Which 4TB RED for GPT/NTFS data use?

[Shou Miko]

I been looking to replacing my 2 old WD Red WD40EFRX drives because 1 of them has now failed with a bad sector.


They have surved me well I think I purchased them back in 2014/2015 and they been used for DATA and Games all this time so this was a good purchase back in the day.

Now in moderen times there is all this talk about CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording) and SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) and I do not run ZFS or anything like this just Windows 11 Pro with NTFS so what should I buy if I want 2 drives to try to last as long as these 2?

I been looking at these 2 RED drives.
WD40EFAX (Red), 5400rpm & 256MB cache (CMR) for about £87/$121 a pop
WD40EFZX (Red Plus), 5400rpm & 128MB cache (SMR) for about £91/$126 a pop

One of the disk will be for DATA/download scratch drive and the other for my Plex server.

*EDIT*

I actually ended up ordering 2 WD Purple WD40PURZ to release both my old read drives.

I still got a WD10PURZ and WD40PURX running with no issues at all.

The 4TB I got in a second hand deal it was unopened and unused still running strong and I purchased the 1TB model to replace a failing WD Gold driver it still runs perfect.

I know these models are only got 64MB cache but for my Plex and data use they are fine and they been powered on for plus 15.000 hours with hiccups.

 

[chrcoluk]

Buy CMR regardless, the price difference is really low to the point of me thinking why did WD even bother with SMR given it appears to have a tiny cost saving (unless they subsidising their CMR drives to keep the prices low).

SMR drives have to work harder so more wear and tear, and in my view they too new to the market for them to have a track record built up, plus you never know if you will repurpose the drive in future.

 

[Toothless]

Gsmartcontrol can possibly tell you how bad the sectors are. For example my WD Purple 4TB has 248 dead sectors.

 

[newtekie1]

Buy CMR regardless, the price difference is really low to the point of me thinking why did WD even bother with SMR given it appears to have a tiny cost saving (unless they subsidising their CMR drives to keep the prices low).

I think the actual truth is WD is keeping the SMR drives' price high to maximize profit.

and in my view they too new to the market for them to have a track record built up

SMR drives have been on the market for something like 10 or more years now. Plenty of time to build up a track record. They are reliable and work find when used in appropriate situations.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I been looking to replacing my 2 old WD Red WD40EFRX drives because 1 of them has now failed with a bad sector.

Given what the SMART data shows, I would say that drive is not dead. Use HDDScan to run a surface test on it to see what is really going on.

HDDScan - FREE HDD and SSD Test Diagnostics Software

HDDScan is a Free test tool for hard disk drives, USB flash, RAID volumes and SSD drives. The utility can check your disk for bad blocks in various test modes.

hddscan.com

With this utility you will be able to determine if the drive is actually on the brink(sector access times will be very poor) or if it's just got a few age induced bad sectors(sector access for the vast majority of sectors will be fast). With HDDs, as a drive ages a few of the weaker sectors will go bad even though the drive as a whole is fine.

If things still look ok after a complete surface scan, get an external USB enclosure and use the drive for casual data transfers and storage. I have an old 1TB Seagate drive in a similar condition and the bad sectors are the only problem. Even though the SMART data give a warning(and it's been like that for 7 years) the drive continues to plug along. So don't throw that drive away. Test it and repurpose it if it's just a few bad sectors. Throwing it away would be terrible waste...

I actually ended up ordering 2 WD Purple WD40PURZ to release both my old read drives.

Excellent choices! Those are good drives!

 

[Shou Miko]

Given what the SMART data shows, I would say that drive is not dead. Use HDDScan to run a surface test on it to see what is really going on.

HDDScan - FREE HDD and SSD Test Diagnostics Software

HDDScan is a Free test tool for hard disk drives, USB flash, RAID volumes and SSD drives. The utility can check your disk for bad blocks in various test modes.

hddscan.com

With this utility you will be able to determine if the drive is actually on the brink(sector access times will be very poor) or if it's just got a few age induced bad sectors(sector access for the vast majority of sectors will be fast). With HDDs, as a drive ages a few of the weaker sectors will go bad even though the drive as a whole is fine.

