Just shucked my first WD Easystore drive - easy

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8 TB Easystore external drive. Even easier to shuck than I imagined. This video helped.

Only disappointment is that I got a WD80EDAZ - 11TA3A0 drive, which is a 5400 RPM drive. But the Black Friday price was right, and it's going to used only for daily backups, which I do last thing in the evening.
 
Pretty much all shucked drives are 5400 rpm drives, I’m unaware of any that yield 7200. I’ve shucked about 2 dozen of them.

Technically some of them are 7200rpm but they’re gimped to 5400, its alleged that they couldnt handle QA at the higher speeds so they slowed them and stuck them in enclosures.
 
Pretty much all shucked drives are 5400 rpm drives, I’m unaware of any that yield 7200. I’ve shucked about 2 dozen of them.

Technically some of them are 7200rpm but they’re gimped to 5400, its alleged that they couldnt handle QA at the higher speeds so they slowed them and stuck them in enclosures.
OK with me if I can't "overclock" them to 7200. I don't want to end up with an unreliable backup drive.

Sheesh, it was so easy to unshuck this drive I'm sorry that I haven't done it before. The price is right.
 
OK with me if I can't "overclock" them to 7200. I don't want to end up with an unreliable backup drive.

Sheesh, it was so easy to unshuck this drive I'm sorry that I haven't done it before. The price is right.

Obviously you'd have to get a SAS controller, or have a mobo with one built in, but you can get super low usage SAS drives that are extremely reliable and resilient that are true enterprise drives (provided you have adequate cooling).
Those are often used but they are generally low usage, 7200RPM, and cheaper to boot (about $110-120 for 8TB off ebay) ~ not to mention helium filled vs the new air filled models in the easystores now.
 
Shucked my 14TB from black friday a few days ago. Far from my first shucked drive though, Probably my 10th.
The new WD packaging is WAY easier to open than the last round that I shucked (8TB seagate drives).
 
Pretty much all shucked drives are 5400 rpm drives, I’m unaware of any that yield 7200. I’ve shucked about 2 dozen of them.

Technically some of them are 7200rpm but they’re gimped to 5400, its alleged that they couldnt handle QA at the higher speeds so they slowed them and stuck them in enclosures.
This one is 7200Rpm,
IMG_8786-edited.jpg
 
Shucked my 14TB from black friday a few days ago. Far from my first shucked drive though, Probably my 10th.
The new WD packaging is WAY easier to open than the last round that I shucked (8TB seagate drives).
Yeah, but I have avoided Seagate for years now.
 
This one is 7200Rpm,
Oooo those are new (my last shuck round was October of last year I hadn't seen those yet), that came out of one of the WD black enclosures from the looks of it though, not one of the essentials or easystore correct?
Assuming so, that enclosure is advertised as a 7200 rpm drive so I'd expect it to have one, I'm surprised those contain DC drives too.

At the same time what did you pay for it, I'd assume 160 or 170+? I generally pick up the 8TB easystore for $130 or less when bb puts them on sale a half a dozen times a year, for my use I don't need the extra speed, power, or heat generation.
Not trying to discount your find, just more than I prefer to pay for 8TB with the easystore & cheap used SAS options available.
 
Oooo those are new (my last shuck round was October of last year I hadn't seen those yet), that came out of one of the WD black enclosures from the looks of it though, not one of the essentials or easystore correct?
Assuming so, that enclosure is advertised as a 7200 rpm drive so I'd expect it to have one, I'm surprised those contain DC drives too.

At the same time what did you pay for it, I'd assume 160 or 170+? I generally pick up the 8TB easystore for $130 or less when bb puts them on sale a half a dozen times a year, for my use I don't need the extra speed, power, or heat generation.
Not trying to discount your find, just more than I prefer to pay for 8TB with the easystore & cheap used SAS options available.
Fair enough. Just took a look at eBay and indeed refurb 8 TB SAS drives are less than what I paid for the 8 TB Easystore. What SAS controller would you recommend that doesn't cost over $300?
 
Fair enough. Just took a look at eBay and indeed refurb 8 TB SAS drives are less than what I paid for the 8 TB Easystore. What SAS controller would you recommend that doesn't cost over $300?
Depends on how many drives you need to connect to it, if just 8 regular HDD, the best ones IMO are the Dell/IBM OEM cards that are LSI 9211-8i flash-able.
You can get it for about $40 pre-flashed or for 20-25$ if you flash it yourself (though the non-flashed market has dried up considerably due to their popularity).
For Dell its the H310 for horizonal SAS connectors, if you need vertical the IBM 1015.

I used this guide to flash all my H310 to it-mode for unraid: https://jc-lan.org/2018/05/19/flash...ode-using-bios-and-uefi-method-firmware-bios/

If you want to future proof yourself or you are planning to use 8 SSD instead of HDD you'll want to pickup a LSI 9207-8i (they're the pcie 3.0 version and have dual processing chips in them with a 4000MB/s limit instead of 2000MB/s), there are some HP variants (H220) that can be flashed but the pre-flashed ones and/or the LSI branded are still only 65-70$.

If you're concerned about getting a fake or non working card I highly recommend ArtofServer on ebay: https://www.ebay.com/usr/theartofserver?_trksid=p2047675.l2559
He's on the ServerTheHome forums I frequent as well and he does extensive testing and borderline refurbishing on all the cards he sells ~ he does charge a little more than others but if your budget was under $300 he'll still be a steal.

I'm using the Supermicro X10SRH (which has a built in SAS controller for 8 drives) and added a H310 for my supermicro enclosures I have (these work with the WD white shucks since its molex powered).

I do highly recommend active air cooling on the SAS controller, if its not under heavy load its generally ok but they still run insanely hot without good airflow (70c+ at times).
I personally picked up a pcie mounted fan bracket works great for cooling my 10g card, sas controller, nvme bifrucation card, and the motherboard SAS chipset with one 140mm fan.


Edit: since this is kinda off topic for here feel free to hit me up if you have any questions or start a new thread
 
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Oooo those are new (my last shuck round was October of last year I hadn't seen those yet), that came out of one of the WD black enclosures from the looks of it though, not one of the essentials or easystore correct?
Assuming so, that enclosure is advertised as a 7200 rpm drive so I'd expect it to have one, I'm surprised those contain DC drives too.

At the same time what did you pay for it, I'd assume 160 or 170+? I generally pick up the 8TB easystore for $130 or less when bb puts them on sale a half a dozen times a year, for my use I don't need the extra speed, power, or heat generation.
Not trying to discount your find, just more than I prefer to pay for 8TB with the easystore & cheap used SAS options available.
I paid $170 for it. One of my 4TB Blacks was showing an error, C6 I think, so I bought this to shuck and toss into the machine to replace both 4TB Blacks.
The 12TB version has a helium filled drive.
What is odd is that the 4TB is no longer showing a SMART error after swapping motherboards, might have been a bad connection on one end of the SATA cable, as I did unplug the cable from the drives as well as the motherboard.
 
My oldest still running seagate is 3.8 years old. My oldest drive in my system overall, and I keep hoping its gonna crash on me someday but SMART still puts it at 100% with no errors. Is a 3TB HGST that has over 6 years power on time.
I use the damn thing as my torrent drive so its CONSTANTLY reading and writing and its still going without a single complaint.
 
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