WD Easystore 14TB External USB 3.0 Hard Drive - $210

Now that is tempting. $15 per TB, just like the 12TB at 180, but higher storage density and less power consumed per unit storage. I think I am not going to do it, and wait for 16TB's to come down to $15 per TB. I have enough open space I can afford to wait.
 
Well it's presumably WD140EMFZ, but does knowing that help any? What's the real question?
 
Extra $20 off with Google Express: Link (or use promo code HOLIDAY19 at checkout).

Came out to around $211 shipped after (CA) tax. Now I just need another two and I'll be able to backup my RAID10 6x14TB NAS. Well not really since I'm not even close to filling that NAS yet and my backup can be a random array of drives in JBOD.
 
I bought the 12tb drive. I think I’d rather have another one of those at 179 than a 14tb drive at this price. Plus at least we know what drives are in the 12tb.
 
Well it's presumably WD140EMFZ, but does knowing that help any? What's the real question?

Most are interested because these have the possibility of being Red Drives or relabeled Red Drives. Red drives are stupid expensive. I can't even find 14TB Red drives in stock right now, but I believe they are over $400 a piece. The cost of building large arrays gets multiplied many times over when you're buying 10-20 drives. Even a $50 savings per drive can be significant. Saving $200 per drive, in excess of 50%, is insane.

So the question asked is the question that needs to be answered: What drive and can I take it out?

(Obviously we already have a response).
 
Most are interested because these have the possibility of being Red Drives or relabeled Red Drives. Red drives are stupid expensive. I can't even find 14TB Red drives in stock right now, but I believe they are over $400 a piece. The cost of building large arrays gets multiplied many times over when you're buying 10-20 drives. Even a $50 savings per drive can be significant. Saving $200 per drive, in excess of 50%, is insane.

So the question asked is the question that needs to be answered: What drive and can I take it out?

(Obviously we already have a response).
The thing is that they aren't the same drives because they would be sold for the full price as regular reds if they were such drives. And the 14TB reds are stupid expensive for what they are as the true enterprise grade 14TB drives I got earlier this year were actually cheaper.

I've noticed that the WD external deals seem to be in line with drives being as cheap as they can even though they share the same parts with more expensive brothers. But knowing what I know about pricing, there's no way a $200 drive has the same thing going for it as a $400 drive--it just won't. And in arrays where simultaneous drive failures at the wrong time can destroy large amounts of data, the cost of the drives is just a part of the total cost of a storage system. I mean if drives never failed at all, I don't think people would really care what the cost per TB would be because every drive you'd ever buy would still run indefinitely so you're only buying at an incremental cost.
 
The thing is that they aren't the same drives because they would be sold for the full price as regular reds if they were such drives. And the 14TB reds are stupid expensive for what they are as the true enterprise grade 14TB drives I got earlier this year were actually cheaper.

I've noticed that the WD external deals seem to be in line with drives being as cheap as they can even though they share the same parts with more expensive brothers. But knowing what I know about pricing, there's no way a $200 drive has the same thing going for it as a $400 drive--it just won't. And in arrays where simultaneous drive failures at the wrong time can destroy large amounts of data, the cost of the drives is just a part of the total cost of a storage system. I mean if drives never failed at all, I don't think people would really care what the cost per TB would be because every drive you'd ever buy would still run indefinitely so you're only buying at an incremental cost.

I think you pay a lot for "warranty" too on boxed red drives, which you lose shucking I believe.
 
The thing is that they aren't the same drives because they would be sold for the full price as regular reds if they were such drives. And the 14TB reds are stupid expensive for what they are as the true enterprise grade 14TB drives I got earlier this year were actually cheaper.

The thing is, this has been happening for a long time. The 8TB Easystores originally had 8TB Red drives in them. Saying "should" doesn't matter. In a business that involves manufacturing most of the cost differences associated with selling a product is just about artificial differentiation. You can have two identical products and sell them at two different prices with just a different label.

Need an example? That's how every Costco brand essentially operates. There is a premium brand that charges their premium price, and then there is Kirkland brand that is relabeled for Costco at a cheaper price. This is done on things like Olive Oil to Alcohol, cleaning products to toiletries. And the companies do this relabeling because it targets two different sectors. One is a group that cares about labels, the other cares about deals, and you can't get people to change their buying behavior. So you sell more product by simply relabeling the product and pricing them differently. Hell, this is how they make money regardless of if you choose store brand or brand label sitting side by side, which is genius.

This is much the case here for harddrives. WD has a product they label for NAS use and another for consumer level and as long as you don't know whats on the inside they can get away with it. Smarter people who figure out what the drives are regardless of the labels can get better deals.

