Amazon.com has
4TB WD Red Plus NAS 5400 RPM 3.5" Internal Hard Drive (WD40EFZX) for
$89.99.
Shipping is free.
Thanks to community member
WingsOfF for finding this deal.
Note, in stock April 9, 2021.
About this item:- Supports up to 180 TB/yr workload rate* * Workload Rate is defined as the amount of user data transferred to or from the hard drive. Workload Rate is annualized (TB transferred ✕ (8760 / recorded power-on hours)). Workload Rate will vary depending on your hardware and software components and configurations.
- NASware firmware for compatibility
- Small or medium business NAS systems in a 24x7 environment
- 3-year limited warranty
Top Comments
Seagate pulled a horrible thing with earlier versions of Ironwolf. They sold the higher capacity models with 7200rpm. But it looks like they were not mechanically stable for that speed and there has been a lot of reports of the same problems as mine, eating away their sectors slowly with increasing reallocation until they die or slow down considerably.
They quietly replaced some of the same models with the same number but spindle speed slowed down to 5600 rpm. So, the earlier performance numbers in reviews no longer apply.
I would not recommend any of the 7200rpm IronWolf drives at the moment.
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63 Comments
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There is a better option with higher cache and double read speed on the same price
Try the following
https://www.amazon.com/Red-4TB-Internal-Hard-Drive/dp/B083XVY99B/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=WD40EFAX&qid=1615937760&sr=8-2
There is a better option with higher cache and double read speed on the same price
Try the following
https://www.amazon.com/Red-4TB-In...760&sr=8-2
Just in the past year, with a few good reliable drive generations available, I finally was willing to consider seagate again after the disaster that was the 7200.xx series.
But seriously, not all of these issues come in some authenticated reports. These models change so often, no one is keeping track what model did what. My research was to figureout what to do with this drive and put several pieces of information together.
Here is my research when I began to experience apps using the media on that drive starting to hang or freeze intermittently. Looked at SMART. I discovered that my Iron Wolf had started increasing its reallocated sector count. Typically even 20-30 total is considered bad and indicating a bad drive. Mine had reached about 200 and adding on 5-10 bad sectors a day.
I did some research to figure out what would be the threshold for RMA based on reallocated sector count. That is when I cam across a number of posts that had mentioned Iron Wolf in that context. That seemed oddly coincidental. But there was more.
I then noticed that the G-Sense_error rate had shot up to 25000+. This was very odd for a drive mounted with vibration dampeners in a non-portable heavy case. Even dropping the drive while running doesn't necessarily result in such a large number.
I did some research on this and the possible explanations, other than external shocks, included electromechanical issues with the drive itself triggering the shock sensors. When I researched on this unit, I again come across a few mentions of the IronWolfs with high G sense error rates. Double conincidence.
Then when I started looking at purchasing another to copy this and send it off for RMA, I noticed that the page for my purchased drive on Amazon had disappeared. There was a different page with the same model number and someone in the same boat had left a recent comment there putting the above two coincidences together and making the same conjecture. The new listings for this model were no longer 7200rpm for the 6tb. There was no announcement from Seagate and the model number was exactly the same. When companies do this I get suspicious.
I cross checked with comments on Newegg (all these retailers mix up comments from multiple models). The comments there confirmed that there was sufficient anecdotal evidence that this model goes fine for a while but somewhere between a year and two, it starts losing sectors in a steady fashion.
So, there was an issue with the 7200rpm spindles that Seagate "fixed" by lowering the rpm for the same model or getting a different lower rpm motor.
So, at this point I would not trust the 7200rpm drives on any of these IronWolf models and definitely not on the 6TB model.
Do whatever inference you will or believe from the above research. This was just an annoyed customer putting two and two together, not the typical all my Seagates died and no WD died or vice versa kind of comments like you find here which are worthless.
I don't have loyalty to any brand. Everyone of them has bad models and good models and it is becoming increasingly difficult to figure out which one is good or bad before purchase.
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But seriously, not all of these issues come in some authenticated reports. These models change so often, no one is keeping track what model did what. My research was to figureout what to do with this drive and put several pieces of information together.
