my experience with 6TB Red Plus vs old 3TB Red

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flyingsherpa
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my experience with 6TB Red Plus vs old 3TB Red

Post by flyingsherpa » Tue Sep 28, 2021 8:02 am

My venerable OG 3TB Red EFRX from 2012 (CMR back then, be careful that these are now called Red Plus if you want the CMR version, the regular Red is now SMR) started throwing SMART errors in the last few weeks. Some sort of sector issue, and files actually started disappearing... yikes.

This is my data drive in my main PC, which is does double duty as HTPC and Plex server. Space slowly fills up as I rip/encode new movies, so 3TB is still enough, but it won't be forever. So I looked at larger replacements. Without MikeC's great reviews, I'm left with anecdotes here and with manufacturer specs to make sure it'll be quiet.

I decided to stay with WD... despite their shady SMR shenanigans, I've had great luck with the old Reds. Looking at their manufacturer specs for the Red Plus line, you really can't beat my old 3TB EFRX:

Code: Select all

drive	idle	seek
14	20	29
12	20	29
10	34	38
8	27	29
6 EFZX	25	30	new purchase
6 EFRX	25	28
4 EFZX	23	27
4 EFRX	25	28
3 EFZX	23	27
3 EFRX	23	24	baseline	

I decided to try the 6TB EFZX (wanted EFRX to save 2 db on seek, but couldn't find in stock at the time, or there was a silly premium being charged). So how is it? Idle is fine, seek is audible. Yeah, it's a faint chatter, but I *never* heard my 3TB seeks and I can hear the 6TB. It's about 4 feet away in a case that has vent holes on the side facing me (maybe blocking this would help, not sure). So I think their specs make sense to my ears, seeks going from 24 to 30 are now audible when it wasn't before... it's just unfortunate there isn't a higher capacity drive with similarly low seeks. I was hoping AAM could be tweaked, but looks like this has been disabled on WD drives for many years (sounds like patent issue).

I'll try this out for a while to see if it bugs me too much or not, but I am a bit disappointed. I still have another 3 EFRX that was my backup for the main one, so I might just use that as my main and use the new 6TB as backup, at least until I fill up the 3TB and am forced to do something else (but that will likely take a few years).

CA_Steve
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Re: my experience with 6TB Red Plus vs old 3TB Red

Post by CA_Steve » Tue Sep 28, 2021 12:27 pm

If your storage needs remain "low", you could try a 2.5" drive. Seagate BarraCuda 5TB goes for ~$160 and list specs of idle 26dB, seek 27dB. Stuck with SMR, though.

My 2TB Red from the same era (might be 2 years younger) is still running fine.

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