Best Buy 12TB WD Easy Store External HDD 179.99

Just shucked 4 from Best Buy - 3 were WD120EMFZs and one WD120EMAZ. The FZ has different voltages on the label (5VDC 0.44a, 12VDC .57A) while the AZ matches the red drive. The AZs are August manufacture and the FZs September.
 
Kipchak said:
Just shucked 4 from Best Buy - 3 were WD120EMFZs and one WD120EMAZ. The FZ has different voltages on the label (5VDC 0.44a, 12VDC .57A) while the AZ matches the red drive. The AZs are August manufacture and the FZs September.
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Is the manuf country thailand vs china by chance?
 
I'll have one of these before the end of the year....
If money's good, maybe 2. That should last me a while.
 
Spartacus09 said:
Is the manuf country thailand vs china by chance?
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All four are labeled as made in Thailand, my guess is different points in the manufacturing run getting slightly different drives?

I failed to notice the FZs have two jumper pins while the AZ has none. The FZs also have the ends or tips of the SATA and power pins visible through a rectangular hole in the bracket while the AZ is a solid piece of plastic, on the off chance that's useful for finding an equivalent drive. Looking at the serial stickers on the bottom of the packaging I notice three " DCM : TGBLVCM" and one "DCM: QGBLVCP". I didn't keep the drives matched to boxes while shucking unfortunately but I figure the FZs came from the VCM boxes and the AZ from the VCP box. That being said I'm not sure yet if there's any reason to have a preference for one over the other.
 
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Kipchak said:
All four are labeled as made in Thailand, my guess is different points in the manufacturing run getting slightly different drives?

I failed to notice the FZs have two jumper pins while the AZ has none. The FZs also have the ends or tips of the SATA and power pins visible through a rectangular hole in the bracket while the AZ is a solid piece of plastic, on the off chance that's useful for finding a equivalent drive. Looking at the serial stickers on the bottom of the packaging I notice three " DCM : TGBLVCM" and one "DCM: QGBLVCP". I didn't keep the drives matched to boxes while shucking unfortunately but I figure the FZs came from the VCM boxes and the AZ from the VCP box. That being said I'm not sure yet if there's any reason to have a preference for one over the other.
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If you have HD tune pro, I believe that shows the cache size under the info tab, I'd be interested to know if theres a difference.
 
Kipchak said:
All four are labeled as made in Thailand, my guess is different points in the manufacturing run getting slightly different drives?

I failed to notice the FZs have two jumper pins while the AZ has none. The FZs also have the ends or tips of the SATA and power pins visible through a rectangular hole in the bracket while the AZ is a solid piece of plastic, on the off chance that's useful for finding an equivalent drive. Looking at the serial stickers on the bottom of the packaging I notice three " DCM : TGBLVCM" and one "DCM: QGBLVCP". I didn't keep the drives matched to boxes while shucking unfortunately but I figure the FZs came from the VCM boxes and the AZ from the VCP box. That being said I'm not sure yet if there's any reason to have a preference for one over the other.
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Can you post crystaldiskmark benchmark results for both models? I have a fear the EMFZ is a SMR drive. Someone on reddit posted CDM results for their EMFZ and it had random write speed 7x higher than random read, which can indicate SMR. I'm curious how benchmarks between the two models compare.
 
Gave HD Tune a go with the controller from the external enclosure- new to the program but I believe Buffer is where the cache size should be listed? Looking at the manual apparently only buffers < 32MB are reported. Under extra tests a drop off in the blue line should indicate the end of the buffer, but as the test tops out at 64MB it's straight across. Crystaldiskinfo returns "----" for buffer size as well.

Gave some other benchmarks a go, here's a link to the results. I'm curious if they are SMR as apparently Synology recommends against using a combination of them in a RAID array which was my plan. The File benchmark in HD Tune seems rather different.
 
The "F" version likely has a 512MB cache vs 256MB for the "A". Neither supports TRIM unlike known WD SMRs.
 
So are these safe to get or not. That SMR has me worried but I don't know what it is. I just add drives to my server. No raid.
 
I just picked up two of these today. It's going to hurt me to gut my NAS but I've gotta do it in the name of power consumption.
 
thesmokingman said:
Get it shipped as shipping is free?
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Yeah, will likely order online though I may wait and see if 10TB drives drop in price. 10 or 12TB drives would be nice as parity drives in Unraid. Means I can use my 8TB drives for just data storage.
 
I just went ahead and bought 10 to replace the 10 x 10tb I bought four months ago. Guess I'm going to have one hell of a ebay sell on 10tb drives. Love these synology nas make you so addicted to storage.
 
the_real_7 said:
I just went ahead and bought 10 to replace the 10 x 10tb I bought four months ago. Guess I'm going to have one hell of a ebay sell on 10tb drives. Love these synology nas make you so addicted to storage.
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Post them here first. I might be interested in 2 or 3.
 
Regarding what the heck the WD120EMFZ is, someone posted this on SD:

"I got 2 WD120EMFZ. The r/n is US7ASP140 which should be based on ultrastar dc hc530. From anandtech, it's a 14tb PMR drive (not SMR). WD probably firmware locked 2tb of spaces because of many reasons..."
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Not much info on R/N numbers, only 1 forum source said it's the interface controller. I noticed power rating also matches, but again that could be due to sharing an interface controller.

The mystery continues.

czFFhl1.jpg
 
Also worth pointing out the WD120EFAZ and WD120EMAX also match using the same metrics. They are both R/N US7SAM120 5VDC 0.40A 12VDC 0.55A.
 
Okay, a little more digging and I noticed on all WD drives the last 3 digits of the R/N corresponds to the drive size. All 10TB drives the R/N ends in 100, 8TB drives the R/N ends in 080, etc. That's a strong indication the WD120EMFZ is actually a 14TB model. I would wager instead of the HC530 this is actually a firmware-limited WD140EFFX. Recently announced WD Red 5,400RPM 512MB cache. It makes sense they might be winding down 12TB production for the new 14TB model. I imagine manufacture cost is the same and it would simplify production. If that's the case I would expect a new/replacement 12TB Red consumer model, WD120EFFX, perhaps also a firmware-limited WD140EFFX.
 
I double checked my 10TB from Newegg the other day which was a sale as well. Turns out it was 170 for the 10TB, making this one 9 bucks more for 2 more TB!
 
Picked up a drive with the VCP serial and it contained an EMAZ drive.

A person on Slickdeals claims to have received an emaz with a vcm serial drive.
 
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