Here is my research when I began to experience apps using the media on that drive starting to hang or freeze intermittently. Looked at SMART. I discovered that my Iron Wolf had started increasing its reallocated sector count. Typically even 20-30 total is considered bad and indicating a bad drive. Mine had reached about 200 and adding on 5-10 bad sectors a day.
I did some research to figure out what would be the threshold for RMA based on reallocated sector count. That is when I cam across a number of posts that had mentioned Iron Wolf in that context. That seemed oddly coincidental. But there was more.
I then noticed that the G-Sense_error rate had shot up to 25000+. This was very odd for a drive mounted with vibration dampeners in a non-portable heavy case. Even dropping the drive while running doesn't necessarily result in such a large number.
I did some research on this and the possible explanations, other than external shocks, included electromechanical issues with the drive itself triggering the shock sensors. When I researched on this unit, I again come across a few mentions of the IronWolfs with high G sense error rates. Double conincidence.
Then when I started looking at purchasing another to copy this and send it off for RMA, I noticed that the page for my purchased drive on Amazon had disappeared. There was a different page with the same model number and someone in the same boat had left a recent comment there putting the above two coincidences together and making the same conjecture. The new listings for this model were no longer 7200rpm for the 6tb. There was no announcement from Seagate and the model number was exactly the same. When companies do this I get suspicious.
I cross checked with comments on Newegg (all these retailers mix up comments from multiple models). The comments there confirmed that there was sufficient anecdotal evidence that this model goes fine for a while but somewhere between a year and two, it starts losing sectors in a steady fashion.
So, there was an issue with the 7200rpm spindles that Seagate "fixed" by lowering the rpm for the same model or getting a different lower rpm motor.
So, at this point I would not trust the 7200rpm drives on any of these IronWolf models and definitely not on the 6TB model.
Do whatever inference you will or believe from the above research. This was just an annoyed customer putting two and two together, not the typical all my Seagates died and no WD died or vice versa kind of comments like you find here which are worthless.
I don't have loyalty to any brand. Everyone of them has bad models and good models and it is becoming increasingly difficult to figure out which one is good or bad before purchase.
I don't have loyalty to any brand. Everyone of them has bad models and good models and it is becoming increasingly difficult to figure out which one is good or bad before purchase.
if this is indeed a wider issue that hasn't been uncovered yet, i hope it does soon, and your contribution would be invaluable. if it was due to a small batch of bad units, then i hope people will understand the clear distinction you made above that it is one person's experience, and that potential customers shouldn't write off an entire brand due to an anecdote.
we all like to crap on seagate for the 3tb barracuda fiasco (sh*tgate) along with potentially other units, but they make some decent quality products as well (otherwise there's no way they would've survived this long). it stinks that we as customers have to be this vigilant to know which products are good and bad from the same brand.
Point being - Just because you had a bad experience with Seagate doesn't mean it's all bad. It only means you had a bad experience.
if this is indeed a wider issue that hasn't been uncovered yet, i hope it does soon, and your contribution would be invaluable. if it was due to a small batch of bad units, then i hope people will understand the clear distinction you made above that it is one person's experience, and that potential customers shouldn't write off an entire brand due to an anecdote.
we all like to crap on seagate for the 3tb barracuda fiasco (sh*tgate) along with potentially other units, but they make some decent quality products as well (otherwise there's no way they would've survived this long). it stinks that we as customers have to be this vigilant to know which products are good and bad from the same brand.
Since they have stopped making the 7200rpm drives for 6TB, it may never surface as the problem would be limited to the people who bought the initial batch. As to whether it affects higher capacity drives which are still 7200rpm, don't know.
However, I must say that it is not just one person's experience but rather one person's investigation that surfaced some consistent patterns and a plausible theory for the sudden change by Seagate. This is what I was trying to say and it is different from people saying my Seagate died and so the brand sucks, That is one person's experience.
But I agree about not brand smearing if only to say there are no saints and it is really caveat emptor.
With these high capacity drives, I think NAS with some redundancy to survive single points of failure may become a necessity going forward. Terabytes of backups aren't cheap.
And Seagate have announced they will be bringing out 50TB and 100TB drives soon.
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https://www.backblaze.c
This is the newest report and a I googled a few of the model numbers listed in the blog and it was Exos enterprise hard drives. There is a link at the bottom of page that has detail info you can download.
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