WD Easystore External Discussion

Mine came in! Product of Thailand so we're off to a promising start.

I may not even shuck it. My ASUS RT-AC68U (a converted T-Mobile unit) has a set of USB 3.0 ports on it. I am thinking about just attaching it there for some sweet network storage.
 
Mine came in! Product of Thailand so we're off to a promising start.

I may not even shuck it. My ASUS RT-AC68U (a converted T-Mobile unit) has a set of USB 3.0 ports on it. I am thinking about just attaching it there for some sweet network storage.
Give it a try, even if just to do some testing which you should perform before shucking anyway. Crystal Disk Mark should pull in 180MB/sec or better over usb 3.0, but gigabit network is actually going to limit you anyway. If you have a lot of data to dump into it initially, you'd be better off connecting it directly as you'd be hard pressed to break 120MB/sec over gigabit.
 
Just confirming what others have said earlier - my Thailand 256mb cache one did turn out to be a white label. I checked it out with CrystalDiskInfo and it is a WD80EMAZ, which I expect is a white label. Firmware is 83.H0A83 which I read is the exact same firmware as many WD Red 8gb drives. I also used GSmartControl ( which has a nice GUI and is easier to use on windows compared to smartctl) to check for TLER by the presence of "SCT Error Recovery Control - Read 70 Write 70 " which is apparently the standard 7 second duration for TLER! I am guessing that between this being active even as the disk is in the enclosure and the firmware is as reported, that this white label drive is for all intents and purposes a Red?

I've not yet popped it out of the enclosure yet, but I figure unless there's a reason NOT to do so at this point it looks like its worth keeping, even though it was a NEBB model; after all, I hear even NESNs are just as likely to be white label these days.

Oh now the only question I have about the 3.3v pin issue, specifically related to my proposed use. I'm planning to use it in a a SATA backplane - its an older Corsair Sata III 6.0gbps backplane (upgraded from the default) in the Corsair 800D - at least to start. What exact pieces of the setup have to be compatible for this to work? For instance, I read that lots of people are having no problem with their backplanes and whatnot so long as they're using a reasonably recently made PSU that is compliant with the new feature. I expect I will be picking up a newer PSU, so this shouldn't be a problem. Does the backplane itself (output/connection to the drive) and/or SATA power input on the backplane have to be electrically different to be compliant here as well? If nothing else I'll do the 'tape mod" I figure, but I just want to gauge my chance of it working without modification.
Try it and go from there. My very old corsair HX520 and Lian-Li backplanes had no issue.
So I'm assuming once the drives are removed from the enclosures they have no warranty? Has anyone checked?

Common sense would say no, but then again a lot of Seagate drives I've pulled from externals had a full valid warranty on the bare drive itself.
Technically void, but most people pop them back in the enclosure and send them in. Lets be honest removing them from the enclosure isn't going to cause a drive to fail unless you removed it with a hammer. So there really isn't a good way for them to tell you ever removed it.
 
Got around to shucking them, but broke the clips :|

7SGMB and 7SGLW

Both 256MB Thailand Reds


Edit:

Aaaannnddd: I got the first drive that I was replacing into the enclosure. It seems to do some basic encryption on the drive, since it showed as uninitialized, but it works.
I wish that I had another My Book Duo enclosure, but these will do for NAS backups
 
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You can just get one any time they're in stock at your local best buy. $200 is fine. Then the day it dips online, just go in the store withe receipt and get a price adjustment, no point in waiting. Anything bought now can be returned til Jan 14
 
I ordered 2 NESN @ $150 a couple weeks back and both came EFAX (Red, 256MB cache)
I ordered 2 more NESN a couple days ago @ $140 and both came EMAZ (White, 256MB cache)
 
I ordered 2 NESN @ $150 a couple weeks back and both came EFAX (Red, 256MB cache)
I ordered 2 more NESN a couple days ago @ $140 and both came EMAZ (White, 256MB cache)
Same seems they are out of efax drives.
 
