[ZedsRedBaby]

Well, with typical techgear efficiency, one half of my NAS RAID has just given up the ghost three weeks out of warranty. No data loss but obviously it needs replacing.

So should I go like for like (WD Red) or, on the basis that the other one will probably fail soon, upgrade the pair to something better?

Thoughts welcome.

[ian332isport]

I'd just bang another WD Red in and not worry about it. My NAS also runs a pair of the same drive, and has been running fine for several years.

[bytejunkie]

i just upgraded my synology, in place. swap a new disk in, force a rebuild, then swap the other disk in.
youre in a very similar scenario, so find out if you're nas vendor supports that pattern.

i rarely see two similar drives fail together, but i also dont leave a system running on a single drive for any length of time. your appetite for risk may vary, but consider a quick and dirty backup to amazon S3 for total security. S3 is cheap if done right.

[ZedsRedBaby]

Originally Posted by ian332isport

I'd just bang another WD Red in and not worry about it. My NAS also runs a pair of the same drive, and has been running fine for several years.

Thanks. Yeah, another red is probably the easiest option. Just thinking another few weeks might see me £180 out of pocket just to have what I had before.

[ZedsRedBaby]

Originally Posted by bytejunkie

i just upgraded my synology, in place. swap a new disk in, force a rebuild, then swap the other disk in.
youre in a very similar scenario, so find out if you're nas vendor supports that pattern.

i rarely see two similar drives fail together, but i also dont leave a system running on a single drive for any length of time. your appetite for risk may vary, but consider a quick and dirty backup to amazon S3 for total security. S3 is cheap if done right.

Thanks. Mine is Synology as well so that's an option. It's on continuous sync to OneDrive so I'm not worried about data loss. I just get a bit peed off with stuff that mysteriously breaks just after the warranty runs out so I'm wondering whether to go for something different.

[Archer-s]

Had the same recently, installed a WD Red, you can install one drive that's bigger, so if the other one fails, you can then do a size upgrade if you want.

I also enable backup to Amazon Glacier, works out well cheap for upload (based on size, I pay circa £2.50 a month), it will cost a bit more if you have to retrieve the data, but better to have the option IMO.

[Xplosiv166]

Be careful with WD Red drives:

Some of the WD NAS HDD's use a technology called SMR (shingled magnetic recording), basically it gives you more capacity at a lower price.

SMR drives have ROTTEN performance for random write usage and should not be used in a NAS RAID array. The other problem with SMR drives is RAID rebuilds will take many hours longer than normal CMR drives (CMR, which stands for conventional magnetic recording). increasing the chance of further drive failures whilst you are rebuilding.

WD have a class action lawsuit against them, as this was not advertised on there NAS labelled drives.

If you have SMR drives i would replace with IronWolf drives from Seagate or look for the WD CMR NAS drives now they have labelled them.

[ZedsRedBaby]

Originally Posted by Xplosiv166

Be careful with WD Red drives:

Some of the WD NAS HDD's use a technology called SMR (shingled magnetic recording), basically it gives you more capacity at a lower price.

SMR drives have ROTTEN performance for random write usage and should not be used in a NAS RAID array. The other problem with SMR drives is RAID rebuilds will take many hours longer than normal CMR drives (CMR, which stands for conventional magnetic recording). increasing the chance of further drive failures whilst you are rebuilding.

WD have a class action lawsuit against them, as this was not advertised on there NAS labelled drives.

If you have SMR drives i would replace with IronWolf drives from Seagate or look for the WD CMR NAS drives now they have labelled them.

Thanks for flagging that up. I checked and the ones I've got (WD20EFRX) are CMR

[aquazi]

I have 4 4TB WD RED pro's running pretty much continuously for the past 4 years, and 2 WD RED 3TB's that are over 8 years old; not even a single bad sector - so would def say get another WD/ Red/ Red pro have been great for me

[ZedsRedBaby]

Originally Posted by aquazi

I have 4 4TB WD RED pro's running pretty much continuously for the past 4 years, and 2 WD RED 3TB's that are over 8 years old; not even a single bad sector - so would def say get another WD/ Red/ Red pro have been great for me

Thanks. I must have been unlucky with this one. I couldn't even run Lifeguard due to "too many bad sectors".