If things still look ok after a complete surface scan, get an external USB enclosure and use the drive for casual data transfers and storage. I have an old 1TB Seagate drive in a similar condition and the bad sectors are the only problem. Even though the SMART data give a warning(and it's been like that for 7 years) the drive continues to plug along. So don't throw that drive away. Test it and repurpose it if it's just a few bad sectors. Throwing it away would be terrible waste...


Excellent choices! Those are good drives!

Sorry for the late answer but I had data in the bad sector I couldn't get out but all other data were fine which was annoying.

 

[Jetster]

You got your moneys worth out of that drive

 

[Toothless]

Given what the SMART data shows, I would say that drive is not dead. Use HDDScan to run a surface test on it to see what is really going on.

HDDScan - FREE HDD and SSD Test Diagnostics Software

HDDScan is a Free test tool for hard disk drives, USB flash, RAID volumes and SSD drives. The utility can check your disk for bad blocks in various test modes.

hddscan.com

With this utility you will be able to determine if the drive is actually on the brink(sector access times will be very poor) or if it's just got a few age induced bad sectors(sector access for the vast majority of sectors will be fast). With HDDs, as a drive ages a few of the weaker sectors will go bad even though the drive as a whole is fine.

If things still look ok after a complete surface scan, get an external USB enclosure and use the drive for casual data transfers and storage. I have an old 1TB Seagate drive in a similar condition and the bad sectors are the only problem. Even though the SMART data give a warning(and it's been like that for 7 years) the drive continues to plug along. So don't throw that drive away. Test it and repurpose it if it's just a few bad sectors. Throwing it away would be terrible waste...


Excellent choices! Those are good drives!

I like this program. Showed me I had over a billion dead sectors and took six days if scanning to see how dead my 4TB failed. Gsmartcontrol said over 17,000 errors. Coworkers and I had daily updates on how screwed it was. Fun times.

 

[Shou Miko]

You got your moneys worth out of that drive

Yeah, I don't complain about the like 7 years it's been running it's been inside builds, in USB 3.0 enclosures and so on it never failed me.

I have one more about the same age still running strong, but now it's going over to be the same drive as my failed drive.

But this was the main reason I purchased 2x4TB this time since prices are sky high for anything over 4TB sadly.

I was aiming for a 10TB like the one I pulled out of WD's enclosure but too expensive now even compared to a 8TB the 2 drives was cheaper.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Sorry for the late answer but I had data in the bad sector I couldn't get out but all other data were fine which was annoying.

No worries. Have you rescanned the drive for bad sectors to see if the drive is failing or just has age-induced sector failures?

 

[neatfeatguy]

Sorry for the late answer but I had data in the bad sector I couldn't get out but all other data were fine which was annoying.

Hopefully you had a backup to replace that data you couldn't get. I haven't had any issues with my WD 4TB Red drives. I've been running them for the past 3 years in my Plex server. I've got all the info backed up on two different HDDs, just to be safe....I'd hate to have to rip nearly 6TBs of all the movies/TV shows again.

Spoiler

For corrupted/bad sectors: Worst issues for me was at my last job and a site called in with issues on their system. I'd track the problem down to a corrupted MS Access database and then eventually discover that the database was on bad sectors on the store's server. I'd have to manually go through and rebuild the database and repopulate all the information that I could get from the file - if they didn't have a proper backup setup for their system (and surprisingly many stores didn't have any kind of redundancy for their system. Kicker of the thing was that it usually happened with the largest database the software used because it housed all of the stores sales history and money information for deposits, pull drawers, and such and also clock in/outs for all employment history, pay wages.....so much information held in one database). Nothing more exciting than spending half a day on one store's issue because they didn't back up their data.

 

[Shou Miko]

No worries. Have you rescanned the drive for bad sectors to see if the drive is failing or just has age-induced sector failures?

I tried but he just went on and said more then 36hours for a normal sfc scan.

Hopefully you had a backup to replace that data you couldn't get. I haven't had any issues with my WD 4TB Red drives. I've been running them for the past 3 years in my Plex server. I've got all the info backed up on two different HDDs, just to be safe....I'd hate to have to rip nearly 6TBs of all the movies/TV shows again.

