WD Easystore External Discussion

I'm using a brand new EVGA Supernova P2 PSU less than a month old...

I'll try the molex to sata power adapter trick though.
 
Using a SATA to MOLEX cable, and then a MOLEX back to SATA power cable did the trick. I'm surprised that EVGA P2 PSU's don't meet the new standard. I literally just got this one last week.
 
Using a SATA to MOLEX cable, and then a MOLEX back to SATA power cable did the trick. I'm surprised that EVGA P2 PSU's don't meet the new standard. I literally just got this one last week.
Just because it's new doesn't mean they care to adhere to the standard. This will probably take years for all the manufacturers to adopt. Right now it's just a major pain for us because WD implemented it on these externals, which providers no benefit but does work with their controllers.
 
FWIW, I would not do a splitter fix, tape looked to be more reliable/safer. EVERY sata power tap I have ever had has melted and made an awful plastic smell as it slowly melted away...
 
FWIW, I would not do a splitter fix, tape looked to be more reliable/safer. EVERY sata power tap I have ever had has melted and made an awful plastic smell as it slowly melted away...
Gotta make sure it's an assembled part on the sata end, not molded. Then you'll be safer. It's always the molded sata parts that melt.
 
Appreciate the advice. This is very much temporary just for doing a Burst plot. Once it is done, it will go in a Supermicro server with as SAS2 backplane that fortunately does support this pin3 non-sense.
 
If anyone is in need of these I have four of these 8TB drives that I shucked and ended up not needing. I will post these to the FS/T section soon. These spent maybe two weeks powered up in my Dell PowerEdge R320 and were then powered off. Three of these drives are red-label, one is white. All 256MB cache models.

I'll get photos and S.M.A.R.T. stats for anyone interested. I have excellent Heatware.

Price?
 
Just because it's new doesn't mean they care to adhere to the standard. This will probably take years for all the manufacturers to adopt. Right now it's just a major pain for us because WD implemented it on these externals, which providers no benefit but does work with their controllers.
I emailed evga about this and they said it was a server feature and was not supported on consumer grade PSUs. Paraphrasing from memory. Luckily my back planes are molex.
 
I have four of the WD80EFAX (Red Label, 256MB) available. They are left over from my build. I can include the original enclosures as well. PM if interested. Not looking to make any money, just recoup the $149.99+8.25% TX Tax I paid for each.
 
I ordered a new Dell T30 server at Christmas along with 3 of these drives. Two were White and one was Red. The White labels wouldn't spin. I had seen all of the suggestions of tape or adaptors, but the easy answer is just deplug the 3.3V wire from the harness at the source connector, not the HDD side - it's only used for this purpose so it doesn't affect anything else by being disconnected. Easy as pie - no need for a bunch of adaptors or worry of damage, etc. and you're not cutting the wire which could be an issue if you're under warranty.
 
I ordered a new Dell T30 server at Christmas along with 3 of these drives. Two were White and one was Red. The White labels wouldn't spin. I had seen all of the suggestions of tape or adaptors, but the easy answer is just deplug the 3.3V wire from the harness at the source connector, not the HDD side - it's only used for this purpose so it doesn't affect anything else by being disconnected. Easy as pie - no need for a bunch of adaptors or worry of damage, etc. and you're not cutting the wire which could be an issue if you're under warranty.
i would suggest a small bit of shrink tube over the exposed connector no need to heat it just cover it up you can fold over one side and seal it.
Another thing is the feature is a odd feature that is not even enabled in most enterprise gear... I ended up leaving mine in the enclosure. Nobody i asked could come up with a good reason as to why the feature was enabled...
 
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I've got a weird WD80EZZX 8TB white label that turns on, is seen by OS and functions normally including proper transfer rates and clean SMART, but after 3-4min it just disappears from OS - disk keeps spinning but I guess controller dies. Power cycle resets it.

Tested it on 3 different servers and PCs and the problem follows the drive. Serial number in WD warranty check just shows "Invalid serial #".

I've dealt with thousands of hdds over the years between home and work but this one's bizarre.
 
I've got a weird WD80EZZX 8TB white label that turns on, is seen by OS and functions normally including proper transfer rates and clean SMART, but after 3-4min it just disappears from OS - disk keeps spinning but I guess controller dies. Power cycle resets it.

Tested it on 3 different servers and PCs and the problem follows the drive. Serial number in WD warranty check just shows "Invalid serial #".

