WD "RED" drives - are they any good for mdadm?

WD "RED" drives - are they any good for mdadm?

[maurice]

Thinking about trying some WD "RED" drives for a build.
Model # WD20EFRX

Does anyone have any experience with these they would care to share?



-- 
Cheers,
Maurice Hilarius
eMail: /mhilarius@gmail.com/

Re: WD "RED" drives - are they any good for mdadm?

[Phil Turmel]

On 12/17/2012 08:41 AM, maurice wrote:
> Thinking about trying some WD "RED" drives for a build.
> Model # WD20EFRX
> 
> Does anyone have any experience with these they would care to share?

I haven't used them yet, but I did check their detailed specs a few
weeks ago.  As far as I can tell, they should be fine for MD raid, as
long as you set the ERC to a reasonable value on every power cycle.

Phil

Re: WD "RED" drives - are they any good for mdadm?

[Mikael Abrahamsson]

On Mon, 17 Dec 2012, maurice wrote:

> Does anyone have any experience with these they would care to share?

I have three in production right now, having replaced failing green 
drives. This is the one that's been running the longest, so far without 
any problems at all. This is without any specific settings at all, just 
plugged it in and added it to the md-raid.

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model:     WDC WD20EFRX-68AX9N0
Serial Number:    WD-WMC<snip>
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 0035938bd
Firmware Version: 80.00A80
User Capacity:    2 000 398 934 016 bytes [2,00 TB]
Sector Sizes:     512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Device is:        Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is:   9
ATA Standard is:  Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is:    Mon Dec 17 15:33:57 2012 CET
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED 
WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
   1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
   3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   178   175   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       4066
   4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       15
   5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
   7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x002e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
   9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   096   096   000    Old_age   Always       -       3406
  10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
  11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
  12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       15
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       14
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   116   110   000    Old_age   Always       -       31
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0


-- 
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike@swm.pp.se

Re: WD "RED" drives - are they any good for mdadm?

[Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk]

> Thinking about trying some WD "RED" drives for a build.
> Model # WD20EFRX
> 
> Does anyone have any experience with these they would care to share?

AFAICS the red drives all spin at 5400RPM, so the speed from them will be quite a bit lower than from a 7k2 drive…

Vennlige hilsener / Best regards

roy
--
Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk
(+47) 98013356
roy@karlsbakk.net
http://blogg.karlsbakk.net/
GPG Public key: http://karlsbakk.net/roysigurdkarlsbakk.pubkey.txt
--
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Re: WD "RED" drives - are they any good for mdadm?

[Michael-John Turner]

On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 06:41:38AM -0700, maurice wrote:
> Thinking about trying some WD "RED" drives for a build.
> Model # WD20EFRX

I purchased four recently to extend a RAID6 set and they've been working
just fine, although it's obviously still very early days. One thing to
remember is that they're 4k sector drives - if you're using partitions, be
sure to align them appropriately.

-mj
-- 
 Michael-John Turner
 mj@mjturner.net      <>     http://mjturner.net/

Re: WD "RED" drives - are they any good for mdadm?

[Bill Davidsen]

maurice wrote:
> Thinking about trying some WD "RED" drives for a build.
> Model # WD20EFRX
>
> Does anyone have any experience with these they would care to share?
>
No, they're available big and cheap, but I confess that I don't see why a drive 
series (red) is needed for NAS use, as opposed to cabled (eSATA) connection. Not 
sure how the drive use would be different, but they are, as noted, big and cheap.

This has some data on the goals for the drive: 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236344&nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL020813&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL020813-_-EMC-020813-Index-_-InternalHardDrives-_-22236344-L0A

But the actual seek time, rpm and such, didn't pop up in the few places which I 
checked. Note these drives are (a) low power and noise, (b) designed for 7x24 
operation, and (c) three year warranty rather than two. I would definitely 
expect them to be a good choice for a RAID array no matter how it's connected.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot

Re: WD "RED" drives - are they any good for mdadm?