Spoiler

For corrupted/bad sectors: Worst issues for me was at my last job and a site called in with issues on their system. I'd track the problem down to a corrupted MS Access database and then eventually discover that the database was on bad sectors on the store's server. I'd have to manually go through and rebuild the database and repopulate all the information that I could get from the file - if they didn't have a proper backup setup for their system (and surprisingly many stores didn't have any kind of redundancy for their system. Kicker of the thing was that it usually happened with the largest database the software used because it housed all of the stores sales history and money information for deposits, pull drawers, and such and also clock in/outs for all employment history, pay wages.....so much information held in one database). Nothing more exciting than spending half a day on one store's issue because they didn't back up their data.

There were some data I couldn't recuse but that was the newest so I just had to make the data again.

This I can live with no issue.

 

[Hardcore Games]

The OP's model disk is known from the WD Red Plus line and my records show it has 64MB cache, 5400 rpm

I recommend server class disks for a NAS which have more cache and faster overall performance

I have extensive tables of hard disks, lots of them

 

[Shou Miko]

The OP's model disk is known from the WD Red Plus line and my records show it has 64MB cache, 5400 rpm

I recommend server class disks for a NAS which have more cache and faster overall performance

I have extensive tables of hard disks, lots of them

Drives are too expensive at the moment like 10TB went up like £100 since February this year so I settled for 2xWD People already own one and it does fantastic for my Plex data.

 

[Hardcore Games]

Drives are too expensive at the moment like 10TB went up like £100 since February this year so I settled for 2xWD People already own one and it does fantastic for my Plex data.

I have not procured any hard disks since earlier this year and the ST8000DM004 was $10 cheaper than the one I bought 4 months earlier.

 

[Shou Miko]

I have not procured any hard disks since earlier this year and the ST8000DM004 was $10 cheaper than the one I bought 4 months earlier.

My history with Seagate is really bad because I had a lot of Barruacuda 7200.12 drives back in the day and ever since that time I never really used Seagate for my own computer.

 

[Hardcore Games]

My history with Seagate is really bad because I had a lot of Barruacuda 7200.12 drives back in the day and ever since that time I never really used Seagate for my own computer.

which models of disk failed on you?

 

[Shou Miko]

which models of disk failed on you?

My remember is not that good seriously I am getting older this is really long time ago been using WD since like 2000 or something permanent.

 

[Hardcore Games]

back around then disks were transition from lead solder to new formulations and I recall some disks died from the

the ST3500320AS lasted for 24665 hours before it croaked, warranty provided the ST3750525AS which lasted 22611 hours before it croaked

a salvaged ST380815AS lasted 13129 hours, came from a lenovo desktop that died

I keep a spreadsheet on OneDrive with all my disks, date of procurement and serial numbers etc I also track hours on the disks as they age

 

[silentbogo]

SMR drives have been on the market for something like 10 or more years now. Plenty of time to build up a track record. They are reliable and work find when used in appropriate situations.

But consumer SMR drives are still as bad as they were back then. Good thing manufacturers are now required to disclose which models are CMR and which ones are shingled.

Now in moderen times there is all this talk about CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording) and SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) and I do not run ZFS or anything like this just Windows 11 Pro with NTFS so what should I buy if I want 2 drives to try to last as long as these 2?

I've never actually had any issues with RAID(or speed degradation in general), but most SMR drives get very loud over time. Had a pair of perfectly functional 4TB Seagate Compute drives in my NAS (bought before spec controversy surfaced on the net), and had to replace them for a pair of 3TB WD Reds cause the spin-up noise was unbearable. My server was in the attic above the 2nd floor, and I could hear it all the way to the 1st floor across the entire house, whenever our dudes were uploading gigs of logs, or mdadm was syncing on weekends. Almost as loud as my cheap-ass washing machine.
Same thing happened with WD Blues at work. I've replaced those with smaller 1TB Toshiba P100's - the cheapest drives on the market, but CMR and quite reliable (bought around 10 of those for various projects, and so far no issues).

 

[lexluthermiester]

But consumer SMR drives are still as bad as they were back then. Good thing manufacturers are now required to disclose which models are CMR and which ones are shingled.

They are slower, nothing more. SMR recording is a proven reliable technology. It's not great in certain use-case-scenario's, but that can be said of a lot of technologies.