I've noticed that the WD external deals seem to be in line with drives being as cheap as they can even though they share the same parts with more expensive brothers. But knowing what I know about pricing, there's no way a $200 drive has the same thing going for it as a $400 drive--it just won't. And in arrays where simultaneous drive failures at the wrong time can destroy large amounts of data, the cost of the drives is just a part of the total cost of a storage system. I mean if drives never failed at all, I don't think people would really care what the cost per TB would be because every drive you'd ever buy would still run indefinitely so you're only buying at an incremental cost.

The argument can be whatever "against". But if the cost is too high then you might not be able to afford building arrays any other way. This is versus the cost of buying "true" RED's. I could buy twice as many of these drives and run an entire redundant array to support my already redundant array.

Still, all drives are a crap shoot whether enterprise level or consumer (and you can read Backblaze reports all day if that's your thing). But arguing that people should spend twice as much money to build their arrays for themselves when that additional cost isn't viable is a pointless argument. Considering as an example that on 10 drives that's a cost difference of $2000. Which may not matter for a small business, but it is a significant investment for an individual user.

So the question is the question because people have budgets. If you don't care and you don't want it and it doesn't make sense for you: then fine. But most folks on here are educated enough to at least know the risks they're taking with these drives and it's ridiculous to say they shouldn't when it's not even your money.

I think you pay a lot for "warranty" too on boxed red drives, which you lose shucking I believe.

That's purely dependent on what it takes to shuck the drive. You can simply put the drive back in the enclosure to handle warranty. But it's doubtful these are supported more than a year. 3, tops.
 
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That's purely dependent on what it takes to shuck the drive. You can simply put the drive back in the enclosure to handle warranty. But it's doubtful these are supported more than a year. 3, tops.

I guess that's my point, I'd rather have the capacity than the warranty if it came down to it because either way if a drive fails you need to get that replacement in there ASAP. I have found nothing stating these relabeled white drives are any less reliable so I will continue to buy them when on sale :)
 
The thing is that they aren't the same drives because they would be sold for the full price as regular reds if they were such drives. And the 14TB reds are stupid expensive for what they are as the true enterprise grade 14TB drives I got earlier this year were actually cheaper.

I've noticed that the WD external deals seem to be in line with drives being as cheap as they can even though they share the same parts with more expensive brothers. But knowing what I know about pricing, there's no way a $200 drive has the same thing going for it as a $400 drive--it just won't. And in arrays where simultaneous drive failures at the wrong time can destroy large amounts of data, the cost of the drives is just a part of the total cost of a storage system. I mean if drives never failed at all, I don't think people would really care what the cost per TB would be because every drive you'd ever buy would still run indefinitely so you're only buying at an incremental cost.
I don't know why you say that. For years, these had 8TB Red drives in them at a price that was, as I recall, roughly 1/2 buying the bare drive. My guess is the only reason they went to white label drives was becasue people were buying these externals, shucking them and selliing the bare drive on ebay.
 
Drive is WD140EMFZ, looks to be helium.

SxZuqGL.jpg
 
Looks like it is the same drive as the Ultrastar HC530, but "underclocked" to 5400rpm. The 512MB cache is still fully intact.
 
I think you pay a lot for "warranty" too on boxed red drives, which you lose shucking I believe.
I thought the warranty was an issue on these for a long time, but it seems that the reddit folks have figured out that the serial number on the drive inside and the casing is the same, so even when shucked, the warranty is still 100% intact, which is pretty damn awesome. (y)
 
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The thing is, this has been happening for a long time. The 8TB Easystores originally had 8TB Red drives in them. Saying "should" doesn't matter. In a business that involves manufacturing most of the cost differences associated with selling a product is just about artificial differentiation. You can have two identical products and sell them at two different prices with just a different label.

Need an example? That's how every Costco brand essentially operates. There is a premium brand that charges their premium price, and then there is Kirkland brand that is relabeled for Costco at a cheaper price. This is done on things like Olive Oil to Alcohol, cleaning products to toiletries. And the companies do this relabeling because it targets two different sectors. One is a group that cares about labels, the other cares about deals, and you can't get people to change their buying behavior. So you sell more product by simply relabeling the product and pricing them differently. Hell, this is how they make money regardless of if you choose store brand or brand label sitting side by side, which is genius.

This is much the case here for harddrives. WD has a product they label for NAS use and another for consumer level and as long as you don't know whats on the inside they can get away with it. Smarter people who figure out what the drives are regardless of the labels can get better deals.