[Drew]

> No, they're available big and cheap, but I confess that I don't see why a
> drive series (red) is needed for NAS use, as opposed to cabled (eSATA)
> connection. Not sure how the drive use would be different, but they are, as
> noted, big and cheap.

It makes sense to me at least.

The big differentiators between the Red & Green/Blue series is
ERC/TLER and the warranty terms. The drives come equipped with TLER
set, which is helpful if you run RAID sets, the reasons for which this
group is well versed in. The drives are also warrantied for 3yrs (as
opposed to 2yrs) *and* specifically allow for use in enclosures of up
to 4 bays. Apparently the Green & Blues aren't covered if use in
enclosures.

I think at the end of the day the addition of Red's was market driven
as a lot of people purchase these little home RAID boxes and find out
the warrany on cheap drives doesn't cover that use, but at the same
time, won't speend several hundred dollars *each* on enterprise
drives.

I personally have used a 4 pack of these hung off a LSI 9204 raid
controller and performance is okay but not spectacular. That'd be
because of the drives supposedly vary from 5400 to 7200 rpm depending
on load. I treat them like 5400rpm drives and the benchmarks seem to
bear that out. Good for bulk storage in home use, not so good for bulk
storage in commercial use, except perhaps in 3rd or 4th tier storage
where who cares how fast they are, what I call legal drives. (As in,
we only keep them around for data the auditors & legal types may
want.)


-- 
Drew

"Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood."
--Marie Curie

"This started out as a hobby and spun horribly out of control."
-Unknown

Re: WD "RED" drives - are they any good for mdadm?

[Daniel Browning]

On Friday 08 February 2013 1:47:42 pm Bill Davidsen wrote:
> maurice wrote:
> > Thinking about trying some WD "RED" drives for a build.
> > Model # WD20EFRX
> >
> > Does anyone have any experience with these they would care to share?

I've bought 8 of them over the last 6 months. One was DOA. Right now they're 
all in a linux md raid6 (LSI 9220-8i HBA) and working great. The reason I 
selected this model is price per GB, TLER, and warranty.

> But the actual seek time, rpm and such, didn't pop up in the few places
> which I checked.

This is one that I read before buying:

http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_red_nas_hard_drive_review_wd30efrx

On Friday 08 February 2013 2:31:24 pm Drew wrote:
> I personally have used a 4 pack of these hung off a LSI 9204 raid
> controller and performance is okay but not spectacular.

Agreed. I only get about 145 MB/s seq r/w on the outer edge of the spindle and 
I'm guessing it will probably be around 80 MB/s on the inner edge. Definitely 
not 15K enterprise drives. On the 8-disk raid6 I get about 130 MB/s rebuild, 
1000 MB/s seq read.

--
DB

Re: WD "RED" drives - are they any good for mdadm?

[Bill Davidsen]

Drew wrote:
>> No, they're available big and cheap, but I confess that I don't see why a
>> drive series (red) is needed for NAS use, as opposed to cabled (eSATA)
>> connection. Not sure how the drive use would be different, but they are, as
>> noted, big and cheap.
> It makes sense to me at least.
>
> The big differentiators between the Red & Green/Blue series is
> ERC/TLER and the warranty terms. The drives come equipped with TLER
> set, which is helpful if you run RAID sets, the reasons for which this
> group is well versed in. The drives are also warrantied for 3yrs (as
> opposed to 2yrs) *and* specifically allow for use in enclosures of up
> to 4 bays. Apparently the Green & Blues aren't covered if use in
> enclosures.
That was my point, the requirements for NAS vs. an enclosure in a box on eSATA 
are essentially, run in an enclosure 7x24. Other than marketing the method of 
attaching the box of drives shouldn't matter to the drive. And they're cheaper 
than enterprise drives, which are mainly faster, an issue which really isn't 
going to matter a lot to SOHO users.
> I think at the end of the day the addition of Red's was market driven
> as a lot of people purchase these little home RAID boxes and find out
> the warrany on cheap drives doesn't cover that use, but at the same
> time, won't speend several hundred dollars *each* on enterprise
> drives.
>
> I personally have used a 4 pack of these hung off a LSI 9204 raid
> controller and performance is okay but not spectacular. That'd be
> because of the drives supposedly vary from 5400 to 7200 rpm depending
> on load. I treat them like 5400rpm drives and the benchmarks seem to
> bear that out. Good for bulk storage in home use, not so good for bulk
> storage in commercial use, except perhaps in 3rd or 4th tier storage
> where who cares how fast they are, what I call legal drives. (As in,
> we only keep them around for data the auditors & legal types may
> want.)
>
>
I would be interested to see if the performance really does get better with 
load, and how much load it takes. Maybe read a few TB off an array and measure 
the effective transfer rate every 10MB or so. Interesting project, I will 
probably try these the next time I need storage.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>
   We are not out of the woods yet, but we know the direction and have
taken the first step. The steps are many, but finite in number, and if
we persevere we will reach our destination.  -me, 2010

