Western Digital Red 8TB Video Review

The part about heat transfer does not make sense to me. Without air of any type, there is no friction and thus no heat generated by the platters. The only heat would then be that coming from the motor, which is already attached to the steel case for heat dissipation from outside air. Helium seems to do well in heat transfer, but the steel case should be able to dissipate the motor's heat. I guess its a bonus to help the drive stay cool, but I doubt it's really needed unless the spindle is transferring heat from the motor to the platters. I'd be interested to know if that actually happens.
Heat generated at the motor and bearings will conduct everywhere it can--into the frame of the hard drive, yes, but also into the platters, and from there into the air in the drive and then to the chassis. Sure, it's a less direct route, but it still transfers that way. The amount of air resistance in a drive is very small in any case--the platters are quite smooth.

Even if you ignore the necessity of a gas in the drive (to let the heads fly over the platters), maintaining a vacuum for years under hundreds or thousands of thermal cycles is a challenge. Even if you engineer it so that the only penetrations are for electrical connections, it's still a matter of percentages--some (very tiny) amount is going to leak.

plus isn't air an insulator?
Air *is* a good insulator...when it's not moving. A vacuum, on the other hand, is an *excellent* insulator.

Nope, air is a decent conductor of thermal energy (HVAC guy here). It just depends on temperature differentials.
Air is decent at transferring heat...when it's moving (as in an HVAC system).
 
Heat generated at the motor and bearings will conduct everywhere it can--into the frame of the hard drive, yes, but also into the platters, and from there into the air in the drive and then to the chassis. Sure, it's a less direct route, but it still transfers that way. The amount of air resistance in a drive is very small in any case--the platters are quite smooth.

Even if you ignore the necessity of a gas in the drive (to let the heads fly over the platters), maintaining a vacuum for years under hundreds or thousands of thermal cycles is a challenge. Even if you engineer it so that the only penetrations are for electrical connections, it's still a matter of percentages--some (very tiny) amount is going to leak.

Air *is* a good insulator...when it's not moving. A vacuum, on the other hand, is an *excellent* insulator.

Air is decent at transferring heat...when it's moving (as in an HVAC system).
Thanks for explaining it more clearly.
 
interesting, but there are some sellers that are selling enterprise drives on ebay.. dirt cheap. no idea how. I recently ordered 8x 6tb RE 4kN drives. Came brand new from WD(were supposed to be recertified) but only 4 month warranty vs 5 years. I paid $183 per drive.. Very happy with my 8x RE drives in my synology 1815 hah.
 
The second is at BB waiting for me to pick it up. I don't plan to open up the second one though. I'm just going to use it for external storage.
So I got the 2nd one, it doesn't benchmark quite as well as the first, but still better than the WD80EZZX. :confused:

Curiosity got the better of me and I decided to open it and see what drive was in it. I found a HUH728080ALE601 just like was in the first one. :confused: I have no idea why it's about 15-20MB/sec slower than the other. I put it back in the shell and will use it as is.

WD_mybook_8TB_ATTO_d2.png


WD_mybook_8TB_CDM_d2.png
 
The way the He8 shakes & hums on initial startup, it's easy to tell whether it's an He8 or not.
 
Dammit, it's a WD80EZZX. Ordered from Amazon. Not benching too well, but part of it might be my laptop.

MyBook 8TB CrystalDiskMark.png
MyBook 8TB ATTO.png
 
a bit OT but here

local 24 hr bestbuy in nyc has 6 of these my book 8tb in the cabinet

interesting thing i noticed, they have some with DCM: HEBHMCK, which i believe might be newer drives

the one i have at home is GEBHMCK, and i hand picked a GEBHMCK to purchase. also hand picked one with a serial number close to mine which starts with 2EJL
will get to check speed later

DCM = Drive config matrix, which might mean something. might not.
This is the Drive Configuration Matrix string, which identifies the configuration of the drive, such as type of motor, number of platters, heads, and even the casing etc.

confirmed that both of my drives are HUH728080ALE601
Can someone with the wd80ezzx check to see what the dcm is, its right by the upc on the label.
 
With the advent of SSDs, I've found HDD reviews to be a bit... off target.

I guess if you really reviewed a HDD for what people were going to use it for, it would be like this:

Western Digital 8TB HDD review:

"Yup. Its a drive, it holds 8TB. It works. 10/10"

I'm not into mass storage, though. I really could care less about how fast, noisy, hot or pretty my drive is. I only care about one thing: Reliability. My SSDs have to worry about speed, noise, temperature in my main rig. Reliability is nice, but secondary to the SSD. The HDDs in my server's JBOD are in the garage: ALL I care about is that they stay alive and store shit. Compartmentalization: SSDs are fast, sleek and sexy, HDDs are big, fat and reliable. I don't need one to be both.
 
a bit OT but here

local 24 hr bestbuy in nyc has 6 of these my book 8tb in the cabinet

interesting thing i noticed, they have some with DCM: HEBHMCK, which i believe might be newer drives

the one i have at home is GEBHMCK, and i hand picked a GEBHMCK to purchase. also hand picked one with a serial number close to mine which starts with 2EJL
will get to check speed later

DCM = Drive config matrix, which might mean something. might not.


confirmed that both of my drives are HUH728080ALE601
Can someone with the wd80ezzx check to see what the dcm is, its right by the upc on the label.

That looks to match up with what I got. Two reds with DCM HEBHMCK and one He8 with DCM GEBHMCK. Too bad all of my local best buys are totally sold out.
 