The argument can be whatever "against". But if the cost is too high then you might not be able to afford building arrays any other way. This is versus the cost of buying "true" RED's. I could buy twice as many of these drives and run an entire redundant array to support my already redundant array.

Still, all drives are a crap shoot whether enterprise level or consumer (and you can read Backblaze reports all day if that's your thing). But arguing that people should spend twice as much money to build their arrays for themselves when that additional cost isn't viable is a pointless argument. Considering as an example that on 10 drives that's a cost difference of $2000. Which may not matter for a small business, but it is a significant investment for an individual user.

So the question is the question because people have budgets. If you don't care and you don't want it and it doesn't make sense for you: then fine. But most folks on here are educated enough to at least know the risks they're taking with these drives and it's ridiculous to say they shouldn't when it's not even your money.



That's purely dependent on what it takes to shuck the drive. You can simply put the drive back in the enclosure to handle warranty. But it's doubtful these are supported more than a year. 3, tops.
Being an automotive parts distributor as a previous profession taught me a lot about the 'oem' and 'equivalent' market. There is a significant difference on non-branded items. Sometimes it is really large, like the quality between 'Great Value' brand and the branded items they're copying, and sometimes less like you mention about costco and kirklands. But there is a difference. Why? Because generally any product is marked up 50% (100% from cost). So your branded items sell for 1/2 that price in wholesale from distributors. But the unbranded items can be marked up as high as 70%. Why? Because if they were only marked up to 50%, people would know they were inferior and instead the higher price implies that they are higher quality when they definitely are not.

These WD drives probably cost no less to make than their 7200 enterprise brethren, and are probably even made on the same assembly line. But, there is a quality difference as these drives for some reason couldn't make it up to 7200 and come with the 5yr warranty of their enterprise brothers. Why is that? If WD could have just made them 5400 and left the 5yr warranty (or even 3yr), that would have probably still worked if the afr was going to be the same as the 7200rpm version, especially when consumer drives won't be on a 24x7 duty cycle. But internal research must have pointed to a higher afr even when detuned to 5400rpm and put on a consumer duty cycle.

Are they a good value--most certainly as you can almost buy 2x 14TB easystores for the same price as one 14TB enterprise drive. But there is a time cost in drive swapping and the potential for data loss that sometimes just doesn't outweigh the price difference, especially when you know where to buy the enterprise drives around the same price as these shucked ones.

I'm not advocating that people should buy anything, but that they should understand that these drives are definitely not the same the reds they keep being touted as being. These are a different product, and they have not been really tested in the same environment as the enterprise quality one except in the comments in the servethehome article on them:
https://www.servethehome.com/wd-wd100emaz-easystore-10tb-external-backup-drive-review/

I completely agree with you on the budget and I've done the same as it was cheaper to buy 2x of these to use as external backups than to buy a single 10TB enterprise at the time. When building an array being able to run raid0+1 versus raid0 at the same price is a huge difference. But there is also a reason why enterprises have much higher quality drives because the same pricing methodology at smaller scales doesn't scale when your rebuild times are in weeks. Even backblaze's continuously redesigned pods keep adding enterprise features and technology. There's a reason for all that, that consumers should not ignore if they like their data. It's important to have all the information and digest it to find the solution that works best for one's individual situation.
 

There are two different types of Western Digital Reds. These are white labeled WD 5400RPM Red's. What you're referring to with 7200 RPM drives are “Red Pros”.
https://www.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-red-hdd

More than likely these are relabelled WD WD140EFFX where as these are "WD140EMFZ".

The other half of the convo (drive verification) can be had here on the Datahorder subreddit:

I don't think they're aware that there are two types of Reds either, which is why they have another 5400 vs 7200 RPM discussion. But the crystal disk info is there as well as the naming scheme breakdown. I'm more than reasonably certain that these are in fact relabeled Western Digital RED drives.

The other half of your point isn't the OEM types I was referring to. You can go into any store and find actual product relabeled. You'll know the "difference" when it states the brand relabeled for "x". You'll know that it's not that when it states that it's "for" something which happens a lot in the automotive world (like front right fender "for" Honda Civic).
Different industries do different things. That is true. But there isn't an inferior line of Western Digital drives getting cranked out. That would be a waste of their fabrication space. Drives also can't really be binned either. They're either made inside of tolerances or they aren't. It's also not like they have inferior helium to place in the drive. The only thing that has the possibility of being changed is the firmware. There isn’t a lot of indication of that either. But if you’re patient that will likely be verified by someone in the community as well.
 
