WD Red 8TB Drives Now Available

[JimPhreak]

Just an FYI for anyone about to build a new server that WD has finally released their Red series drives in 8TB capacity.  You can pre-order them here (they ship on 4/5 apparently) for $350.  However you can also purchase their new 8TB My Book External Drive for $250 which has an 8TB Red drive in it.  However my assumption is you would not get warranty support on the drive if removed from the external enclosure.

[John_M]

Its basic spec is included in this data sheet for the whole Red family. I was trying to work out how many platters of what density it contains but the spec suggests that, while it uses noticeably more power than the 6 TB Red in all modes, it weighs somewhat less (0.65 kg vs 0.75 for the 6 TB model). I see that it's designated WD80EFZX, not EFRX and that there's also an 8 TB Purple, but not yet a Blue or Black.

 

[TUMS]

Nice. Thanks for posting this.  I was just fixing on getting some 6TB reds.  I'll probably just hold out now till I can buy 3 of these 8tb reds from newegg.

[ijuarez]

Just an FYI for anyone about to build a new server that WD has finally released their Red series drives in 8TB capacity.  You can pre-order them here (they ship on 4/5 apparently) for $350.  However you can also purchase their new 8TB My Book External Drive for $250 which has an 8TB Red drive in it.  However my assumption is you would not get warranty support on the drive if removed from the external enclosure.

 

read somewhere that drives in enclosures like that have software that will prevent them from working if they are pulled out.

[skylark]

Good price for an offline backup.

[John_M]

I'm curious about these MyBooks, having taken others apart in the past and extracted standard WD Green drives from them.

 

@JimPhreak Why do you think the 8 TB one contains a Red drive? Is it simply that there aren't many other 8 TB WD drives to choose from?

 

@ijuarez Other MyBooks use encryption in the USB-SATA bridge so that if you format and write to the disk in the enclosure it's completely unreadable if you subsequently remove it, but at least re-formatting it when directly connected to a SATA controller makes it usable again. I'm also aware that some of WD's 2.5-inch USB disks have no SATA connector - the USB port is built into the drive electronics.

 

Any other information or references would be very useful.

 

[bkastner]

I have used this method in the past to buy cheap drives, crack the case and install in UnRAID, but can confirm you void the warranty. I had one drive go bad after a year, and had to buy a new drive to replace it. When you factor in that you may need to purchase a 2nd drive if one fails it's not such a good deal. I'd rather have the 3 year warranty behind me in case of issue - especially with these drives getting more and more expensive as capacity grows.

 

Not everyone will feel the same, but I think anyone who's had to throw out a drive just because you voided the warranty would think twice before buying an external drive for UnRAID again.

[JimPhreak]

I'm curious about these MyBooks, having taken others apart in the past and extracted standard WD Green drives from them.

 

@JimPhreak Why do you think the 8 TB one contains a Red drive? Is it simply that there aren't many other 8 TB WD drives to choose from?

 

@ijuarez Other MyBooks use encryption in the USB-SATA bridge so that if you format and write to the disk in the enclosure it's completely unreadable if you subsequently remove it, but at least re-formatting it when directly connected to a SATA controller makes it usable again. I'm also aware that some of WD's 2.5-inch USB disks have no SATA connector - the USB port is built into the drive electronics.

 

Any other information or references would be very useful.

 

Not sure about the 8TB version but they have a 16TB Duo they just released for pre-order (same ship date as the 8TB WD Red drives themselves) and you can see on the Overview tab that they use the Red Drives.

 

My Book Duo

[John_M]

I'm curious about these MyBooks, having taken others apart in the past and extracted standard WD Green drives from them.

 

@JimPhreak Why do you think the 8 TB one contains a Red drive? Is it simply that there aren't many other 8 TB WD drives to choose from?

 

@ijuarez Other MyBooks use encryption in the USB-SATA bridge so that if you format and write to the disk in the enclosure it's completely unreadable if you subsequently remove it, but at least re-formatting it when directly connected to a SATA controller makes it usable again. I'm also aware that some of WD's 2.5-inch USB disks have no SATA connector - the USB port is built into the drive electronics.

 

Any other information or references would be very useful.

 

Not sure about the 8TB version but they have a 16TB Duo they just released for pre-order (same ship date as the 8TB WD Red drives themselves) and you can see on the Overview tab that they use the Red Drives.

