Western Digital Red 8TB Video Review

Anyone encountered RMA issues with WD refusing to honor the warranty claiming it wasn't used in the NAS, but in a desktop, server or similar etc? Lots of similar comments on amazon about it.
WD reps keep spewing out for people who complain their drives failed, WD says Reds are designed for NAS enclosure, almost as if they're saying you're voiding the warranty. Their warranty does state something to that effect, that warranty doesn't apply if you use it in desktop or enterprise environment.

What are your RMA experiences with WD?
 
Hammer! said:
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.
Click to expand...
Did you clean the disk with diskpart prior to connecting it to the SATA to USB bridge? Or was is totally unused?
 
Tried with a drive "cleaned" using DISKPART and still the same problem.

The drives works with other Sata to USB bridges...is there something special with the my book bridge?
 
Last edited:
kandrey89 said:
Anyone encountered RMA issues with WD refusing to honor the warranty claiming it wasn't used in the NAS, but in a desktop, server or similar etc? Lots of similar comments on amazon about it.
WD reps keep spewing out for people who complain their drives failed, WD says Reds are designed for NAS enclosure, almost as if they're saying you're voiding the warranty. Their warranty does state something to that effect, that warranty doesn't apply if you use it in desktop or enterprise environment.

What are your RMA experiences with WD?
Click to expand...

Were they returning the drives in the enclosure (i.e. My Book) or trying to send the drives in "sans-enclosure"?

I'm sure WD has logged the drive serial numbers to the My Book's for production and blocked those serial numbers if a "raw" drives warranty is claimed. This is why I would try to take apart the enclosure as carefully as possible so you could reassemble and return as a "whole unit" and obviously you won't get a HGST Enterprise drive back but you'll still get an 8TB drive for the money spent.
 
Cruisinforgold said:
Were they returning the drives in the enclosure (i.e. My Book) or trying to send the drives in "sans-enclosure"?

I'm sure WD has logged the drive serial numbers to the My Book's for production and blocked those serial numbers if a "raw" drives warranty is claimed. This is why I would try to take apart the enclosure as carefully as possible so you could reassemble and return as a "whole unit" and obviously you won't get a HGST Enterprise drive back but you'll still get an 8TB drive for the money spent.
Click to expand...
This is amazon, written about Red series drives, no enclosed drive break-out there.
 
Picked up a My Book at Best Buy today. Broke it out of the enclosure and it's the WD80EZZX. Crystal disk below. I'm happy for the money.
 

Attachments

  • EEZZ Bench.jpg
    EEZZ Bench.jpg
    115.7 KB · Views: 129
I bought three of these at area Best Buy stores. Three units at three stores due to short supply however all stores were not far off my normal commute. Two are excellent - they are indeed the He8 drives. A bit slow to spin up and get recognized but they work great.

The third - very sad story. When plugging it in, no drive spin-up however the light would go on. Tried the power supplies and USB cables of the first two, to no avail. I had a concern, as the first two were shrinkwrapped whereas the third had been sitting on the shelf... butI thought "maybe a connector came loose and I can fix it?" I decided to sneak a peak inside the enclosure. Sure enough, someone took the original drive out, tossed in some 40GB junker and took it back to the store. VERY UNCOOL.

I'm going to take it back to the store tomorrow telling them it's not working but I need to figure out a way to let them know that they really need to check this one out before they put in on the shelf, without my being left holding the bag. Suggestions welcomed. I'm definitely going to mention that I bought two others that were fine and in shrink wrap but this one wasn't and maybe it is used model? And to the person who did this, who likely is reading this thread or the pcper one, you're one classy person.
 
> I need to figure out a way to let them know that they really need to check this one out before they put in on the shelf ...

This isn't novel to Best Buy. Tell them exactly what happened.
 
Hammer! said:
Does anyone know if the enclosures from older versions of mybook work with non-original hard drives?
Click to expand...
The 5TB that Best Buy was selling also does not work with the 6TB Red drive in it. Didn't try the 8TB HGST drive in the 5TB enclosure, the 8TB drives require more power & I didn't want to mess up the drive.
 
