Review of White Label 4TB drives

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bds1904

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Aug 30, 2013
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Forgot to mention that the drives I have always sit about 30C in my rackable SE3016 enclosure, ambient is 25C. I've had other drives in the enclosure that run much hotter. That leads me to believe that these white label drives would make pretty good nas drives. Power usage with 10 drives in the SE3016 is 130w (just enclosure and drives obviously), really really really good.

$0.029/GB, good performance, runs cool and good power numbers. Perfect for NAS in my book.
 

Chuckleb

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Mar 5, 2013
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From a consumer side, if these are WD Re drives for half the cost, it's a great value. The RE drives are just very solid overall, faster than NAS drives, and seem to be in new condition. At this price point, you are pretty close to a tossup for NAS vs RE disks.

Looking at the vendor side, not sure if these are DOA returns or new drives. From a quick check, the drives don't have any physical wear and tear, SMART data is clear, and the vendor is trustworthy. They seem to carry drives from multiple manufacturers so they appear to buy from pretty close to source regardless. From what I can also tell, it seems that they bring in batches of 400-500 every couple of months, at least the 4TB WL that is. I haven't followed the other drives. I just heard that when this stock runs out, it will be mid-August before next batch comes in.
 

Dariss

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Jun 17, 2014
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Ordered two as well myself, so far have been running great in a RAID1 so far, with neither of the drives DOA. Burning them in as type this.
 

smccloud

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Jun 4, 2013
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Given that I'm getting more SMART errors on two of my 4 1TB drives and the wife approved new HDDs (for sure those two). I'm torn between two 1TB drives and two 2TB drives from them (other option is Best Buy which is nice for the fact that I can have them right away).
 

BigXor

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May 6, 2011
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I just bought 4 of these.

I'm a complete Linux dummy so I will be using Hard Disk Sentinel Pro for exercising and monitoring the drives. Drive write testing is only available in the pro version. This program shows SMART data even in an array and using a SAS2208 controller.

If you have an Areca card installed, save your money, HD Sentinel won't work.
 
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Chuckleb

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Nothing wrong with being a Linux dummy! The 2208 is in JBOD mode? If so, must be why you can see them individually. Cool to document other ways of testing though.
 

BigXor

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Nothing wrong with being a Linux dummy! The 2208 is in JBOD mode? If so, must be why you can see them individually. Cool to document other ways of testing though.
The controller is in RAID mode. The array is raid 0. When I get the WL drives they will be in Raid 5

The controller I use is a Dell H810 flashed with Intel RS25NB008 Firmware. This configuration allow Raid and JBOD both and allows the card to spin down JBOD & unconfigured drives. (JBOD has to be enabled with MegaCLI after flash).
 
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Patrick

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Dec 21, 2010
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These are WD RE 4TB drives. No question.

BTW will have more soon but here is the WD RE 4TB and the WD Red 4TB drives side by side FLIR grab using the rainbow much like WD did. I also turned off MSX to make it more comparable. Same exact workloads side by side.
upload_2014-7-27_18-30-23.png

Here is the WD comparison of desktop v. WD red for comparison: WD Red NAS Storage – What is NAS?
 
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Chuckleb

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Pretty pictures. RE on the left? Do the red spin slower? I never checked.

I also plan on updating my original post as drives fail and I get more in of people are curious. We will probably standardize on these until higher capacity comes out at a comparable price point.
 

Patrick

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You are right on which is which. The Red drives do spin slower hence why they are cooler and have lower sequential/ random transfer rates.
 

Hrast

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Oct 5, 2013
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BTW will have more soon but here is the WD RE 4TB and the WD Red 4TB drives side by side FLIR grab using the rainbow much like WD did. I also turned off MSX to make it more comparable. Same exact workloads side by side.
View attachment 23
And this is why I'm waiting for three more case fans to arrive before I fire up 8 instances of badblocks. I've already tripped the SMART Temperature threshold on three of the eight running it for 15 minutes...
 

Chuckleb

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Mar 5, 2013
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I have computer case fans on the desk pointed at the drives, works very well. It definitely gets hot sitting on a desk!
 

Chuckleb

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Mar 5, 2013
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I think that's because they are out of them. Let's see where the price goes when the next batch comes in. I think about 2.5-3 weeks is what I heard.