WD Red NAS drive longevity?

[patseguin Global Moderator]

Anyone else who uses a NAS device with WD Red drives, how much longevity do you get out of them? I have a 10 bay setup and put it together around 3 years ago. Right now, I have a degraded volume with another bad drive. This is probably the 7th-8th drive I have had to replace. Is it normal to have to replace drives so frequently in a NAS?

[Psyscope]

3 Years?  Wow that doesn't sound good. What size were they?  Maybe Western Digital had issues with the early batch?  I believe of western Digital's line the GOld are the best. 

[Jim K Global Moderator]

I would say no ... no that isn't normal.  I bought 4 3TB Reds in December 2014 which are still going without issue in my NAS.  I bought a couple more 3TB  Red's in 2015 and a 8TB last year for additional NAS/HTPC storage ... and haven't had one fail yet.

 

7-8 of your drives failed??  Are they getting adequate cooling...clean power?  What kind of NAS box are you using?  Could they have been from the same "batch" as Psyscope suggested?  Hopefully you RMA'd them (I believe 3-yr warranty) 

[xendrome]

Yeah something isn't right here with your cooling or power...

[patseguin Global Moderator]

8 minutes ago, Jim K said:

I would say no ... no that isn't normal.  I bought 4 3TB Reds in December 2014 which are still going without issue in my NAS.  I bought a couple more 3TB  Red's in 2015 and a 8TB last year for additional NAS/HTPC storage ... and haven't had one fail yet.

 

7-8 of your drives failed??  Are they getting adequate cooling...clean power?  What kind of NAS box are you using?  Could they have been from the same "batch" as Psyscope suggested?  Hopefully you RMA'd them (I believe 3-yr warranty) 

It’s a Synology DS1511+ with the 5 bay add on. I haven’t bothered with RMA but maybe I should have. I just bought a new one on AMazon for $108 so it’s not like it breaks the bank. I’d just expect at least several years without ANY failing drives. Maybe I should try and RMA this bad one and then have a spare.

 

As for cooling, there is plenty. I keep it on a shelf in the basement where it’s cool and it’s open for plenty of airflow.

 

Now that I’m thinking about it now though, when I first set this up I used regular WD blue drives and every single one failed and I started replacing with red. This might be only the 2nd failure of one of the red drives.

[+Fahim S. MVC]

Have you bought the disks one at a time or all together?

 

They do have bad batches, and when buying multiple disks it's usually a sensible strategy to buy from a number of vendors to avoid getting lots of disks from the same batch.

My oldest disk in a NAS (a temp drive if you like) - is a 1TB Samsung disk which is now 11 years old. I expect it to fail any day now but it keeps on soldiering on.

[patseguin Global Moderator]

12 minutes ago, Fahim S. said:

Have you bought the disks one at a time or all together?

 

They do have bad batches, and when buying multiple disks it's usually a sensible strategy to buy from a number of vendors to avoid getting lots of disks from the same batch.

My oldest disk in a NAS (a temp drive if you like) - is a 1TB Samsung disk which is now 11 years old. I expect it to fail any day now but it keeps on soldiering on.

Actually, no. I started the whole system off with non NAS drives and as they failed, I replaced with Red drives until all 10 were red. I did buy them all from NewEgg but spread over a period of maybe a year or less.

[+Fahim S. MVC]

OK... I think that pretty much throws the bad batch theory out of the window. Can still happen with that purchasing pattern, but very unlikely.

 

Is power particular spikey where you are? Is the NAS plugged into a surge protector?

 

You may have the odd disk that fails in the 3-4 year timeframe but it shouldn't really happen.

Another strong case for taking good quality backups (remember RAID is not a backup strategy). 

 

 

[DevTech]

34 minutes ago, patseguin said:

Actually, no. I started the whole system off with non NAS drives and as they failed, I replaced with Red drives until all 10 were red. I did buy them all from NewEgg but spread over a period of maybe a year or less.

The WD Red drives were pushed as a response to the WD Green disaster.

 

The creation of so many drive versions these days is mainly a branding/marketing thing aimed at maintaining as much market as possible against the onslaught of SSD and most drives in most situations are more adaptable than the branding suggests.

 

The WD Blue is a quality drive superior to a WD Red which should have lasted well in your NAS.

 

Your failure rate of both Blue and Red is insane and should indicate a serious system issue.

 

- Perhaps the basement has power spikes?

- maybe the basement humidity is too high?

- maybe the basement has Radon gas?

- maybe the temperature is too low?