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I am pretty sure WD went the White label route to curb people trying to pass off shucked Red Label drives as retail Red Label drives.
My 8TB Easystore I bought 3 years ago was a Red Label and my 10TB and 3 other 8TB I shucked for others were all white label.
 
There are 2 type now. There used to only be the 5400rpm. Seagate smartly discovered there is a market for lower quality nas drives and higher quality ones and sub-segmented their 'ironwolf' series into a pro and non-pro segment and WD followed suit.

I've seen the picture. I also have seen the enterprise version of this drive, and it looks identical. But just because something looks the same doesn't mean it is the same--especially in electronics.

I've read the reddit thread extensively as I was very curious since 14TB drives were only available as enterprise class prior to the red and easystore releases. My opinion is that all the drives besides the enterprise ones are simply binned ones of varying quality. To say that a drive's quality is as binary as the ones and zeros being recorded to the drive is to not have a full understanding of quality control. Quality control is an entire department in itself in many industries and I don't think hard drive manufacturing is exempt from that.

See, these are consumers doing a consumer analysis. The servethehome article on the 10TB flushed out the whole issue pretty well imo. The drives are similar but not the same. And the comments of people having issues in raid systems, one so frustrated that he swapped them all out for real reds, confirms that these drives are not the same, no matter how closely specs and whatnot appear to be.

I don't think you know what goes on in manufacturing if you think it is simply a label which is different between a branded product and 'relabeled'. Even on a relabeled product, there is a quality difference as the costs have to be less for the price to be less than the branded item. And furthermore, no manufacturer is going to truly make a product that simply competes with their own so they can mark theirs up to a higher percentage. The only way this would fly numbers-wise is if the relabeled product was selling more than their own, which would mean that the brand isn't worth anything in the first place.

Hard drives and computers diverged in quality when the 'home computers' were introduced. Prior to that there was no quality difference between enterprise and consumer. There was some differentiation in drives because IDE drives were inferior in many ways to SCSI drives, so SCSI drives tended to be used in more business applications while IDEs were for desktops. But there wasn't a 'home' or 'consumer' designation.

Packard Bell changed all that with the 'home' computer. Built with inferior parts, but good enough for the masses, it brought computers into the home because the price points were low enough. What followed was a trend to market items for the home market (a lot of it I termed 'consumer crap' back then because it was), and the entire industry shifted to making products in two grades--business grade and consumer grade. And it still continues to today except there's now 3 levels and not as much of a delta in the quality between all three--consumer, business, and enterprise.

The enterprise stuff is what used to be computers, the business is a lot of the binned enterprise stuff or enterprise features in a consumer package (Dell Optiplex series for example), and then there's the flat out consumer, which interestingly has in itself diverged recently with the 'gaming' segment which uses a lot of business or even enterprise stuff.

The easystore drives are for the consumer, the reds are for business, and the full out enterprise is for the enterprise. The price difference from one end to the other is pretty steep--$200 to $400--and I really doubt the $200 drive is the same as the $400 or anything in between. It would not make business sense. Seagate does the same thing with their nas series--Ironwolf, Ironwolf Pro and Exos. If one manufacturer was gaming the public with higher margins, the other would respond with the same prices if the margins were artificially boosted. That's the beauty of capitalism.

As far as proving what drives are what--the servethehome article did it for me. Patrick does a great job of flushing out the truth in gear and I don't think he was wrong in his assessment of the easystore line, although I would love to see an update on the article with this 14TB drive. I've been dealing with drives for 30 years now, and I've learned that if it's important, the small cost of a better drive is actually worth it in the long run--at least for me it's worked out this way. ymmv.
 
I am pretty sure WD went the White label route to curb people trying to pass off shucked Red Label drives as retail Red Label drives.
My 8TB Easystore I bought 3 years ago was a Red Label and my 10TB and 3 other 8TB I shucked for others were all white label.
I think that initially might have been the reason, but today the drive is different than a red as the sth article flushes out.
 
Look, you're reasonably sure on your understanding. I am on mine. I wouldn't mind you linking the article on servethehome.
 
STH sample size is insufficient to determine standard deviation and prove the difference is more than just that.
 
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STH sample size is insufficient to determine standard deviation and prove the difference is more than just that.
So is almost any review of an item--what's your point? WD isn't going to release their internal test data.
 
So is almost any review of an item--what's your point? WD isn't going to release their internal test data.

My point being that it's interesting but proves nothing.

Back in the day I worked at a place that was among the first to receive Seagate's brand new 4GB drives. We experienced an over 60% failure rate inside 2 weeks across 40 drives. While our numbers significantly impacted the overall rate, it was far lower than our experience might lead someone to believe.
 
