Stop Buying WD NAS Drives.

[@SpaceRexWill]

Updated video diving into the warning: kzbin.info/www/bejne/oqTWaKdsd79ogbs

[@Matlockization]

I couldn't agree more. WD in all its forms is crap and has been so for the last 10 yrs for me. I'm happy to spend more to guarantee some kind of piece of mind. At one stage I was thinking about buying ECC RAM so that when the drives tank I could salvage close to 100% of my data. However it hasn't gotten to that yet. I dont care what WD say. If its happening to me then its a lot worse elsewhere.

[@KrK-EST]

All my WD drives have died just weeks after bought. WD Red a 2tb nas drive died after 1 year. My 5 yo 4tb seagate ironwolf has worked perfectly and has great performance. Never buy WD!

[@Warp3326]

No offense but you are saying "anti consumer dont buy" yet you have a macbook, apple is far more anti consumer than WD

[@Matlockization]

@@Warp3326 No I think WD is worse than Apple but WD is not anti consumer because their products break down completely and your forced to recover your data and get the system up and running again. Because WD is selling faulty products and bad quality control not manipulation, after all, why would WD cut their own throat ?

[@Warp3326]

@@Matlockization Yeah, apple is pretty bad tho ngl But yeah

[@stephensears7483]

Thanks for the update, WIll! I don't think you are trashing WD - they are trashing themselves. You are giving your audience, and all consumers, important information.

[@jsmithtraveller]

I checked my WD NAS drives and yes Big orange warning on volume 1. Status of each drive is normal so I'll be using this and temp to dictate when I replace them... for Seagate!

[@MitchellEarl]

@@talismanna Only applies to a small portion of the Synology NAS lineup. Most allow any drive you can throw in one, even ones that aren't on their compatibility list, which is woefully out of date.

[@hellraserfleshlight]

I really hate that we're slowly getting to the point where we just can't trust *any* manufacturer.

[@raylopez99]

Yeah, agree, posting from a PC that's 13 years old and still going strong.

[@RhavoX]

any corporation basically. Whenever a company gets too large it seems like psychopaths get into higher management and have braindead ideas like this one.

[@ianbelletti6241]

Let me add software devs to that. Nowadays both see you, the customer, as their wallet.

[@HansensUniverseT-A]

Yeah, I've started buying new old stock, including drives, expect it to get much much worse in the coming years.

[@blender_wiki]

That's not new. Tech brands are experts on legal scams. Never trust a manufacturer only trust a product after you collect enough info about it.

[@kychemclass5850]

I agree, If they didn't want to 'fear people' into buying a new drive, the 'warning' could have been: "Note: The HD has accumulated 36 months usage". A subsequent analytical report to assess any relevance to the 'warning' could also have been given. Well done for highlighting this.

[@MM3RTH]

Thanks Will, i am afraid this sort of behaviour applies to software as well with yearly updates where you are just paying for bug fixes under the guises of new features. Glorified beta testers is that what we are, and loyalty has gone right out with awful upgrade prices for your loyalty. Keep up the good work. You are appreciated.

[@shahrilamrias]

Oh we already are. There’s a lot of software out there that releases major version every year and want user to pay to upgrade to v4 v5 v6 or whatever. Guess what? Quite a lot of these “major” releases are not that major 😂

[@udirt]

A really good explanation of how a false positive alert hides the real alerts. Great job! They built their reputation for the WD Red series based off 5 year warranty. Now they're killing it.

[@okiul]

not all Red series have 5 year warranty.

[@opiniononion919]

Seagate Exos gives you 5 years as well.

[@DuckDuckDad]

Exactly. Same reason I can’t stand the check engine light on in my car, even when I know why it’s on and that it’s not a major issue. How will I know if another code for a serious problem is thrown if I’m not plugging in an OBD reader every day? This is ridiculous, and, all of my 3 year old WD Red Pros in my Synology NAS just went into warning mode last week. I couldn’t figure out why because diagnostics shows everything is good. I definitely won’t be buying their drives anymore if they don’t fix this, and maybe even if they do because they audacity to do it in the first place. They’ve lost the trust of their customers, or this one anyway.