- any possible vibration sources not anticipated? (kids, dogs, passing buses, basement workshop, etc)

 

 

 

[DevTech]

- If nothing can be found as the "smoking gun" you could buy a WD Black as a long term experiment. It is the highest quality drive WD makes and their Enterprise versions are just branding (i.e. slap a different label on the drive)

 

- Another experiemnt would be to buy the exact model Hitachi drive identified in the Backblaze data as having excellent longevity. The Backblaze data is the ONLY reliable source of information on hard drive reliability but of course is limited to the exact models they use which are often impossible to find anymore since they have been updated or replaced in the marketplace by the time the longevity data is processed...

 

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

36 minutes ago, DevTech said:

- any possible vibration sources not anticipated? (kids, dogs, passing buses, basement workshop, etc)

 

I read that as "pissing buses". My mind sometimes comes up with the most ridiculous things...

[hjf288]

They don't recommend Reds for NAS using more than 8 drives (I believe due to vibration)

 

I've got 2 x 2TB Reds that are around 2 1/2 years old, 2 x 3TB reds that are around 2 years old without issue, also have 2 X 4TB Red Pros that are only a couple of months old.

 

Have you tested the drives on another machine (using WD lifeguard?) to rule out the Synology acting strange?

[DevTech]

29 minutes ago, Mindovermaster said:

I read that as "pissing buses". My mind sometimes comes up with the most ridiculous things...

Uric Acid delivered to hard drives could indeed explain the symptoms described.

 

I would assign that possibility to a very low probability event, but it should easily be subject to a visible surface analysis and chemo-receptor based olfactory test.

 

[Odom Member]

I haven't read the whole thread, but the WD Red drives are not rated for 10 drive NAS devices, they are only rated up to 8-bay NAS devices. If you have 10 bays, you should be going with the WD Red Pro series, as these are rated for up to 16 bays.

it could be that you have the wrong models and they are getting fragged due to the vibrations of having so many drives next to each other, for which they weren't designed.

The WD Reds that I have since a few years are still running, haven't had any issues yet with any of them.

[d5aqoëp]

Why not go for totally different brand like Seagate Ironwolf NAS series?

[DevTech]

On 2018-03-26 at 2:36 PM, Odom said:

I haven't read the whole thread, but the WD Red drives are not rated for 10 drive NAS devices, they are only rated up to 8-bay NAS devices. If you have 10 bays, you should be going with the WD Red Pro series, as these are rated for up to 16 bays.

it could be that you have the wrong models and they are getting fragged due to the vibrations of having so many drives next to each other, for which they weren't designed.

The WD Reds that I have since a few years are still running, haven't had any issues yet with any of them.

This does not possibly account for his insane failure rate. 

 

And most of these specialized drive brandings are just bogus anyways.

On 2018-03-26 at 2:46 PM, d5aqoëp said:

Why not go for totally different brand like Seagate Ironwolf NAS series?

Why not debug the root cause of his serious failure rates before sending more drives of any brand to their early death?

 

If your logic was applied in a military situation, you would be one of those commanders that was shot by friendly fire by "accident"

 

Be respectful of your loyal spinning platter troops! Don't send them to their doom!

 

[Odom Member]

15 hours ago, DevTech said:

And most of these specialized drive brandings are just bogus anyways.

Where do you get that from? Do you mean to say that all the extra technology and design listed on all the manufacturers websites is also bogus?

 

Quote

This does not possibly account for his insane failure rate. 

Still could be a combination of bad luck, wrong drives, wrong location to keep a NAS, etc.... With the information provided there is nothing to go on. The only thing I can think of for now is that the used drives are obviously not designed for NAS usage due to the reasons I already mentioned.

[DevTech]

2 hours ago, Odom said:

Where do you get that from? Do you mean to say that all the extra technology and design listed on all the manufacturers websites is also bogus?

 

Still could be a combination of bad luck, wrong drives, wrong location to keep a NAS, etc.... With the information provided there is nothing to go on. The only thing I can think of for now is that the used drives are obviously not designed for NAS usage due to the reasons I already mentioned.

Look, I can't help it if you don't understand how the industry works. Yes all the red drives for this, purple drives for that, pink-poka-dot drives for that is a bunch of mainly pure-**** designed as a branding/marketing ploy to help keep the hard drive industry alive against the tidal wave of SSD.

 

The "color coded" marketing campaign succeeded really well probably because the simplicity of it appealed to people that were previously overwhelmed with detailed specs. 

 

He does not have any problem whatsoever because he picked the wrong color of drive! There is something seriously wrong with his environment or his equipment.