I've dealt with thousands of hdds over the years between home and work but this one's bizarre.
Are you sure you've removed the 3.3v power? Pop it back in the enclosure and see if it still vanishes after a few mintues, if so then the drive is likely defective.
 
Are you sure you've removed the 3.3v power? Pop it back in the enclosure and see if it still vanishes after a few mintues, if so then the drive is likely defective.
are you sure EZZX if yes that is not actually a red or he8 like the emaz... or efax or efzx drives

If memory serves ezzx was one of the first run of drives and are white label BLUE/GREENS. the Emaz is the one with the 3.3 volt reset feature and is a HE8 ultrastar hgst drive

EZZX = Blue/Green non Helium drive initial run circa 2015 june to feb 2016 High failure rating.
EFZX = Red label Made in China 128mb cache Feb 2016-nov 2016
EFAX = Red label PRO? HELIUM DRIVE Nov 2016-AUG 2017 256 MB cache Made in Thailand
EMAZ = Enterprise HGST Ultrastar HE8 256MB cache AUG 2017 - Has 3.3v reset feature enabled
 
EZZX are the first generation white-label reds that replaced the HE8s in the early batch 8TB My Books. HGST 5400RPM and helium, really no practical difference from the later drives, but you shouldn't find one these days unless you got really old stock or refurbished. Only thing I can think of that'd lead to them dropping out and coming back on reboot is some sort of spin-down incompatibility, but if you got it "refurbished" it was probably more like "broken".
 
are you sure EZZX if yes that is not actually a red or he8 like the emaz... or efax or efzx drives

If memory serves ezzx was one of the first run of drives and are white label BLUE/GREENS. the Emaz is the one with the 3.3 volt reset feature and is a HE8 ultrastar hgst drive

EZZX = Blue/Green non Helium drive initial run circa 2015 june to feb 2016 High failure rating.
EFZX = Red label Made in China 128mb cache Feb 2016-nov 2016
EFAX = Red label PRO? HELIUM DRIVE Nov 2016-AUG 2017 256 MB cache Made in Thailand
EMAZ = Enterprise HGST Ultrastar HE8 256MB cache AUG 2017 - Has 3.3v reset feature enabled

Yep, WD80EZZX, Aug. 2016. I can't remember if I pulled it out of a My Book or got it from ebay as a bare drive, but I'm thinking maybe it was from a time when the external enclosure and internal drive had different serial numbers.

Anyway, great info in this thread. Reminds me of the storage forum's glory days.

upload_2018-1-25_15-5-9.png
 
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Yep, WD80EZZX, Aug. 2016. I can't remember if I pulled it out of a My Book or got it from ebay as a bare drive, but I'm thinking maybe it was from a time when the external enclosure and internal drive had different serial numbers.

Anyway, great info in this thread. Reminds me of the storage forum's glory days.

View attachment 51623

I have one of these, but it came from an external drive I bought on Amazon.
 
I bought 2 of these a few weeks ago, finally getting around to installing them in my htpc, they are the white label 256mb cache drives. Windows does not see the drive at all (disk management) (either of them). What am I doing wrong?

Bios does not see the drive(s) either. msi z170 board with 6700k.

**Just realized they are not eveing spinning up, acting like it has no power.


*** okay read through this thread and found out I have the 3.3v issue, using corsair AX860i power supply, covered the 3 pins with tape and working fine now.
 
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Another odd thing, bought 2 of these 3 4 weeks ago, both are the new white 256mb drives.. Have them in my htpc but they are different sizes, off by a meg or so so could not mirror them. I am now transfering all my data from the smaller one to the larger one and hoping it will let me mirror then.
 
awesome, decided to pick up 2 more.
Still finding the Thailand WDBCKA0080HBK-NESN up here.
These still seem to have the EFAX drives.

Haven't shucked yet, as I prefer to run a 3-pass overwrite to validate no bad sectors, so unsure of manufacture date.
 
Picked up another 11 this morning. 1 red label and 10 white labels. It it interesting to note that there appears to be 3 "flavors" of the white label EMAZ drives. Look at the rear black plastic molding shape in the below pic:

8tbwhitelabelflavors.JPG
 
awesome, decided to pick up 2 more.
Still finding the Thailand WDBCKA0080HBK-NESN up here.
These still seem to have the EFAX drives.