So there has to be some problem using these disks in a zpool, one has 1.75k checksum errors and one has 1.53k.

I just got 2x NESN when they were $140. Long story short, one drive already threw 321 ZFS CKSUM errors, should I return it?

I ran HDSentinel write then read surface test, came back with no problems.

They are white label Made in Thailand 256MB WD80EMAZ-00WJTA0.

I had an existing ZFS pool with 2x 6TB drives in mirror-0 configuration. I want to replace both 6TB drives with these two drives, and expand the pool to use the extra 2TB.

I attached one disk to the zpool and resilvered. Everything went alright. I shut down the system, removed 1x 6TB drive and added the second 8TB drive. Rebooted. I was going to attach the second disk and resilver again. At this point the the first new 8TB disk threw 321 checksum errors, according to zfs.

edit: it's up to 347 now FUCK what a hassle
 
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There is something you should all know about these drives... First there is no internal part number wd80efax there is a wd100efax it was surmised they are the same drive but with 2 platters turned off due to qc failure at the full 7 platters the drives fail but most of those failures are on 2 platters so in firmware the heads are turned off creating an 8tb drive.

If you are getting errors return the drive for another.
 
Unlike most of you, I'm using the drive un-shucked. Thailand version, paid $150 for it on BF.

I'm using FreeFileSync to mirror an internal drive in a Windows 10 workstation to the easystore attached to a blue USB 3.0 rear port. Getting 80 - 90 MB/sec write speed. Is this on the slow side? Any way to speed it up?

The drive was about 5/8 full when I got these speeds. A NAS was also mirrored to the easystore.

Thanks!
 
Unlike most of you, I'm using the drive un-shucked. Thailand version, paid $150 for it on BF.

I'm using FreeFileSync to mirror an internal drive in a Windows 10 workstation to the easystore attached to a blue USB 3.0 rear port. Getting 80 - 90 MB/sec write speed. Is this on the slow side? Any way to speed it up?

The drive was about 5/8 full when I got these speeds. A NAS was also mirrored to the easystore.

Thanks!
It will slow down as you fill it up. The fastest speeds are when it's fresh. You can try running some benchmarks on it now to see if it's another limitation, such as the internal drive's read speed. It's also possible that the usb controller isn't up to snuff, as you should be getting double that fresh. Try running crystal disk mark, I have one still unshucked that's 97% full and I get 200MB still. Give it a try and report back.
8tb easystore crystalmark test 12-11-2017.png
 
Write speeds from a slower drive will be determined by that drive, it's file sizes, and especially any fragmentation.

This is from one of EZZX models, though they perform about the same as these here.


wd-8tb.jpg
 
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Crystaldiskmark is meant for Solid state drives that write linear.

This is from one of EZZX models, though they perform about the same as these here.

Also write speeds from a slower drive will be bottlenecked by that drive, it's file sizes, and fragmentation.
One thing that is still useful about crystal vs hd tune, is that you can perform a write test. It still would answer the question if his usb controller was up to snuff, when compared to my result.
 
It will slow down as you fill it up. The fastest speeds are when it's fresh. You can try running some benchmarks on it now to see if it's another limitation, such as the internal drive's read speed. It's also possible that the usb controller isn't up to snuff, as you should be getting double that fresh. Try running crystal disk mark, I have one still unshucked that's 97% full and I get 200MB still. Give it a try and report back.
View attachment 46064

Here's the result -

HI1iq8k.jpg
 
Here's the result -
Hmm yeah that's hurting a bit. Do you have another computer to try it on, or another set of ports to try? I found on my pc two of my usb 3.0 ports were provided by an add on chip, and their speed was pretty bad. My server has the newest system, and that's what it's connected to and the usb 3.0 ports are very fast.
 