 

My Book Duo

 

OK. Thanks. It's just that you said

 

However you can also purchase their new 8TB My Book External Drive for $250 which has an 8TB Red drive in it.

 

in your OP, which is why I asked.

 

[JimPhreak]

I'm curious about these MyBooks, having taken others apart in the past and extracted standard WD Green drives from them.

 

@JimPhreak Why do you think the 8 TB one contains a Red drive? Is it simply that there aren't many other 8 TB WD drives to choose from?

 

@ijuarez Other MyBooks use encryption in the USB-SATA bridge so that if you format and write to the disk in the enclosure it's completely unreadable if you subsequently remove it, but at least re-formatting it when directly connected to a SATA controller makes it usable again. I'm also aware that some of WD's 2.5-inch USB disks have no SATA connector - the USB port is built into the drive electronics.

 

Any other information or references would be very useful.

 

Not sure about the 8TB version but they have a 16TB Duo they just released for pre-order (same ship date as the 8TB WD Red drives themselves) and you can see on the Overview tab that they use the Red Drives.

 

My Book Duo

 

OK. Thanks. It's just that you said

 

However you can also purchase their new 8TB My Book External Drive for $250 which has an 8TB Red drive in it.

 

in your OP, which is why I asked.

 

Yea that was just an assumption based on what I had seen on another forum but it hasn't been confirmed.

[JimPhreak]

Now available on Amazon.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Red-8TB-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B01BYLY4DM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1458250651&sr=8-1&keywords=wd+red+8tb

[John_M]

If the top picture on Amazon is genuine it appears to show a centre mounting hole, unlike the Seagate 8 TB offerings.

 

[InlineRanger]

Its basic spec is included in this data sheet for the whole Red family. I was trying to work out how many platters of what density it contains but the spec suggests that, while it uses noticeably more power than the 6 TB Red in all modes, it weighs somewhat less (0.65 kg vs 0.75 for the 6 TB model). I see that it's designated WD80EFZX, not EFRX and that there's also an 8 TB Purple, but not yet a Blue or Black.

 

I don't have the source at hand, but I remember reading that they are essentially repackaged HGST He8 drives. As a 7 platter drive, these have slightly lower sequential throughput than the 8TB Seagate SMR drives (178MB/s vs 190MB/s max sustained read), but obviously don't have the random write slowdown for huge transfers. They also have a slight power consumption advantage (-2.5W spin-up, -1W operating, -0.25W sleep).

[trurl]

From that same Amazon link here is the $/TB on these:

Price	TB	$/TB
$62.99	1	$62.99
$89.99	2	$45.00
$106.09	3	$35.36
$149.00	4	$37.25
$194.99	5	$39.00
$246.88	6	$41.15
$339.48	8	$42.44

Of course there are other costs associated with drive count. I have 2x6TB parity, with 2x6TB + 3x4TB data and plenty of free space for a while so won't be jumping on these 8TB any time soon.

[JimPhreak]

From that same Amazon link here is the $/TB on these:

Price	TB	$/TB
$62.99	1	$62.99
$89.99	2	$45.00
$106.09	3	$35.36
$149.00	4	$37.25
$194.99	5	$39.00
$246.88	6	$41.15
$339.48	8	$42.44

Of course there are other costs associated with drive count. I have 2x6TB parity, with 2x6TB + 3x4TB data and plenty of free space for a while so won't be jumping on these 8TB any time soon.

 

The Seagates are still a far better value for UnRAID setups at $220 per drive thus $27.50 per TB IMO.  I have 8 of them in each of my servers (main and backup) and they have been working great.

[ashman70]

I could of sworn I found the WD RED 8TB on Amazon.ca yesterday, if memory serves it was over $500 but for some reason its not showing up now. The Seagate's are definitely a better value, I have three of them and no issues so far. Its also disappointing that WD seems ti have discontinued their Red PRO line, they had 5yr warranties like their black series.

[garycase]

Clearly the Seagates are the best value with a very low cost/TB => and the mitigations they'd made to offset the disadvantages of the shingled technology really work well for most UnRAID scenarios.    If I was building a new server with 8TB drives, I'd use the Seagates for all the data drives, but would agonize over the parity drives ... I suspect I'd likely go with the WD Reds for those, just to avoid SMR (although most folks have had no issues with shingled parity drives either).