I did return the one drive to Best Buy.

A couple of days later I passed a different one on the way back from the dentist and poked in to see any MY2016 TVs... nothing interesting there however they did have one more 8TB drive with the magic GEBHMCK on the bottom... and it's another He8 so that's 3/3 with GEBHMCK on the box. Unfortunately most in the stores seem to be HEBHMCK which I've gathered is the slower drive.
 
Took my son to go look around at the local BB last night and they had a GEB. Had to buy it.
 
ufokillerz said:
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.
Click to expand...

Mine from amazon says DCM HEBHMCK. It is the 5400rpm drive but was not looking for a performance drive but a storage drive. It popped up an error message when I was copying files, that never happened before unless the drive was bad and had uncorrectable errors.. But I clicked retry and it went on copying.. So not sure is TLER is disabled on these. WDC WD80EZZX-11CSGA0 : 8001.5 GB Firmware : 83.H0A03
 
The DC adapter comes with
tikiman2012 said:
The 5TB that Best Buy was selling also does not work with the 6TB Red drive in it. Didn't try the 8TB HGST drive in the 5TB enclosure, the 8TB drives require more power & I didn't want to mess up the drive.
Click to expand...
a 1.5A one where as others/seagate/WD come with 2A and my Toshiba 5TB drive came with a 3A DC adapter.. HGST has these spec'd at under 8watts..The adapter can only do 18 Watts max anyway so it requires less not more.

The toshiba is the fastes drive have seen, does 220MB+ and at 11ms.. The seagate is a 7200rpm drive.. the WDC is 5400rpm..
SATA6GB (2) ST3000DM001-1E6166 Sequential Read : 121.433 MB/s Sequential Write : 139.978 MB/s
USB3 (3) WDC WD80EZZX-11CSGA0 Sequential Read : 147.500 MB/s Sequential Write : 138.116 MB/s
USB3 (4) TOSHIBA MD04ACA500 Sequential Read : 176.098 MB/s Sequential Write : 134.709 MB/s

I am getting read errors with this drive. Guess the TLER has a problem where the read error retries is set very low so it fails after getting just one error.. Pressing retry will continue and work..

I also tried its USB3 bridge board and it will not work with any other drive, maybe because it has hardware encryption built into the bridge rather than the drive although it looks like it is a third party bridge board and the toshiba uses a very similar one although that board works with all hard drives. These bridge board does not do logical address translations so the drive will work as is as an internal drive. Seagates on the other hand requires a reformat for use in SATA ports..
 
Last edited:
Picked up 7x on Amazon couple days ago and all were HGST Ultrastar He drives! *happyface*
 
Bought 4 on Amazon recently and they are showing pretty decent results in CDM as all of them are WD80EZZX's

Here are the benches for all 4 drives.

5GvHgil.png
7piqOpF.png
KnEniny.png
6anRiSC.png
 
Last edited:
wow I'm behind! I thought 6TB was the largest currently available. Man I'd love me a nice 4 drive raid 10 with 8tb each drive! Geez
 
Hi guys, all this talk about WD 8tb My book makes me want to buy some.

I notice the standard warranty is only 2 years on the 8tb WD My book, but the 8tb WD My book for MAC is 3 years warranty, and guess what, it's the same price!

Has anybody purchased a My book for Mac and cracked it open to see which drive is inside ? This could be the perfect deal !

