No Shingles 6GB Drive

LunarMist

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
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Do the WD Green 6TB WD60EZRX drives use the stupid shit on the shingles technology that slows down the writing to a crawl every few minutes?
I want to buy some of them or other ~5400 RPM, non-shingles drives for frequent backup use. Thanks.
 
I think you already have your answer, but none of the current WD drives are SMR. Most are 4K, except some datacenter drives at 4TB and under, such as the WD RE, which are 512n.
 
Buck said:
I think you already have your answer, but none of the current WD drives are SMR. Most are 4K, except some datacenter drives at 4TB and under, such as the WD RE, which are 512n.
Click to expand...

Yes, and I had forgotten about the thread started back in 2014.

The tortilla rate looks normal, so there are no shingles. Read speed STD graph is fine for the 5700 RPM as well.

WD60EZRX.png
 
mubs said:
I saw this at B&H. Don't know if it has shingles or it's been vaccinated against the herpes virus.
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Yes, I have that drive also. The NAS drive has no shingles and performs well, though it is a noisy.

I have no idea how the tortilla was involved. :dunno:
 
So I'm going to build a 4 drive RAID 5 array using 6TB drives, trying to decide between the HGST drive linked to by mubs and the WD Black. Any recommendations either way?
 
Doesn't WD still intentionally prevent you from using their drives in RAID by messing with the firmware so they'll drop from arrays? In effect forcing you to buy their RAID Edition drives?

What controller are you going to use?

Edit: Newegg has these for $225.99 after promocode ESCKNKW28 when you buy 4 or more (limit 5). Promo code expires 12/20.
 
Last edited:
Stereodude said:
Doesn't WD still intentionally prevent you from using their drives in RAID by messing with the firmware so they'll drop from arrays? In effect forcing you to buy their RAID Edition drives?

What controller are you going to use?

Edit: Newegg has these for $225.99 after promocode ESCKNKW28 when you buy 4 or more (limit 5). Promo code expires 12/20.
Click to expand...

I have a few of these HGST 6TB NAS drives and have been perfectly happy with them. Though I should note they're not used in a NAS but rather in my workstations. I've waited for them to go on sale much around the price you've listed rather than their full price of $269.
 
Thanks for the discount link. Will be using an Areca 1220 controller.


Stereodude said:
Doesn't WD still intentionally prevent you from using their drives in RAID by messing with the firmware so they'll drop from arrays? In effect forcing you to buy their RAID Edition drives?

What controller are you going to use?

Edit: Newegg has these for $225.99 after promocode ESCKNKW28 when you buy 4 or more (limit 5). Promo code expires 12/20.
Click to expand...
 
Are you sure you want an 18TB RAID5 given the mathematical certainty of having a hard read error during an array rebuild of a data set that large?
I try not to make RAID5 arrays larger than 12TB.

SD, as far as I can tell, the "intentional messing with firmware" is limited to those Eco-type drives. Even the basically moronic SMR drives actually do behave themselves in arrays (other than being weird). I think NAS edition drives are ~6000rpm drives that behave in arrays while eco drives are ~6000rpm drives that don't.
 
I'm using the Deskstar NAS model you plan to buy in a low-performance fileserver. Bought the drives last year, in early December. None have failed so far and no one complains about their speed.

Regarding their use in a RAID 5 array, like Merc pointed out, I wouldn't use those in a large RAID 5. They are rated for one unrecoverable error per 100 Tb written (1 per 10^14), so one error per ~12.5TB. You plan for an 18TB RAID 5... so you'll get at least one error per rebuild. Garantied by the specifications of the drive.

For a RAID 5 that large, I would at least use drives rated for one unrecoverable error per 10^15, but all those are quite a bit more expensive. The cheaper one is the WD Red Pro. I've never used it. The Seagate ST6000VN0001 (Enterprise NAS 6TB) cost ~300U$, but isn't stock at New Egg at the moment.
 
Thanks for the feedback guys.

My desktop machine has started BSODing about 5 mins after power on, tried swapping out the memory modules to no effect. So I've decided to upgrade the aging internals (moving from an E6600 and 2GB of DDR2) and hold off on buying the drives.

i7-5930
MSI X99A Gaming 7 mobo
Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4 DRAM 3000MHz
Corsair Hydro Series H110i GTX cooling
 
The 6TB are good, but now my 4TB 2.5' WD seems to be slow after a while.
Is there a tool to identify the shingles?
€£€
 
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