 

[neufuse Veteran]

I have a 18 drive setup with WD red drives with one my my synology setups...  reads/writes about 1TB a week on 24/7 been running for 4yrs now and haven't lost a drive yet

[DevTech]

Slightly off-topic maybe, since posts in this thread have split into 2 camps of either A) Your NAS Box has Mice living inside it eating the wires versus B) You picked the wrong drives.

 

I am firmly with A) but here are my general thoughts on B)

 

Buy a disk drive depends what you need/want and individual psychology on where the perceived value might be in any purchase.

 

For backup, more people should just use backblaze.com instead of buying drives, which pushes longevity issues onto somebody else and prevents any data loss.

 

In reality, I am as paranoid as anyone about the death of a disk drive and have my voodoo preferences based on experience which is always going to be (mostly) non-science due to small sample size. For example, I generally prefer WD drives because they always get cranky and exhibit warning signs before they fail while Seagates have been as nasty as SSD failures - poof! no warning.

 

From a tech analysis perspective, I think WD Black drives are engineered with the best chance at reliability and so all else being equal that would be my default preference for any drive purchase for any task, including NAS.

 

The Backblaze reliability data suggests that Hitachi drives have a significant reliability increase over other brands but I have not yet had a chance to own a Hitachi drive.

 

So yes, if was populating a large NAS it would be WD Black 6 TB or else one of the Backblaze Hitachi drives.

 

There is probably no other category of tech purchase as frustrating as hard drives since one of the most vital and important characteristics of the drive is a secret.

 

The only reliable source of reliability for all of humanity is the Backblaze data since Google, Azure and AWS all keep a tight secret on this information.

 

[patseguin Global Moderator]

Just an update - I had ordered a replacement WD Red drive. I installed it and turned the NAS back on and it told me my volume was gone and had to be reformatted. I put the old drive back in and eventually figured out the volume just had to be REPAIRED after an improper shutdown. After 24+ hours of running the repair, everything is fine now.

 

I went through my history and found that it was the WD BLUE drives that systematically failed one by one. I haven't had to replace a single WD RED drive yet. These are advertised specifically as NAS drives so I figured they'd be best.

[+Warwagon MVC]

32 minutes ago, patseguin said:

Just an update - I had ordered a replacement WD Red drive. I installed it and turned the NAS back on and it told me my volume was gone and had to be reformatted. I put the old drive back in and eventually figured out the volume just had to be REPAIRED after an improper shutdown. After 24+ hours of running the repair, everything is fine now.

 

I went through my history and found that it was the WD BLUE drives that systematically failed one by one. I haven't had to replace a single WD RED drive yet. These are advertised specifically as NAS drives so I figured they'd be best.

For storage drives in my PC I buy WD Reds. Also for drives, I put in a Sata dock, back stuff up onto and disconnect. Not OS boot drives those are SSDs.

[notta]

I don't know guys. I have had 5 of these https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01K5XU966/ref=s9_acsd_simh_hd_bw_b1PRYq3_c_x_w?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=merchandised-search-4&pf_rd_r=SCTFDPEQ2NMDP7S9BMV3&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=7a6a68aa-96da-5137-9caa-9f257ebb3433&pf_rd_i=1292110011 drives in a raid 6 configuration, running 24x7 for over 4 years now, in my QNAP and have only had to 2 drives die in that time period. My QNAP is my storage for Kodi that I stream to my TV's and also use for backup. For the most part these drives have been rock solid and well worth the money. Going to the link now people seem to be ripping them for failing so I don't know if they have changed something or it's people bit*hing to bit*h. 

[adrynalyne]

9 minutes ago, notta said:

I don't know guys. I have had 5 of these https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01K5XU966/ref=s9_acsd_simh_hd_bw_b1PRYq3_c_x_w?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=merchandised-search-4&pf_rd_r=SCTFDPEQ2NMDP7S9BMV3&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=7a6a68aa-96da-5137-9caa-9f257ebb3433&pf_rd_i=1292110011 drives in a raid 6 configuration, running 24x7 for over 4 years now, in my QNAP and have only had to 2 drives die in that time period. My QNAP is my storage for Kodi that I stream to my TV's and also use for backup. For the most part these drives have been rock solid and well worth the money. Going to the link now people seem to be ripping them for failing so I don't know if they have changed something or it's people bit*hing to bit*h. 

So in a 4 year period, which doesn't seem abnormal for an HDD, you've had a 40% failure rate.

[sc302 Veteran]

1 hour ago, warwagon said:

For storage drives in my PC I buy WD Reds. Also for drives, I put in a Sata dock, back stuff up onto and disconnect. Not OS boot drives those are SSDs.

For storage on my pc's I buy ssd's.  I have a 32TB nas for movies and music and to backup.