Just bought a pair of these to replace dual parity

 

https://amzn.to/2IXZAe0

 

Good value when when compared to smaller sizes on offer for higher prices.

Apologies if asking the obvious, but does the internal drive have a standard sata header where you can mount it internally in your server?

Thank you

Yes they do.

The one caveat is that the tend to be deactivated when supplied with 3.3V

 

But they are fixes for that (kapton tape or power from Molex 4p connectors mainly).

The price difference is worth the little trouble for many people (me included).

From what I've read, I don't believe these particular units even need those workarounds. Mine arrived on Saturday, but I'm running it through some stress tests and will do a preclear or two before shucking to ensure they are OK OOB. So i wont be able to tell what drives or power config they have for a few more days.

 

@juan11perez, here's a decent video on how to get the drives out, you can see its fairly straight forward, and they are just regular 3.5"drives inside;

 

 

Edited December 21, 20205 yr by meep
added shucking vidfeo

@meep  

@ChatNoir

Thank you for the information. Appreciate any feedback on the results of these drives.

 

Well, they are presently preclearing. I've kept them in their cases and connected via USB 3.0 but it's a slow process. Averaging 160MB/s and getting slower as the pre-read reaches the edge;

 

 

If they keep going at this pace, and no problems arise, I'll have them ready for shucking by the new year!

 

3 days to preclear in their cases. I'll be shucking in the next few days

 

Should you not preclear 3 times?

There is no rule for how much preclear is recommended, many people do not preclear the drives before adding them to the array.

 

ONE pass is gives me enough confidence to add a new drive to Unraid.

I think that everyone should make their own decision once they understand what is at stake.

On 12/24/2020 at 11:24 PM, meep said:

I'll be shucking in the next few days

 

Since you precleared them before shucking, are they still recognised as precleared when you connect them directly to SATA ports? The reason I ask is because WD used to use encryption on some of their external drives (around the time when 4 TB was considered high capacity). The encryption was performed by the USB to SATA bridge chip so shucking the drive made its contents unreadable. Not a problem for Unraid purposes - just clear it again after shucking. I wondered if that was still the case.

 

On 1/14/2021 at 4:09 PM, John_M said:

 

Since you precleared them before shucking, are they still recognised as precleared when you connect them directly to SATA ports? The reason I ask is because WD used to use encryption on some of their external drives (around the time when 4 TB was considered high capacity). The encryption was performed by the USB to SATA bridge chip so shucking the drive made its contents unreadable. Not a problem for Unraid purposes - just clear it again after shucking. I wondered if that was still the case.

 

I still haven't found the time to shuck and, more to the point, disassemble the server to drop in the drives. I'm waiting on another part to arrive (caught up in Christmas/Brexit shipping fiasco) so once that's here, I'll do so and report back.

 

The pre-celaring was not so much to preclear as to run the drives at some degree of intensity while still in their cases to see if there would be any issues that would merit a warranty return. (none showed up). Also, these will be parity, and I can't recall if parity disks actually need a pre-clear

 

Anyway, will report back once I get a chance to do the installation.

5 minutes ago, meep said:

The pre-celaring was not so much to preclear as to run the drives at some degree of intensity while still in their cases to see if there would be any issues that would merit a warranty return. (none showed up). Also, these will be parity, and I can't recall if parity disks actually need a pre-clear

 

Indeed, if you're going to have to return such a drive that's died an early death you at least want it to fail while it's still in its case, so getting a few hours on the clock before shucking is a very good idea. No, parity disks don't need to clear, but they do need to be filled up with parity bits, which will take about the same amount of time (so allow a day or so!). Whatever they previously contained is completely overwritten, of course, and therefore doesn't matter. I have a few shucked Toshiba drives and find the USB to SATA bridge cards occasionally useful with other drives as temporary adapters, since they don't use encryption. The Preclear plugin has the option to verify quickly whether a drive is precleared. I was asking out of curiosity, really.

 

I found this item on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08MBCX8RW/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A1BKCYQGK0QCS0&psc=1  WD Easystore 14TB External USB 3.0 Hard Drive - Black WDBAMA0140HBK-NESN for $269.00 on US Amazon.  NewEgg was priced at $337.95.  BestBuy has them for $259.99.  Since I am going to replace my parity, I will buy only one of these and upgrade the rest of my drives with 8TB drives for now.