That looks to match up with what I got. Two reds with DCM HEBHMCK and one He8 with DCM GEBHMCK. Too bad all of my local best buys are totally sold out.
I got He8's in my two. I have to check how they're labelled when I get home. I'm still puzzled why the one is about 10% slower in STR than the other though. Can you run CDM and ATTO on your HUH728080ALE601 and WD80EZZX if they're still in the USB 3.0 enclosure?

Note the WD80EZZX is not a Red. It's a 5400RPM He8.
 
So I got the 2nd one, it doesn't benchmark quite as well as the first, but still better than the WD80EZZX. :confused:

Curiosity got the better of me and I decided to open it and see what drive was in it. I found a HUH728080ALE601 just like was in the first one. :confused: I have no idea why it's about 15-20MB/sec slower than the other. I put it back in the shell and will use it as is.

View attachment 1436

View attachment 1437

so my first drive has 205 read/write all around, while my 2nd one shows 220 read/write all around but had lower iops. weird drives, don't think cdm is doing it right
 
I got He8's in my two. I have to check how they're labelled when I get home. I'm still puzzled why the one is about 10% slower in STR than the other though. Can you run CDM and ATTO on your HUH728080ALE601 and WD80EZZX if they're still in the USB 3.0 enclosure?

Note the WD80EZZX is not a Red. It's a 5400RPM He8.

I took them out of the enclosures as soon as I got them. I can try popping the pcb's back on and testing them after the badblocks runs are done.

FWIW, I'm referring to the WD80EZZX as a Red because even if it's based on the He8 it's clearly not identifying as a He8, while the relabeled HUH728080 drives are.
 
so my first drive has 205 read/write all around, while my 2nd one shows 220 read/write all around but had lower iops. weird drives, don't think cdm is doing it right
I have no idea... I'm pretty sure my benchmarks are accurate. I tested them with something else that reads and writes data for over 5 minutes per block size. Those number agreed with ATTO and CDM (for STR). Interesting that you have one that's even faster. It's like WD made a batch of prototype drives with different firmware tweaks until they hit the performance level they were after or something and then decided to white label those drives and ship 'em in the WD My Book 8TB enclosures to use them up.

I've got a ~205 R/W drive and a ~190 R/W drive.
 
I bought 2 from Fry's in Chicago and both were the WD Reds (or HGST 5400s). I have one to pick up from Best Buy today and will report back. Interesting if DCM GEBHMCK means something. I'm going back to Fry's today to return the two I bought and I will see if any of them have the DCM GEBHMCK on them.

Do we feel like the HGST 5400 Heliums will be good drives for a NAS (stripe 2 together just for Blu-ray videos that I don't care if I lose). 16TB of nice cool high end drives for $500 is a lot cheaper than any other options I can find.
 
Oh, another note to help you guys. There is a SUPER EASY way to open these things. I opened 2 of them in 3 minutes and you can't even tell they were opened and they still click closed perfectly! If you already knew it, sorry but I see so many people talking about breaking the tabs.

All it took was a credit card or similar sized tool.

Check out this guy's video:
 
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anyone happen to check if their drives kept the changed TLER setting after reboot? I haven't gotten around to doing it myself yet.
 
anyone happen to check if their drives kept the changed TLER setting after reboot? I haven't gotten around to doing it myself yet.
I haven't tried it, but even real enterprise drives don't keep the changes after power cycle, so is it really a valid test?
 
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anyone happen to check if their drives kept the changed TLER setting after reboot? I haven't gotten around to doing it myself yet.
someone on another forum tested it. Does not keep TLER after reboot
 
What is the real world effect of the TLER setting being off in the typical raid situations? I have read up on it a little but in a typical Raid (either hardware or software) what are the issues we would see?

I'm also wondering if I should just keep these HGST 5400 RPM drives for $270 each. I'm more concerned in drive longevity than getting a little more performance.
 
Was just wondering if it would be possible to properly enable it, that's all.
I'm not sure.

However, I made an error in my earlier post, which I've gone back and corrected. Real enterprise drives don't keep the setting through a power cycle. They will keep the setting through a reboot.
 
Found 2 of the older ones at my local B&M only ones in 250 mile radius. About to open and will report back to confirm the GEBHMCK is the hotness.
 
That looks to match up with what I got. Two reds with DCM HEBHMCK and one He8 with DCM GEBHMCK. Too bad all of my local best buys are totally sold out.
My two drives had He8's in them. Both were GEBHMCK.
 
What drive would be in the Mac version of the 8tb mybook?

My guess is those are slow movers at B&M stores.
 
I picked up another one at my local Best Buy. Checked the serial numbers on the ones on the shelf & got the one that was closest. Turned out to be right & got another He8. Benching at 210MB read & 213MB write.
 
so is HE8 better than a Red?


The He8's are 7200rpm drives. Very fast. They also have a media caching algorithm built into them if I remember correctly, don't know if the Reds have that or not. Mine consistently run between 180MB/s & 200MB/s on dvd & blu-ray transfers.
 
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I also picked up a drive today after visiting 3 Best Buy stores - 2 had the HEBHMCK's and 1 store had the GEBHMCK Qty 1 on-hand.

I'm burning it in now in the enclosure before taking it out.

HDDSCAN will identify the drive correctly without opening the enclosure.
 

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Well....on the third pass of badblocks one of the HEBHMCK's is now up to 2000+ comparison errors, so something's definitely wrong with that drive. Other two are still holding steady.
 
Now that we've extracted the goods, is there a way to re-purpose the case/usb to sata bridge? I tried putting in another SATA drive, and connected it to a Windows 10 PC, but can't seem to initialize the drive. I get an error saying that the drive is smaller that what is required for GPT even though it's a 3TB drive. MBR also does not work although I get a different error message (says drive error).

Thanks.
 
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