 

[John_M]

I don't have the source at hand, but I remember reading that they are essentially repackaged HGST He8 drives. As a 7 platter drive, these have slightly lower sequential throughput than the 8TB Seagate SMR drives (178MB/s vs 190MB/s max sustained read), but obviously don't have the random write slowdown for huge transfers. They also have a slight power consumption advantage (-2.5W spin-up, -1W operating, -0.25W sleep).

 

The spec sheet also says it's a "5400 RPM class" drive. I must say in the Amazon photo it looks as though it could be a sealed helium-filled unit, but if it really has seven platters there would be no room for centre mounting holes.

[garycase]

I very much doubt it's a sealed helium drive -- the price would likely be appreciably higher and/or they'd certainly market it was a helium-filled unit.

 

My guess is it's a 6-platter 1.33TB/platter unit, but until it's actually shipping we're unlikely to know that for sure.

 

[InlineRanger]

The spec sheet also says it's a "5400 RPM class" drive. I must say in the Amazon photo it looks as though it could be a sealed helium-filled unit, but if it really has seven platters there would be no room for centre mounting holes.

 

Do any 6-platter drives have center mounting holes? I know the 8TB Seagate SMR drives don't. I think 7-platter drives use the same internal z-height, but with thinner platters.

 

I very much doubt it's a sealed helium drive -- the price would likely be appreciably higher and/or they'd certainly market it was a helium-filled unit.

 

My guess is it's a 6-platter 1.33TB/platter unit, but until it's actually shipping we're unlikely to know that for sure.

 

This was the article I remember seeing and it looks like storagereview.com corroborates.

 

That would be great news if it's a 6-platter drive. The only 8TB PMR drive I know of is Seagate's enterprise ($$$) unit. The sooner mainstream 8TB drives transition to PMR the sooner we'll get 10TB SMR drives. I'd be surprised though, since WDC usually trails Seagate in platter density.

[John_M]

Six regular platters plus air, or seven thin platters plus helium take up the same space and leave no room for that centre mounting hole.

 

Seagate makes a whole range of 8 TB non-SMR drives now, including a desktop (DM) version, a NAS (VN) version, an enterprise NAS (NE) version and an enterprise capacity (NM) version.

 

[JorgeB]

They are helium drives, read speed starts at 191MB/s and ends at 85MB/s.

 

Looks like there's no center mounting hole, at least not on the bottom.

 

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storage/Western-Digital-Red-8TB-Full-Review-Consumer-Helium-Hard-Disk

 

 

[danioj]

The spec sheet also says it's a "5400 RPM class" drive. I must say in the Amazon photo it looks as though it could be a sealed helium-filled unit, but if it really has seven platters there would be no room for centre mounting holes.

 

Do any 6-platter drives have center mounting holes? I know the 8TB Seagate SMR drives don't. I think 7-platter drives use the same internal z-height, but with thinner platters.

 

I very much doubt it's a sealed helium drive -- the price would likely be appreciably higher and/or they'd certainly market it was a helium-filled unit.

 

My guess is it's a 6-platter 1.33TB/platter unit, but until it's actually shipping we're unlikely to know that for sure.

 

This was the article I remember seeing and it looks like storagereview.com corroborates.

 

That would be great news if it's a 6-platter drive. The only 8TB PMR drive I know of is Seagate's enterprise ($$$) unit. The sooner mainstream 8TB drives transition to PMR the sooner we'll get 10TB SMR drives. I'd be surprised though, since WDC usually trails Seagate in platter density.

 

10TB SMR drives. I'd buy them if they have the same performance of the 8TB SMR's.

 

I say it (and I'll keep saying it) my 8TB SMR disks perform just as well (and in some case out perform) my WD Red PMR disks.

 

Perhaps my use case (which is varied) lends itself to not expose any potential write penalties speculated (as I have not seen ANY evidence in all this time) to be expected as a result of the SMR Technology OR Seagate have done such a good job at mitigating those issues they are just transparent to me.

 

Either way I look at it like this, I have an 8TB SMR disk (and with the same warranty) for cheaper than a 6TB (e.g. WDRed) PMR and have experienced NO negative Performance issues in well over a year now!

 

Bring on the 10TB SMR's!!! 

[nightanole]

 

Dont know how you can yak for 15min about a hd....

[John_M]

I'd like to see it compared with the ST8000VN.