Harvesting WD easystore external drives for NAS drives?

Status
Not open for further replies.

akalin

Dabbler
Joined
Feb 12, 2017
Messages
15
According to this thread on Reddit, the 8 TB WD easystore currently on sale for $160 has WD80EFAX WD Red drives in them.

Are these worth buying instead of buying the 8 TB WD Reds normally, which are at $260, and the earlier WD80EFZX model? (Which has 128MB cache instead of 256MB.) Are there any differences between the Red drives in these external drives?

Also, looking over my earlier purchase of the 8 TB WD Reds, it seems that B&H sold me WD80EFRX instead of WD80EFZX. Watch out!
 

Stux

MVP
Joined
Jun 2, 2016
Messages
4,367
You'll lose the warranty

So if you do go this way it'd be a good idea to thoroughly test/burnin the drives before shucking
 

dwhite78

Dabbler
Joined
Jul 22, 2017
Messages
17
According to this thread on Reddit, the 8 TB WD easystore currently on sale for $160 has WD80EFAX WD Red drives in them.

Are these worth buying instead of buying the 8 TB WD Reds normally, which are at $260, and the earlier WD80EFZX model? (Which has 128MB cache instead of 256MB.) Are there any differences between the Red drives in these external drives?

Also, looking over my earlier purchase of the 8 TB WD Reds, it seems that B&H sold me WD80EFRX instead of WD80EFZX. Watch out!
I'm deploying 64 TB of them in a new build. I've had them burning in since this morning. From what I can tell I see no difference in drive.

Since this is solely for plex media I'm not concerned with drive warranty at this price point.
 

Stux

MVP
Joined
Jun 2, 2016
Messages
4,367

akalin

Dabbler
Joined
Feb 12, 2017
Messages
15
Okay, so I ended up getting 6 of the easystores to replace the ones I bought earlier. I was planning to hook them up via usb 3.0 and run the usual tests on them before shucking, but whenever I try a long SMART test, it seems to stop after a few minutes. I'm guessing this is because the controller thinks there's no disk activity and goes to sleep, interrupting the SMART test. Bleh. So I think I'll just run badblocks instead.

I wonder if there's an easy way to prevent it from going to sleep so the SMART test can run to completion. I guess maybe a script to periodically touch the drive to wake it up, e.g. smartctl -a /dev/da0?

Also, I noticed I had one of them on my desk upside down, so I stupidly grabbed it and turned it around, forgetting that it was on (!). I definitely felt a torque as I turned it over -- I hope I didn't cause any damage that way. (Although someone told me it's 'guaranteed' to cause some sector damage...) Thoughts?
 

Stux

MVP
Joined
Jun 2, 2016
Messages
4,367
Okay, so I ended up getting 6 of the easystores to replace the ones I bought earlier. I was planning to hook them up via usb 3.0 and run the usual tests on them before shucking, but whenever I try a long SMART test, it seems to stop after a few minutes. I'm guessing this is because the controller thinks there's no disk activity and goes to sleep, interrupting the SMART test. Bleh. So I think I'll just run badblocks instead.

I wonder if there's an easy way to prevent it from going to sleep so the SMART test can run to completion. I guess maybe a script to periodically touch the drive to wake it up, e.g. smartctl -a /dev/da0?

I suspect that'd work.

Also, I noticed I had one of them on my desk upside down, so I stupidly grabbed it and turned it around, forgetting that it was on (!). I definitely felt a torque as I turned it over -- I hope I didn't cause any damage that way. (Although someone told me it's 'guaranteed' to cause some sector damage...) Thoughts?

If it did cause damage, the smart/badblock tests would pick it up. I think you'll find its okay.
 

siconic

Explorer
Joined
Oct 12, 2016
Messages
95
Wow! Those are the sealed helium ones! For $179!!!!

I have seen this in the past, with other brands and models, and I always wonder: Why can you pick up an external HDD for $179.99, but a barebones disk of the same exact type is $275?????
 
Last edited:

Inxsible

Guru
Joined
Aug 14, 2017
Messages
1,123
I recently bought 6TB Ironwolfs for $179 each. Maybe these 8TBs would have been better. price/TB wise at least.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top