Mixing HDD Types's - EFAX & EFRX

[wizard99]

Taking advantage of the Prime Sale, I ordered a 920+ to replace my 5 year old 215J..... I failed though in looking more closely when I ordered two 3TB WD30EFAX's..... My plan was to use them and the two older 3TB WD30EFRX's from the 215J..... I'm now reading some conflicting threads that say never to mix these two......

Primarily the 920+ will be for home office backup, and I also have a small library of MKV Movies that I stream to our home network for viewing....

The older EFRX's are 5 years old and likely nearing there end of life..... but would have like to still utilize them if possible....

 

[Telos]

Return the SMR drives (WD Red) and exchange them for CMR drives (WD Red Plus or WD Red Pro).

 

[wizard99]

So SMR are incompatible for Synology? Just trying to understand as I'm seeing both SMR and CMR are okay on some charts, but is it just that I cannot mix the two?

 

[fredbert]

I'm seeing both SMR and CMR are okay on some charts

Whose charts?

 

[wizard99]

It's the Synology Chart initially, and as you are likely aware there is a lot of contradictory info on this....

Especially that CMR is being discontinued from WD... and that SMR is the new standard for them.

NASCOMPARES is what alerted me to this issue:

Yes, WD replaced the existing CMR range to SMR drives silently. This was very bad decision in ended up big Lawsuit Claims. I hope justice is served. But in the meantime, new SMR drives are NAS compatible but only recommended for users in the home environment or small business.

You should not mix CMR and SMR drives in the same RAID. But you can have two separate RAID on your Synology or Qnap NAS. If you can still find CMR drives on Amazon or eBay I would get them. Having a single RAID on a NAS gives more available storage space compared to several RAID groups. CMR drives will not be available for long since they are replaced.

If you do not trust WD you can have another RAID with Seagate drives.

A difference between CMR and SMR drives is speed and rebuild times. In home environment with 1Gbit network, you will unlikely notice a speed difference, and RAID rebuild times will be long anyway, adding few extra hours would not feel making a difference.

I've gone ahead and cancelled the WD SMR's.... I'll order the Seagate's instead... CMR this time...

ST4000VN008​

Thanks for your advice.... It's always a learning experience.....

 

[fredbert]

Sorry got called away to eat. Was going to add that the current WD Red Plus are the same as the old WD Red (pre SMR debacle).

The EFAX/EFRX model label isn’t fully reliable to distinguish Red SMR / Red Plus CMR. Some of the larger Red Plus are EFAX labelled too.

 

[wizard99]

Thanks Fredbert... No apologies required! I was unaware of the "Debacle" as its been a while since I purchased any new HDD's

Stuff happened so quick as I should have done a bit of research before just ordering what I thought was compatible Drives....

Only when I googled the compatibility did the can of worm's of SMD vs CMD rear its ugly read/write head.....

I'll just return the WD's and I've already ordered the 2 ST3000VN007's.... The WD's were not available in the model I waned from Amazon itself, only 3rd party sellers

 

[Telos]

So SMR are incompatible for Synology?

They're OK... as long as they're not paired with CMR drives, or your applications are not database intensive.

The thing is... only WD seems to have positioned SMR drives as NAS-rated, and they are relatively small capacity... so when you need 8TB and up, you'll see only CMR drives... From a practicality point, SMRs should be avoided unless your storage needs are less than 6TB.

I'll just return the WD's and I've already ordered the 2 ST3000VN007's.... The WD's were not available in the model I waned from Amazon itself, only 3rd party sellers

Look at B&H and NewEgg.

 

[wizard99]

Thanks for all the advice.... Its likely prevented issues that I would have faced at some point.... that would have not been easily evident to me.