New Disks to replace WD Red 4TB

[lathajoh]

Hi All. My first post on this forum and it's clear that some of the acronyms and technology have moved on since I last had to think about this, so apologies if I ask something stupid.

I've got a 215j with a pair of WD40EFAX RED that are setup in simple shared volume/RAID/mirroring. I need to get the details on what I chose 5 years ago when I set this up but right now my NAS is running too slowly to login into and I might have to force a reboot (with fingers crossed).
I'm assuming the speed is due to degraded disk as I know that one of the drives was starting to complain about the odd bad sector.

Given that both drives are 5 years old it might be a good time to invest a new pair. I see that there is some discussion about SMR and CMR but the blog posts don't appear to be there anymore to read.
Firstly, is there a good 4TB disk that would be recommended that's reliable and wont break the bank? Ideally it would run quiet given the NAS is sitting on the desk here.
Secondly, I'm assuming that I would:
1) Remove one drive from the shared volume, then power down
2) Swap out the old drive for one of the new, power up
3) Add the new drive into the shared volume (repair?). Wait for it to finish
4) Do the same with the other drive.

Any other hints or advice would be appreciated, thanks.

 

[Rusty]

Welcome to the forum!

I've got a 215j with a pair of WD40EFAX RED that are setup in simple shared volume/RAID/mirroring.

SHR or RAID1?

I'm assuming the speed is due to degraded disk as I know that one of the drives was starting to complain about the odd bad sector.

What does the Storage Manager say on the status of the volume (and drives)?

reliable and wont break the bank?

Same storage space needs or more?

1) Remove one drive from the shared volume, then power down

Power down 1st then remove the drive, but essentially the steps are correct.

I'm assuming the speed is

Speed problem might be also regarding the apps/services running on top of that device as well as DSM version. J models from 5y ago tend to struggle with DSM requirements especially with some heavy apps running on them, but if your volume is indeed degraded, then that would be the main suspect at this point.

Do you have a backup of your NAS data?

 

[lathajoh]

It's taken this long to get in to find out I have them on SHR. Storage Manager reports it as healthy BUT I have notifications of low capacity (13% left), read abnormality etc as per screenshot.

I'll look to delete some data (I expect it's my youngest daughter copying video files here) and run some tests on the drive.
Critical data is backed up to an external USB drive by the way.
For new drives I think it makes sense to go for 6TB drives to give little more space.

 

[fredbert]

Are you 100% sure you have WD Red WD40EFAX and not WD40EFRX? I started with a DS215j and two WD30EFRX (being the standard WD Red at that time) and these are CMR disks.

You need to look for WD Red Plus to guarantee CMR disks, aka what WD Red used to be. And WD Red 'plain' are now SMR.

I agree that the DS215j can be sluggish but it will still work given a little patience. But recent updates of the AV Essential package have rendered it nigh on impossible to run on my DS215j... sucks the life out of it.

 

[Rusty]

Ok so one of your drives is probably gonna fail soon. Best to go forward with your plan

 

[EAZ1964]

Toshiba nas and seagate ironwolf disks are are fine as well, just pick what is easy to get and at a good price.

 

[lathajoh]

Are you 100% sure you have WD Red WD40EFAX and not WD40EFRX? I started with a DS215j and two WD30EFRX (being the standard WD Red at that time) and these are CMR disks.

You need to look for WD Red Plus to guarantee CMR disks, aka what WD Red used to be. And WD Red 'plain' are now SMR.

I agree that the DS215j can be sluggish but it will still work given a little patience. But recent updates of the AV Essential package have rendered it nigh on impossible to run on my DS215j... sucks the life out of it.

You are right. I see in Storage Manager that they are both WDC WD40EFRX-68WT0N0.

I can't get 'health info' on the drives. When I try I get the message below. It happens on both disks.

I'm going to switch off any packages not in use (which I should have already done) and then order some drives.

 

[Rusty]

You are right. I see in Storage Manager that they are both WDC WD40EFRX-68WT0N0.

I can't get 'health info' on the drives. When I try I get the message below. It happens on both disks. View attachment 2716
I'm going to switch off any packages not in use (which I should have already done) and then order some drives.

Yep, one or both are gonna die for sure very soon, by the looks of it.

 

[lathajoh]

Thanks for the replies. I'm putting an order in for a couple of 6TB Ironwolf drives as I don't want to pay the price for the WD Pro's.