You need the case for warranty. But since these are essentially Hitachi drives, you'll probably never have to worry about reliability.
My 32x Ultrastar He8s have been running 24/7 for quite a few months now without issues.

In my experience it's the years of constant usage that wear down large cluster drives, I just had a storage drive fail and have doubled down on backup since.
 
So if the drive is just used for say 10 hours per week what kind of lifespan would you all think it would have (obviously YMMV)?
 
So if the drive is just used for say 10 hours per week what kind of lifespan would you all think it would have (obviously YMMV)?
Keeping in mind that my server isn't being hit all that hard, I find that my HD's are replaced with larger drives before they die. And the few drives that have died were almost always over 7 years old, though I've had one or 2 die under warranty. Whether it was in year 1-2 or year 3, I can't remember. There's a reason why Blackblaze has typically said the extra warranty is not worth the extra money you pay.
 
Thanks, That sounds good, give me a price shipped to Perry, GA
Careful, some WD enclosures whitelist the drives they will work with, and won't even work with other WD drives of the same capacity. They also tend to automatically encrypt the drive's contents, making the drive unreadable if you ever take it out of the enclosure.
 
They also tend to automatically encrypt the drive's contents, making the drive unreadable if you ever take it out of the enclosure.

There may also be lying about sector size. Some enclosures make the drive look like it is 4K native when the drive really is 512e. This will make your data unreadable when you switch from internal to external or vise versa.

The reason for this is to allow large drives to work with operating systems that do not support GPT.
 
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Did you read the posts?

"...completely forgot that exFAT can't handle drives over 2TB, (the drive being 4TB). When formatted as NTFS, the dive being connected does not interrupt the boot process. This narrows it down to exFAT being the culprit."

exFAT can't be used with paritions greater than 2TB according to that user. Though a Google search says otherwise so idk.

Maybe the issue is with GPT vs MBR (where GPT should be used for volumes > 2TB)? So maybe they meant MBR instead of exFAT?
 
Careful, some WD enclosures whitelist the drives they will work with, and won't even work with other WD drives of the same capacity. They also tend to automatically encrypt the drive's contents, making the drive unreadable if you ever take it out of the enclosure.

I didn't know that. Has anyone tried these enclosures with other drives?
 
I didn't know that. Has anyone tried these enclosures with other drives?

I put an old 2tb red in my 8tb enclosure and it works fine.

The drives are encrypted though, so i can't take it out without full data loss. You also cannot switch from one enclosure to another.
 
I didn't know that. Has anyone tried these enclosures with other drives?

I put my Hitachi 1TB drive in the enclosure and Windows doesn't detect it when plugged in. It sees the USB interface (Easystore), but the drive inside can't be manipulated in any way.
 
Ugh. I've been hemming and hawing on whether I want to leave the drive in it's enclosure and attach it to my Asus RT-A68U via the USB 3.0 port, or whether I want to build/buy some sort of NAS box.

I'm now leaning towards a NAS of some kind because a lot of people claim USB 3.x transfers bog down the CPU in the AC68U and that the firmware doesn't support using a USB 3 hub at rated speeds (so no multiple drives). I can't really afford to buy a dedicated appliance right now so I'm thinking of just using some spare parts to build a basic box to stick this drive and a few others in. I've got a couple of socket 775 boards with Core 2 Duos in them and hefty amounts of DDR2, some nice 650w Seasonic PSUs from that sick Ebay deal last year, and a few cheap Zalman cases from another deal several months ago. I think I'll build something and attach it to the network that way. It will do for now...
 
Got my $140 offer NESN 8TB WD in last night. Same as most other peoples. Mine was a white label WD80EMAZ.
 
Bought 5 yesterday at local BBs.....4 were 256MB REDs (NESN) and 1 was a 256MB White Label (NEBB). Going back for more today....
 
Is there a way to identify the cache size without shucking? I ran CrystalDisk Info and I have a NESN WD80EMAZ.
 
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