Replacing WD 4TB Red with Ironwolf in existing RAIDZ1

[Narwhal78]

Hi,

A drive in my RAIDZ1 (5 x WD 4TB EFRX) began to throw SMART errors yesterday. I had a cold hotspare (another WD 4TB EFXR) and replaced it with no issues.

Now I want to get another hotspare just in case. Problem with WD is SMR with EFAX models, andI don't want to get those. And also, I don't know if EFXR models being sold today are "current" (ie, still sold and supported by WD).

So I was looking into Ironwolf instead. By my question is: do these two manufacturers models share the same exact geometry if I were to replace one of the WD's with an Ironwolf one? I'm afraid there are slight differences in geometry and that one is, say 3.9999TB and the other one is 4TB. I'm not too worried about speeds and things like that, I've already found out that should be fine.

Thanks!

 

[subhuman]

Problem with WD is SMR with EFAX models, andI don't want to get those. And also, I don't know if EFXR models being sold today are "current" (ie, still sold and supported by WD).

https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library/en_us/assets/public/western-digital/product/internal-drives/wd-red-hdd/product-brief-western-digital-wd-red-hdd.pdf

The EFRX models are listed on the product brief, so that would seem to imply they are still supported drives.
For clarification, only EFAX drives 6TB and under are SMR. Larger EFAX are CMR.

 

[Samuel Tai]

You can always go with a larger IronWolf. It will join the pool without issues, but the extra space won't be available until all the drives in the RAIDZ1 are all replaced with the larger capacity.

 

[Narwhal78]

You can always go with a larger IronWolf. It will join the pool without issues, but the extra space won't be available until all the drives in the RAIDZ1 are all replaced with the larger capacity.

Thanks, so that actually means that there *is* a risk of getting a slightly smaller or different disk (even if they are both 4TB), and being unable to make it part of the pool?

 

[Narwhal78]

https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library/en_us/assets/public/western-digital/product/internal-drives/wd-red-hdd/product-brief-western-digital-wd-red-hdd.pdf

The EFRX models are listed on the product brief, so that would seem to imply they are still supported drives.
For clarification, only EFAX drives 6TB and under are SMR. Larger EFAX are CMR.

OK, thanks for pointing that out!

 

[danb35]

Thanks, so that actually means that there *is* a risk of getting a slightly smaller or different disk (even if they are both 4TB),

Disk capacities have been pretty standardized for quite some time now. On the off chance that the new disk is a tiny bit smaller, you can always disable swap creation on the new disk, which will give you 2 GB back.