a decade and vibrate like crazy. Even more recently, I have a batch of 24x 4TB HGST ultrastra drives that had varying degrees of vibration, some more than others... but the ones that vibrate the most aren't the ones that fail first.

as much as the "vibration as a metric of quality" seems to make logical sense in theory, over the years of dealing with hard drive storage I haven't seen data to back that hypothesis. on the other hand, I've seen externally induced vibration to cause performance degradation on large disk arrays; but that's not the same issue..
 
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dragonme

Active Member
Apr 12, 2016
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@BLinux

With today's drive densities.. vibration is everything.. it definitely effects the drives ability to read and write...

I didnt say that a drive that vibrates cant last long or do well... but not at today's densities.. and certainly not running in large groups with others that vibrate.. take a raid array of your new reds and mount a couple of your vibrator chetats in the same backplane.. and take some measurments.. thats provided your raid card even keeps the reds on line.

And your point about external vibration causing issues with arrays is exactly my point... you take 24 drives with out of tolerance vibration and put them in an enclosure and try and raid them up... it wont work.. the drives doesnt know external from internal vibration.. it just knows that it isn't tracking and read and write error rates spike and the array begins to offline disks...

And just because they have red labels.. doesnt mean that these drives weren't originally supposed to be enterprise drives .... the red is not the end all be all of hard disks.... not even close. And if these really are the same as the reds sold for NAS use.. they have tler .. I would not want or expect tler to be enabled on a external drive that has no parity... if the disk gives up on a read after only a couple senconds (TLER) instead of trying really hard for 30-60 seconds (std desktop drive) that backup drive is going to loose a lot of data.

When the reds first came out I read an article that went into serious depth just short of taking them apart... comparing the WD 8tb to its identical HGST enterprise 8tb helium drive.. the case, pcb, etc was all the same.. it was theorized that quite possibly every component on the red drive was itdentical to its enterprise brother even the spindle motor... and that it was just programmed in firmware for the slower spin rate.

I can definitely see the possibility of drive mfg to do what the chip forges like intel do ... start to bin drive hardware like the chip makers bin processors... if you can make 2 to 4 different lines of drives and use all the same parts and mfg on the same lines and the only thing that separates them are physical bining based on vibration, etc. and just firmware load and label .... that cuts costs huge.. you scrap less comming off the line and you get economy of scale during mfg...
 
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CJ145

Member
Mar 11, 2015
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I picked up 9 of the 8TB reds from the best buy my book deal. Two came with a different power brick than the rest.
All are burning in now. They have very loud seeks compared to my other drives.
 

realtomatoes

Active Member
Oct 3, 2016
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damn. one of those things is the of my total zfs pool.
what stuff do you guys store to fill all those up?