Maybe somebody would consider buying one to take a look. =)
 
WD RED 8TB WD80EFZX hdparm and smartctl

hdparm -I output

Code: 
ATA device, with non-removable media
        Model Number:       WDC WD80EFZX-68UW8N0                  
        Serial Number:      xxxxxxxx          
        Firmware Revision:  83.H0A83
        Transport:          Serial, ATA8-AST, SATA 1.0a, SATA II Extensions, SATA Rev 2.5, SATA Rev 2.6, SATA Rev 3.0; Revision: ATA8-AST T13 Project D1697 Revision 0b
Standards:
        Used: unknown (minor revision code 0x0029)
        Supported: 9 8 7 6 5
        Likely used: 9
Configuration:
        Logical         max     current
        cylinders       16383   16383
        heads           16      16
        sectors/track   63      63
        --
        CHS current addressable sectors:   16514064
        LBA    user addressable sectors:  268435455
        LBA48  user addressable sectors:15628053168
        Logical  Sector size:                   512 bytes
        Physical Sector size:                  4096 bytes
        Logical Sector-0 offset:                  0 bytes
        device size with M = 1024*1024:     7630885 MBytes
        device size with M = 1000*1000:     8001563 MBytes (8001 GB)
        cache/buffer size  = unknown
        Form Factor: 3.5 inch
        Nominal Media Rotation Rate: 5400
Capabilities:
        LBA, IORDY(can be disabled)
        Queue depth: 32
        Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, no device specific minimum
        R/W multiple sector transfer: Max = 16  Current = 0
        Advanced power management level: 254
        DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6
             Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns
        PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
             Cycle time: no flow control=120ns  IORDY flow control=120ns
Commands/features:
        Enabled Supported:
           *    SMART feature set
                Security Mode feature set
           *    Power Management feature set
           *    Write cache
           *    Look-ahead
           *    Host Protected Area feature set
           *    WRITE_BUFFER command
           *    READ_BUFFER command
           *    NOP cmd
           *    DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
           *    Advanced Power Management feature set
                Power-Up In Standby feature set
           *    SET_FEATURES required to spinup after power up
                SET_MAX security extension
           *    48-bit Address feature set
           *    Device Configuration Overlay feature set
           *    Mandatory FLUSH_CACHE
           *    FLUSH_CACHE_EXT
           *    SMART error logging
           *    SMART self-test
           *    Media Card Pass-Through
           *    General Purpose Logging feature set
           *    WRITE_{DMA|MULTIPLE}_FUA_EXT
           *    64-bit World wide name
           *    URG for READ_STREAM[_DMA]_EXT
           *    URG for WRITE_STREAM[_DMA]_EXT
           *    WRITE_UNCORRECTABLE_EXT command
           *    {READ,WRITE}_DMA_EXT_GPL commands
           *    Segmented DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
                unknown 119[6]
                unknown 119[7]
           *    Gen1 signaling speed (1.5Gb/s)
           *    Gen2 signaling speed (3.0Gb/s)
           *    Gen3 signaling speed (6.0Gb/s)
           *    Native Command Queueing (NCQ)
           *    Host-initiated interface power management
           *    Phy event counters
           *    NCQ priority information
           *    unknown 76[15]
                Non-Zero buffer offsets in DMA Setup FIS
           *    DMA Setup Auto-Activate optimization
                Device-initiated interface power management
                In-order data delivery
           *    Software settings preservation
                unknown 78[7]
                unknown 78[10]
                unknown 78[11]
           *    SMART Command Transport (SCT) feature set
           *    SCT Write Same (AC2)
           *    SCT Error Recovery Control (AC3)
           *    SCT Features Control (AC4)
           *    SCT Data Tables (AC5)
           *    reserved 69[3]
           *    WRITE BUFFER DMA command
           *    READ BUFFER DMA command
Security:
        Master password revision code = 65534
                supported
        not     enabled
        not     locked
        not     frozen
        not     expired: security count
        not     supported: enhanced erase
Logical Unit WWN Device Identifier: 5000xxxxxxxxxxxx
        NAA             : 5
        IEEE OUI        : 00xxxx
        Unique ID       : xxxxxxxxx
Checksum: correct

smartctl -A output

Code: 
=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
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     0x000b   100   100   016    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  2 Throughput_Performance  0x0005   130   130   054    Pre-fail  Offline      -       120
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0007   100   100   024    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       6
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   005    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000b   100   100   067    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  8 Seek_Time_Performance   0x0005   128   128   020    Pre-fail  Offline      -       18
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       87
10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0013   100   100   060    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       5
22 Unknown_Attribute       0x0023   100   100   025    Pre-fail  Always       -       100
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       11
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       11
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0002   206   206   000    Old_age   Always       -       29 (Min/Max 25/34)
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0022   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0008   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x000a   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 
16 heads? Does that mean 8 x 1TB platters? I thought WD had at least 1.2TB platters by now, and I thought I read that the 6TB WD Red was 5 x 1.2TB.
 