My point being that it's interesting but proves nothing.

Back in the day I worked at a place that was among the first to receive Seagate's brand new 4GB drives. We experienced an over 60% failure rate inside 2 weeks across 40 drives. While our numbers significantly impacted the overall rate, it was far lower than our experience might lead someone to believe.
The other issue in that case is you got copies early on and as I recall, backblaze found that new drive models tend to have higher rates of failure than the same model does later in the process (assuming the model isn't a lemon, eg the ibm deathstar)

But I agree you need to have a fairly large sample size. I'd think that if individuals on reddit posted data for their drives on that forum, you'd get a reasonable idea of what to expect from the various drive models.
 
My point being that it's interesting but proves nothing.

Back in the day I worked at a place that was among the first to receive Seagate's brand new 4GB drives. We experienced an over 60% failure rate inside 2 weeks across 40 drives. While our numbers significantly impacted the overall rate, it was far lower than our experience might lead someone to believe.
If you can't understand the points in the article, there isn't much I can do about that.
 
The other issue in that case is you got copies early on and as I recall, backblaze found that new drive models tend to have higher rates of failure than the same model does later in the process (assuming the model isn't a lemon, eg the ibm deathstar)

But I agree you need to have a fairly large sample size. I'd think that if individuals on reddit posted data for their drives on that forum, you'd get a reasonable idea of what to expect from the various drive models.
This is true of almost any new model. My father was an engineer at Ford and he would tell me that newer models always tended to have more issues or recalls. It's just the nature of mass manufacturing something new.

And these 14TB drives aren't new, that's the thing. The enterprise versions were around for at least a year if not more before the easystore and red pro versions came around.

The real data lies with WD as they have the afr. I'm sure they did the testing, market research, ran the numbers and everything before they even manufactured the drives. And there's no way that information will be made public anytime soon nor can it be crowdsourced as any sample size will still be a small fraction of all the drives in service. But with what I know about business, there's no way the afr is going to be the same as their enterprise product or they would be selling these as such.
 
... But with what I know about business, there's no way the afr is going to be the same as their enterprise product or they would be selling these as such.

That same research and experience is going to tell them the sweet spot of price for intended market where they make the most for the smallest quantity and lowering prices boosts quantity but not profit. For certain classes of hardware it's cheaper to differentiate models post-manufacturing than to have actually different product lines. This may or may not be the case here since we don't have the hard data to make that determination.

Either way the argument is moot as it's based on personal experience and belief of what can be gleaned from the minimal data available rather than pure fact. You have your opinion and I have mine and imho they're both valid. I'm not trying to say you're wrong just pointing out that yours is not the only possible explanation and people get to make their own judgement call.
 
That same research and experience is going to tell them the sweet spot of price for intended market where they make the most for the smallest quantity and lowering prices boosts quantity but not profit. For certain classes of hardware it's cheaper to differentiate models post-manufacturing than to have actually different product lines. This may or may not be the case here since we don't have the hard data to make that determination.

Either way the argument is moot as it's based on personal experience and belief of what can be gleaned from the minimal data available rather than pure fact. You have your opinion and I have mine and imho they're both valid. I'm not trying to say you're wrong just pointing out that yours is not the only possible explanation and people get to make their own judgement call.
If you believe that quantity is better than profit, then there's a couple of franchises I could sell you, lol.

You're right we don't have the facts and that both of what we have stated are opinions, so reader--ymmv.
 
Ok, finally not stuck on a phone so can wall of text you to tears...

If you believe that quantity is better than profit, then there's a couple of franchises I could sell you, lol. ...

Not sure how you got that from what I said even with all the detail I unintentionally left out while constrained to the tiny phone screen. Obviously profit is king, but for each market segment (eg: enterprise, consumer, ...) there's a price point that gets you maximum profit which isn't necessarily derived from maximum units sold. The added cost of a separate production line for minimally differentiated products such as the drives we're talking is likely not justified since the public numbers for HDD sales say that enterprise is the volume king. Some amount of artificial differentiation in the firmware is the obvious choice here if anything at all. For some time there was definitely no variation at all, then ebay re-sellers took that joy away. So a little performance ding, maybe compatibility differences (like consumer SATA drives not liking SAS controllers or port multipliers), but nothing to hit AFR/MTBF and definitely nothing that takes real effort . Those compatibility issues may just be bugs found in the enterprise firmware that don't get fixed in the consumer side.

Ok, not so wall of text... perhaps more clearly thought as I'm not on the highway trying to think while the wife drives in the rain. ;)
 
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