Re: WD "RED" drives - are they any good for mdadm?

[Mikael Abrahamsson]

On Fri, 8 Feb 2013, Drew wrote:

> I personally have used a 4 pack of these hung off a LSI 9204 raid
> controller and performance is okay but not spectacular. That'd be
> because of the drives supposedly vary from 5400 to 7200 rpm depending

Nah, the variable spin speed was an misinterpretation of some blogs and 
article writers from reading the WD material.

It's fixed spin speed, but it might vary within the same series with 
different capacities. Most of the time it's 5400-5900 for this type of 
drive.

-- 
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike@swm.pp.se

Re: WD "RED" drives - are they any good for mdadm?

[Piergiorgio Sartor]

On Sat, Feb 09, 2013 at 09:10:11AM +0100, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:
> On Fri, 8 Feb 2013, Drew wrote:
> 
> >I personally have used a 4 pack of these hung off a LSI 9204 raid
> >controller and performance is okay but not spectacular. That'd be
> >because of the drives supposedly vary from 5400 to 7200 rpm depending
> 
> Nah, the variable spin speed was an misinterpretation of some blogs
> and article writers from reading the WD material.
> 
> It's fixed spin speed, but it might vary within the same series with
> different capacities. Most of the time it's 5400-5900 for this type
> of drive.

Does anybody know if the REDs support Staggered Spin Up?

I could not find any info on that on WDC web site.

In the past, some WDC HDDs supported SSU by software
and/or by jumper, but on these it seems unknown.

Thanks,

bye,

-- 

piergiorgio

Re: WD "RED" drives - are they any good for mdadm?

[Brad Campbell]

On 09/02/13 16:20, Piergiorgio Sartor wrote:

> Does anybody know if the REDs support Staggered Spin Up?
>
> I could not find any info on that on WDC web site.
>
> In the past, some WDC HDDs supported SSU by software
> and/or by jumper, but on these it seems unknown.

All my WD drives (Greens and Blacks) do out of the box, so I'd assume 
the RED does too. In fact, I think the last drive I tried that did not 
was an old 250GB Maxtor. Everything else seems to.

Re: WD "RED" drives - are they any good for mdadm?

[Piergiorgio Sartor]

On Sat, Feb 09, 2013 at 08:38:34PM +0800, Brad Campbell wrote:
> On 09/02/13 16:20, Piergiorgio Sartor wrote:
> 
> >Does anybody know if the REDs support Staggered Spin Up?
> >
> >I could not find any info on that on WDC web site.
> >
> >In the past, some WDC HDDs supported SSU by software
> >and/or by jumper, but on these it seems unknown.
> 
> All my WD drives (Greens and Blacks) do out of the box, so I'd
> assume the RED does too. In fact, I think the last drive I tried
> that did not was an old 250GB Maxtor. Everything else seems to.

Maybe, but some do by software, some by jumper and
some others by SATA pin. Or combinations of that.

So, I was curious, since one WDC I've can be
configure by jumper (and software) and it has
the "instructions" on the HDD itself.

bye,

-- 

piergiorgio