 

[fredbert]

WD Plus isn't WD Pro. But You may struggle to find the Plus disks, I did when looking last September/October: I got 8TB Ironwolf but I find them a bit noisier than the smaller WD 3TB and 4TB I have in 2-bay NAS. But this noise may also be the 5-bay could be more prone to radiating noise around the disk caddies and dual fan. I can live with this chuntering in my v.v.v. small office.

 

[lathajoh]

I wanted to keep this thread updated until everything is resolved. The first update, even before new disks arrive, is that I've found the main culprit for the speed issues. The hint was in finding my HomeAssistant (running on a Pi) was also unresponsive. It appears that the HA add-in that allows for monitoring of Synology devices was misbehaving, even though configured correctly and taking resources from both machines through massive numbers of connection requests. Removed that add-in and now I can see the wood for the trees!

An extended SMART test on the 'dodgy' disk is still running and the count of bad sectors in increasing. Once the new drives arrive (some point in the next couple of days) I'll swap those in.
I've also started going through all the packages that were running and switching off the unused ones. There were quite a few on there that I played around with at some stage but just don't use.

 

[Tedster]

Stop running the smart tests, you already know the drive(s) are failing. They don't need the additional workload and you may need their last bit of life to rebuild with new disks!

 

[lathajoh]

Stop running the smart tests, you already know the drive(s) are failing. They don't need the additional workload and you may need their last bit of life to rebuild with new disks!

Yes, that's a good point!
Done.

 

[maravac]

WD Plus isn't WD Pro. But You may struggle to find the Plus disks, I did when looking last September/October: I got 8TB Ironwolf but I find them a bit noisier than the smaller WD 3TB and 4TB I have in 2-bay NAS. But this noise may also be the 5-bay could be more prone to radiating noise around the disk caddies and dual fan. I can live with this chuntering in my v.v.v. small office.

I have to say, unfortunately. that also new WD Red Plus HDDs are more noisy than older WD Red. I had 5x 3TB WD Red in my NAS - perfectly quiet. But now I had to upgrade to a bigger HDDs (no more free space on my storage), so I ordered 5x 8TB WD Red Plus WD80EFAX. Yes, they are CMR, but... so much noisier, hotter (+10 °C comparing to older drives) and energy consuming. And they seem to be 7200 rpm, despite that Wester Digital says - they are 5400 rpm class, which means worse performance than declared 7200 rpm drives, but they still spin at 7200
Unfortunately, as far as I know, there is no good alternative today for home NAS in terms of low consumption and mainly quiet operation. I did not find any "real" 5400 rpm HDD drive for NAS.

 

[fredbert]

From what I see people reporting, bigger disks do seem to be noisier. Not sure where the cut-over is but my 4TB WD Red (SMR) are a lot less noticeable than the Ironwolf 8TB. There's a choice here then: bigger NAS and small disks (or SSD) or smaller NAS and big disks. I agree the small disks run cooler too.

The alternative is then to stick the NAS away from where you need it to be quiet. And why I didn't see a reason to have a NAS with HDMI.

 

[malkie0831]

I upgraded the 4TB drives in my DS415+ to 8TB a year ago, two of them were Toshiba N300. They are 7200 rpm and very noisy if you sit next to the NAS..

 

[sktn77a]

I updated my two 6 year old WD Red 5400rpm 4TB drives to two WD red 5400rpm 10TB drives in 2019 (prior to the SMR/"Plus" designation fiasco). No difference in noise levels. If, indeed, they are just using 7200rpm drives now, this may partly explain any increased noise.

 

[microkid]

I just replaced my 4 WD Red 4TB WD40EFRX drives with Ironwolf drives (6TB). You can also go for the 4TB if you don't require additional storage. The Ironwolfs are great, they have the special Ironwolf Health Management that the Syno can read. They are a little more noisy when writing to disk, but that's no problem for me.

 

[bobkoure]

I have to say, unfortunately. that also new WD Red Plus HDDs are more noisy than older WD Red.

Agreed. I went from 6TB WD Reds (old/non-SMR) to 8TB Red Plus. Went from inaudible to pretty quiet - but audible. NASs live in the basement with the other network gear so it's a non-issue for me, but I'd be disappointed if the box lived on my desk.

 

[sktn77a]

Could be worse...... I just got two WG Gold 10TB drives and they are noisier than a jackhammer in an oil drum! Had to relegate them to a NAS that is tucked away in a closet where it can't damage anyone's hearing!