Future of WD Red Plus drives, or anything similarly quiet?

Joined
Oct 20, 2016
Messages
34
I've bought a couple of 12TB WD Red Plus drives (model WD120EFBX) based in large part on the claimed noise levels (20 dBA idle, 29 dBA seek). They do seem to be pretty quiet so far, so I'm happy with them. I've realised I will need more space, so I'm thinking of getting a couple more, probably to make a 4-disk RAID-Z2 pool instead of the mirrored pair that I originally planned. My usage is going to be mostly just file storage and I would prefer to be resilient against the loss of any two drives, which is why I'm probably not going for two 2-way mirrors.

However, I read in this article on ServeTheHome that they say the WD Red Plus line is listed as Clearance on the WD website. I'd noticed some varying availability when I bought the first two, but assumed it was just general supply chain problems like with many other things nowadays.

Does anyone know whether the WD Red Plus drives are really being discontinued, and what the future might hold? Is there anything like them from another supplier? When I looked, it seemed that other options (WD Red Pro, WD Gold Seagate IronWolf, etc.) were all noisier than WD Red Plus. I'm a little concerned that if a drive fails I won't be able to buy a similarly quiet replacement in the future (unless big SSDs have become much cheaper by then!). Normally I'd assume that something bigger, quieter and cheaper will come along in time, but it seems that I might be falling into a gap between smaller SSDs and larger, noisier HDs.
 

artlessknave

Wizard
Joined
Oct 29, 2016
Messages
1,506
ironwolfs should be about the same, with a plus of not being WD and their sneakiness.
note that WD red PLUS is more equivalence to standard ironwolfs, not the advanced ones, because seagate didnt try and sneak SMR in and then have to create extra brands once people found out to try and make it make sense.
seagate doesnt HAVE a WD RED equivalent in the nas segment, because, again, they aren't liars
 
Joined
Oct 20, 2016
Messages
34
Thanks! But, is it really correct that the Ironwolfs are at a similar noise level? It seems like most of the comments I've seen online suggest that they are notably louder.

It's also not clear to me what the Ironwolf acoustic levels are actually claimed to be. In a datasheet dated 2018 the 12TB model ST12000VN0008 is listed as 1.8 bels idle / 2.8 bels seek. However, in a datasheet dated 2021 the same model ST12000VN0008 is listed as 2.8 bels idle / 3.0 bels seek, i.e. significantly louder, at least at idle.

I understand that you can't necessarily simply convert between bels and dBA, but wouldn't the 2021 numbers suggest that the Ironwolfs are louder than the Red Plus?
 

jgreco

Resident Grinch
Joined
May 29, 2011
Messages
18,681
Perhaps. So? With the implosion (okay, "consolidation") of the HDD marketplace down to two major vendors, your choices are going to be constrained. You can either buy your spare now, and hope you only need to use it, or take your chances on future availability. No one here is going to have a great degree of clarity on what the future holds, except that HDD is headed in the direction of slower, bigger storage. This may mean quieter drives, but if Seagate isn't focusing on noise, you'll only get the quieter as a side effect of reduced RPM, reduced power consumption, etc. The future is unfortunately going to be what it's going to be.
 

Etorix

Wizard
Joined
Dec 30, 2020
Messages
2,116
I understand that you can't necessarily simply convert between bels and dBA, but wouldn't the 2021 numbers suggest that the Ironwolfs are louder than the Red Plus?
It could well be… With Toshiba, there are still three HDD vendors, but that's not much better than two and none of them makes 5400 rpm drives in large capacity (WD's "5400 rpm-class" are down rated 7200 rpm drives).
The future of large capacity HDDs is probably as a speciality item for the data centre (where noise is NOT a concern), while consumers go SSD all the way (except perhaps the lowest and cheapest end which is not "large capacity" anyway). I would not trust 2-way mirrors at 12 TB capacity, so if you're satisfied with the noise level of four WD Red Plus the best advice is probably to get your drives now for a raidz2 (possibly with some cold spare) and hope they last.
 
Joined
Oct 20, 2016
Messages
34
Perhaps. So? With the implosion (okay, "consolidation") of the HDD marketplace down to two major vendors, your choices are going to be constrained. You can either buy your spare now, and hope you only need to use it, or take your chances on future availability. No one here is going to have a great degree of clarity on what the future holds, except that HDD is headed in the direction of slower, bigger storage. This may mean quieter drives, but if Seagate isn't focusing on noise, you'll only get the quieter as a side effect of reduced RPM, reduced power consumption, etc. The future is unfortunately going to be what it's going to be.
Thanks @jgreco, I'd suspected that might be the answer, but it's good to know that I wasn't missing something obvious. When you wrote "hope you only need to use it", did you mean "hope you never need to use it"?
 

jgreco

Resident Grinch
Joined
May 29, 2011
Messages
18,681
With Toshiba, there are still three HDD vendors

As I said, two major vendors. Toshiba's market share is about a quarter of Seagate or WD's. And I say this as someone who likes Toshiba's stuff. Their laptops were top notch, and drives were very reliable. I actually just logged a failure of a Toshy HDD in a 2013 era Toshy laptop. We bought a bunch of them back in the 2013-2014 timeframe and they've been super, I'm actually typing this on one of them right now... but their HDD business has never been strong.
 