[RobUK]

I typically have a dozen or so NAS drives on the go at any one time (in Synology devices) and have stuck with WD Red (CMR) drives. Did try Seagate in the early days but the failure rates were too high, don't know about today's comparative reliability. Also on the odd occasion where a WD drive has failed within warranty, WD have been very good at replacing them.

[ZedsRedBaby]

Originally Posted by RobUK

I typically have a dozen or so NAS drives on the go at any one time (in Synology devices) and have stuck with WD Red (CMR) drives. Did try Seagate in the early days but the failure rates were too high, don't know about today's comparative reliability. Also on the odd occasion where a WD drive has failed within warranty, WD have been very good at replacing them.

Thanks Rob. Mine is literally 3 weeks out of warranty, which is quite annoying. I think I'm going to plump for another Red though just for the sake of symmetry.

[Watsey]

Originally Posted by Xplosiv166

Be careful with WD Red drives:

Some of the WD NAS HDD's use a technology called SMR (shingled magnetic recording), basically it gives you more capacity at a lower price.

SMR drives have ROTTEN performance for random write usage and should not be used in a NAS RAID array. The other problem with SMR drives is RAID rebuilds will take many hours longer than normal CMR drives (CMR, which stands for conventional magnetic recording). increasing the chance of further drive failures whilst you are rebuilding.

WD have a class action lawsuit against them, as this was not advertised on there NAS labelled drives.

If you have SMR drives i would replace with IronWolf drives from Seagate or look for the WD CMR NAS drives now they have labelled them.

Agreed on the Ironwolf units. I have several in my 6-bay QNAP and they're proving to be very reliable.

[ZedsRedBaby]

Originally Posted by Watsey

Agreed on the Ironwolf units. I have several in my 6-bay QNAP and they're proving to be very reliable.

Thanks. I'm going to try another Red for now, but I'll switch to Ironwolf if I get any more problems.

[Xplosiv166]

just make sure you don't purchase the SMR drives, and if you have any i would replace them. They should not have been sold for NAS use.

[ZedsRedBaby]

Originally Posted by Xplosiv166

just make sure you don't purchase the SMR drives, and if you have any i would replace them. They should not have been sold for NAS use.

Thanks again, mine are definitely CMR.

[aquazi]

Originally Posted by ZedsRedBaby

Thanks. I must have been unlucky with this one. I couldn't even run Lifeguard due to "too many bad sectors".

I think the Pro line have a 5 year warranty over the usual 3 - and when i got mine the difference in price between the REd and Red pro was only £20.

The extra spin speeds may help - depending what you do too... although i didnt notice any improvement - but depends what you use it for....

[ZedsRedBaby]

Well typical Amazon! I ordered a WD20EFRX (CMR) drive, I got a box that said WD20EFRX, inside was a package that said WD20EFRX, and inside that was a disk drive clearly marked WD20EFAX (ie SMR).

Guess what I'll be ordering next.

[RobUK]

Sorry to hear that. WD have re-branded their CMR Red drives to 'WD Red Plus' to make it easier to distinguish but that only happened recently so suppliers probably still have a mixture of old CMR and SMR drives all just labelled 'WD Red' and with Amazon just being box shifters it's a crap shoot as to which you'll get.

Good luck with the refund, at least it's usually quite straightforward with Amazon just a pain to have to reorder and wait longer.

[ZedsRedBaby]

Originally Posted by RobUK

Sorry to hear that. WD have re-branded their CMR Red drives to 'WD Red Plus' to make it easier to distinguish but that only happened recently so suppliers probably still have a mixture of old CMR and SMR drives all just labelled 'WD Red' and with Amazon just being box shifters it's a crap shoot as to which you'll get.

Good luck with the refund, at least it's usually quite straightforward with Amazon just a pain to have to reorder and wait longer.

Thanks Rob. The red was collected yesterday and I got confirmation of the refund issue about 5 minutes after the Hermes guy left. I didn't want to risk any more wrongly labelled disks so I ordered an Ironwolf from Scan which arrived yesterday lunchtime. That's already installed and formatted and the storage pool is now saying repaired and healthy, so not too painful in the end.