Western Digital 4TB Intellipower SATA 6Gb/s 64 MB Cache 3.5-Inch NAS Desktop Hard Disk Drive - Red (WD40EFAX)

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Robert – I generally look for low-cost CMR drives, and expect that they will fail on me. While I expect the drive failures, I also look for a predictable level of performance during operation and rebuilds. In both cases, the WD Red SMR drives would not work for me personally. I will also say that a likely part of the problem here is that these are DM-SMR drives that hide the fact they are SMR from the host. SMR drive support is getting better when hosts know they are using SMR drives.

The biggest advantage of the Red SATA III drives is the fact that they have been specially developed for use in smaller NAS systems. Theoretically, these also work with normal desktop hard drives, whereby an algorithm should always determine the best possible relationship between reliability and transmission performance. For NAS and RAID environments, the manufacturer has designed these drives in such a way that they should last for many years even in continuous operation. RAID error recovery protocols also reduce the risk of failure. The MTBF is specified as up to one million hours of continuous operation. Ultimately, the Western Digital Red SATA III with NCQ support is a much more professional solution for 24-hour continuous operation than classic desktop and notebook hard drives, which of course were not designed and tested for these conditions. Available in Different Memory Capacities I received a phone call from the rep this morning. They were apologetic, but then they dropped the bombshell: All Seagate 2.5″ drives are SMR, they no longer make 2.5″ PMR drives. So, if anyone needs to know WHAT INTERNAL DRIVE MODEL they have in their WD EXTERNAL ENCLOSURES, install https://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskinfo and COPY PAST the info to the clipboard! (EDIT -> COPY or CTRL-C). Paste it to a text editor, and voila!!!The 68N32N0 is a newer model with 3 x 1.33TB platters and only 6 heads. It is lighter, at around 638g in the anti-static bag, and marginally faster than the older model. The top cover is quite different as well. Something we noticed is that the test that immediately followed the file copy test was a sequential CrystalDiskMark workload: SMR CrystalDiskMark Someone said this is part of a RACE for BIGGER capacities. It can be… BUT, before that happens, WD is probably using the most demanding customers / environments to TEST SMR tech so they can DEPLOY them in the bigger capacity DRIVES: 8, 10, 12, 14TB and beyond (do not currently exist). I say this because, WD has the same “infected SMR drives” using the well known PMR tech! https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library/en_us/assets/public/western-digital/product/internal-drives/wd-red-hdd/data-sheet-western-digital-wd-red-hdd-2879-800002.pdf

I generally tell people RAID arrays tend to operate at the speed of their slowest part. If you mix drives, the slower ones tend to dictate performance more times than not.Customers MUST be informed of this new tech, even those using EXTERNAL SINGLE DRIVES ENCLOSURES!!! I have many WD external drives, and i DON’T WANT any drive with SMR!!! Period! The 68WT0N0 has 4 x 1TB platters and 8 heads. It is a heavy drive at about 700g. I’ve also personally had RMAs involving this model, but of course WD would never admit to a systemic issue. When it comes to data recovery one of the most common problems Western Digital WD40EFRX Hard Disk Drive experience is burnt circuit board(PCB). So if you will need to match a replacement PCB, it is important that you note the “ Board Number” of your current circuit board in addition to the hard drive’s “ Model Number“.