Haven't shucked yet, as I prefer to run a 3-pass overwrite to validate no bad sectors, so unsure of manufacture date.

so I lied.
One of these 2 is an EMAZ, despite both being the same exact EasyStore model number (and the same exact model as my other 4 that were EFAX)

Also, apparently the EMAZ has a max operating temp of only 111.2F, whereas the EFAX has a max operating temp of 158F (158F for EZFX also).
At least, that's per SMART per StableBit Scanner.

Aaaaaand, now I'm only getting 35MB/s from it. Was getting around 150MB/s+ before I stopped the wipe due to heat, let it cool down and got a fan in front of it.
Restarted wipe, and now a measly 35MB/s.

S'pose I could go ahead and shuck to verify if it's something weird with the USB bus or drive.
 
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Any ideas why I can't mirror two of these drives, they are both the newer white 256mb cache WD80EMAZ drives but they show two different size in windows, one is 7452.04GB and the other is 7451.91GB. I have all my data on the smaller of the two, it tells me there is not enough space available on the disk to complete this operation.
 
Any ideas why I can't mirror two of these drives, they are both the newer white 256mb cache WD80EMAZ drives but they show two different size in windows, one is 7452.04GB and the other is 7451.91GB. I have all my data on the smaller of the two, it tells me there is not enough space available on the disk to complete this operation.
that makes little sense is one gpt the other mbr? otherwise i don't see why you could not partition them to be exactly the same
 
that makes little sense is one gpt the other mbr? otherwise i don't see why you could not partition them to be exactly the same

Yeah is crazy.. .I ended up getting minitool partition software and it showed a ~1mb partition and a ~100 mb partition on the other drive that windows does not show in disk management at all. so I deleted all the partitions off the empty drive and recreated a partition and formatted it in windows disk management. I am now again (4tth time) copying all my data from the other drive to this one.. once that is done I will use minitool to delete all partitions, including that 100mb unknown one and recreate partition in windows and see if it will allow me to mirror then, hope so.. if not I am just returning these drives lol, already spent more time than I want/have on this.
 
okay, still won't mirror, it will create the mirror set but won't sync and the drive I am adding the mirror two has a ! on it.

mirror.jpg
 
okay, still won't mirror, it will create the mirror set but won't sync and the drive I am adding the mirror two has a ! on it.

mirror.jpg
Did you clone one of your drives to get data on to the 8tb WD?
If so you might be encountering a duplicate drive signature error. It you hover or right click it should tell you what the exclamation means.
 
I did not clone, just copied and pasted. It tells me nothing for some reason, only options are reactivate disk, offline and properties.. reactivate does nothing when I select it. Properties shows the device is working properly. I assume its not resyncing, as normally it would give you a percentage.


** crazy after a couple of hours a percentage now shows up, 8 percent. hopfully all is well now. :)

**ended up mirroring fine and all is well again in the world.
 
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I bought two the other day.

1 white. 1 red.

Red is pre-clearing now.

So how is BB with returns?

Do they ask questions? I mean the (white) package was opened, but I didn't shuck it. I could live with the white of course but considering I don't really NEED it right now (thought I did), and I'd rather not have to deal with the hassle of the 3.3v. (I have 5x3 drive system and not so easy to remove the 3.3v... I could us tape, sure... but again don't need the space now, and if it was a red drive, I'd love to keep it)
 
I bought two the other day.

1 white. 1 red.

Red is pre-clearing now.

So how is BB with returns?

Do they ask questions? I mean the (white) package was opened, but I didn't shuck it. I could live with the white of course but considering I don't really NEED it right now (thought I did), and I'd rather not have to deal with the hassle of the 3.3v. (I have 5x3 drive system and not so easy to remove the 3.3v... I could us tape, sure... but again don't need the space now, and if it was a red drive, I'd love to keep it)

You will be find. I was able to return one without issues that was opened.
 
No questions asked I was able to walk in and swap my dead drive.
 
Just picked up one of these from the local best buy. SN is 7SGNA***. White label with 256MB Cache.
 
I picked up one from BBY tonight. they didn't have a ton of drives and the ones they had were clearly white label 256mb drives. I don't really care, since it's generally believed these are all just relabeled red drives, which are actually HGST drives. I'm getting closer to getting a nas (building a computer is easier than figuring out what NAS to get).
 
Had an old 2TB drive fail (HDS722020ALA330). It had 52,000 hours on it, so I guess I got my money's worth out of it, lol. At any rate, checked BB website, and they are back at $199.99 again. Bummer. Guess it will be another couple of weeks before it goes back down to $159.99 again. I got a $100 and a $40 gift card from the last batch I purchased, so hopefully they will go on sale again before they expire!
 
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