Joined
Oct 20, 2016
Messages
34
The future of large capacity HDDs is probably as a speciality item for the data centre (where noise is NOT a concern), while consumers go SSD all the way (except perhaps the lowest and cheapest end which is not "large capacity" anyway). I would not trust 2-way mirrors at 12 TB capacity, so if you're satisfied with the noise level of four WD Red Plus the best advice is probably to get your drives now for a raidz2 (possibly with some cold spare) and hope they last.
Thanks, @Etorix, I'll probably do that. And of course, I hope that — by the time I need to replace more than one drive — SSDs will have become affordable enough to create pools of this capacity, but I don't know if that is guaranteed to happen, and how soon.

When it comes to a cold spare HDD, is there any best practice I should be aware of, apart from testing it first (e.g. with badblocks) before putting it into storage, and storing it somewhere safe (e.g. secure, dry, not too much temperature variation)?

I realise there's (hopefully) a high probability that the cold spare will go out of warranty before I have a drive fail on the main array. Would it make sense to test the cold spare every year or so just to check that it has not died?

I was considering using the 'spare' drive as part of a pool in a backup NAS (maybe a mirror), in order to avoid the 'waste' of it sitting on the shelf, where it might never be used. The idea was that — when I need it — I'd replace it in the backup NAS (where noise might be less of a problem, and it might not be running all the time) with whatever drive is for sale at that time, and move it over to the main NAS to replace the failed drive. However, I suppose this is a bad idea because it complicates things and puts more wear and tear on the 'spare'.
 

jgreco

Resident Grinch
Joined
May 29, 2011
Messages
18,681
badblocks is not a good disk test, especially on larger disks, as some posters recently discovered.

Speaking as someone who has a largish inventory of HDD's (thousands over the years), drives do not seem to go bad sitting on a shelf. It takes some adverse condition, i.e. temperature, humidity, oops I dropped it, etc.
 
Joined
Oct 20, 2016
Messages
34
badblocks is not a good disk test, especially on larger disks, as some posters recently discovered.

Oops — I did run badblocks on the first two 12TB drives, which I've already bought. Does "not good" here mean not useful, or does it actually damage the drives? I guess I should be using your solnet-array-test as described in the resources?

Speaking as someone who has a largish inventory of HDD's (thousands over the years), drives do not seem to go bad sitting on a shelf. It takes some adverse condition, i.e. temperature, humidity, oops I dropped it, etc.
Thanks, that's reassuring! I also found (in case anyone else is interested) some suggestions in another thread.
 

jgreco

Resident Grinch
Joined
May 29, 2011
Messages
18,681
There are few if any truly good drive testing utilities. My "test" was actually looking for a completely different issue, which was overall array performance issues on SCSI busses. The actual disk testing came along for a low cost. That's why it seems to have all that OCD in it about array performance.

Likewise, badblocks was never intended for disk TESTING. It was designed for bad block remapping/isolating, hence the name.

Most recently discussed at https://www.truenas.com/community/t...n-testing-discussion-thread.21451/post-683146

Does "not good" here mean not useful, or does it actually damage the drives?

badblocks has a 32-bit limit. It will not drown puppies or haunt your children. It just isn't designed for the job people seem to have abused it for.
 
Joined
Oct 22, 2019
Messages
3,589
It just isn't designed for the job people seem to have abused it for.
What about using it in the non-destructive read-write mode to forcefully write ("refresh") every sector again for drives that will be in cold storage for extended periods of time?

Or would using cat / dd suffice? (I'm not sure how well either will handle a sudden powerloss during such an operation.)

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sda bs=512K status=progress
 

Belphegor

Dabbler
Joined
Mar 21, 2020
Messages
11
Thanks! But, is it really correct that the Ironwolfs are at a similar noise level? It seems like most of the comments I've seen online suggest that they are notably louder.

It's also not clear to me what the Ironwolf acoustic levels are actually claimed to be. In a datasheet dated 2018 the 12TB model ST12000VN0008 is listed as 1.8 bels idle / 2.8 bels seek. However, in a datasheet dated 2021 the same model ST12000VN0008 is listed as 2.8 bels idle / 3.0 bels seek, i.e. significantly louder, at least at idle.

I understand that you can't necessarily simply convert between bels and dBA, but wouldn't the 2021 numbers suggest that the Ironwolfs are louder than the Red Plus?
A noisier drive revision could make sense if the 12 TB capacity units have been modified to use an open air disk compartment instead of a sealed helium one. This would be achieved by using higher density platters with fewer platters to reduce cost. All other things being equal, this would result in higher idle noise levels and similar seek noise levels.

I don't know if this is the case for this particular drive and find it puzzling that it wouldn't warrant a change in model number, but we have seen stranger things in the past years.

HDD manufacturers are probably no longer focussing on acoustics anyway with the higher number of platters required to reach current capacities. Noise conscious users have probably migrated to solid state disks or placed their NAS units away from users.
 

Belphegor

Dabbler
Joined
Mar 21, 2020
Messages
11
What about using it in the non-destructive read-write mode to forcefully write ("refresh") every sector again for drives that will be in cold storage for extended periods of time?

Or would using cat / dd suffice? (I'm not sure how well either will handle a sudden powerloss during such an operation.)

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sda bs=512K status=progress
I believe simply reading the disk content should be enough to trigger a rewrite of the affected sectors below a certain signal/noise threshold. This would be initiated by the drive itself as a maintenance task and is independent on the operating system or filesystem that is used.
 
Top