Those are logical heads and cylinders and sectors/track. The numbers have been bogus for backwards compatibility for decades.
 
Enterprise drives like He8s and all RED drives will have TLER as the default setting.
 
Over on the FreeNAS forum they are finding that the He8s TLER is disabled by default and won't survive a reboot. I know the REDs have it (running 12 of those in a RAID6 array off an Areca 1882 controller),but I'm thinking of picking up 20 of the 8TB My Books, but need to know for sure that TLER works 100% and that WD didn't gimp the firmware for use in those consumer My Books to prevent use in NAS environments. Don't really care if I get the 7200 or 5400 RPM drives, in fact 5400 might use less power, as long as TLER is supported.
 
That makes sense, given that the USB drives aren't sold for RAID use. It's how WD has been doing business for years, selling similar (more likely, identical) drives that have different firmware and warranties and labeling them for different uses.
 
Any updates on whether these white label WD Reds have TLER enabled? and IF you enable TLER does it survive a reboot?
 
pclausen said:
Over on the FreeNAS forum they are finding that the He8s TLER is disabled by default and won't survive a reboot. I know the REDs have it (running 12 of those in a RAID6 array off an Areca 1882 controller),but I'm thinking of picking up 20 of the 8TB My Books, but need to know for sure that TLER works 100% and that WD didn't gimp the firmware for use in those consumer My Books to prevent use in NAS environments. Don't really care if I get the 7200 or 5400 RPM drives, in fact 5400 might use less power, as long as TLER is supported.
Click to expand...

If you are cracking open a mybook for the drive, all bets are off. These are not necessarily going to be the same thing as a drive that retails as a RED.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
If you are cracking open a mybook for the drive, all bets are off. These are not necessarily going to be the same thing as a drive that retails as a RED.
Click to expand...

Definitely true and confirmed with my mix of mybook drives and legit Red's. Firmware versions are different and TLER does not stay on any of the mybook drives.
 
Neb said:
Definitely true and confirmed with my mix of mybook drives and legit Red's. Firmware versions are different and TLER does not stay on any of the mybook drives.
Click to expand...

If the hardware is the same, I wonder if it is possible to flash the firmware from a retail RED drive to a white label RED drive.
 
The WDC
Stereodude said:
Did you clean the disk with diskpart prior to connecting it to the SATA to USB bridge? Or was is totally unused?
Click to expand...
This WDC drives can been encrypted and hence the system is matched. Any changes and it wont work. Neither will the board work with any other drive. But the drive itself will show up properly as a blank to be used in a desktop etc.. The board looks very similar to the Toshiba board and does work with it but without the encryption features. The board can not be used with any other drive other than the one it was matched with. Even though on a system the encrypted partition shows up as a different drive and the main one shows up as having no space and blank. Maybe all data encryption on HD's are done this way, the drive itself has no capability to encrypt data like SSD's do.
 
Cruisinforgold said:
Were they returning the drives in the enclosure (i.e. My Book) or trying to send the drives in "sans-enclosure"?

I'm sure WD has logged the drive serial numbers to the My Book's for production and blocked those serial numbers if a "raw" drives warranty is claimed. This is why I would try to take apart the enclosure as carefully as possible so you could reassemble and return as a "whole unit" and obviously you won't get a HGST Enterprise drive back but you'll still get an 8TB drive for the money spent.
Click to expand...

Heh these drives are also region locked so if you take it to Europe you wont get any warranty. Seagate is also the same way and like you mentioned, sending the bare drive back also is out of warranty. I know before 2010 they would accept just the drive but now no one does.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top