[@savrip]

Thanks for highlighting this. I knew of the previous WD issues, but during my recent 1821+ build I went with a pair of WD 16tb drives. This is about the same time I found your channel. I really enjoy your channel and one of the few I ever end up commenting on. Due to my mistake during adding drives (I wish Synology's RAID calculator told you what order the drives need to be added) I needed to purchase another 16tb drive. It was only a week later, but the price had increased $50 for the WDj drive. It was time-consuming, but the logical option to purchased 3 16tb seagate drives and started to replace the WD drives and rebuild raid until I was able to get the previous 2 WD drives out, then returned them. I hated having to do it, but after this video it confirms that it was something that was worth the time. Thanks for your hard work in making these videos!

[@RagnarRipper]

When a person who is usually super chill and just being positive in their videos is pissed, you know something went VERY wrong and their reason to be pissed is more than justified. I really dig your videos and this video is super valuable to inform people who even are not using Synology.

[@4ntig3n]

I just wanted to say thank you for writing a good description. It really means a lot in a world where everyone is vying for watch-time.

[@DougEvans]

This is very useful Will! Thank you for watching out for us, your audience. Bummer is, I've got 2 NAS systems with a total of 8 WD Red Pro drives. It only saved me a few pennies over going with Seagate Iron Wolf drives. No warning yet, but it's only been 18 months. Really appreciate your work!

[@raven4k998]

ssshhh don't listen to him buy as many WD red nas drives as you can🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@SurfSailKayak]

There's more to this story. Synology started marking any drive as warning if you aren't running synology drives in your Rackmount NAS. Beyond dirty and just unfortunate... Seems like WD was encouraged to play similar games based on what Synology was doing. Honestly, it's the exact opposite to what they should be doing... becoming more open. Synology should sell their OS... Not lock down like old enterprise hardware used to.. They whole beauty of the Synology lineup was great software with all the features for everyone... at a decent price since linux is doing most of the heavy lifting here.

[@TheBillclark2]

Exactly...people should dump Synology and go-to qnap or unRAID.

[@coolcat23]

@SpaceRex How anti-consumer is that behaviour from Synology? Yet you are not dumping them, are you? I support your stance in principle, but I think you are using a double-standard here. Only three WD models have the issue you reported and who knows who (WD or Synology) was pushing for it? Other manufacturers tried selling SMR drives as regular drives as well; it was not just WD. I agree with naming and shaming companies, but it seems you are not using the same standards for everyone.

[@marcopaolini3478]

@@coolcat23 To me, too, it seems like WD's "revenge" specifically against Synology and its small group of officially supported drives by them. Unfortunately it seems to me a short-sighted behavior from both companies: up until a few months ago I was practically sure to get a new Synology NAS, but since I have a lot of "old" drives that I want to use coming from my current / previous NAS (WD and Seagate), but NONE of them are supported by Synology sorry, but I switch to QNAP. I still have two very old QNAPs (TS251A and TS210) that still work, without problems, and with any disk (the TS251A even has two 14TB WD RED Plus inside). As a customer, I demand that I have the choice to purchase the HDs I want.

[@carltaylor1497]

@@coolcat23 I love my Synology NAS Boxes (Have 3 of them). But I am extremely annoyed that they don't validate any RAM or SSDs other than their own over priced (3 - 4 times the price of similar non Synology branded), versions. It's not like they manufacture any of it. They just stick their name on it and mark the price up by 300%. Ridiculous!

[@bigpoppa1234]

Synology will never sell their OS because it would kill the company.

[@metacob]

Frankly I read this as "We couldn't figure out how to make our HDDs fail right after the warranty ends, so instead we'll just pretend it's normal to throw them out after 3 years". Glad I switched to Seagate recently. Also I've had quite a few WD REDs fail over the years, more than even the Backblaze data would have suggested.

[@puffer4909]

From what I heard Seagates Drives are more prone to fail than WDs

[@puffer4909]

What was your experience @metacob

[@nixon2tube]

So you jumped from the frying pan into the fire. ;)

[@delindsay]

@@nixon2tube This, Seagate have the WORST HDD's on the market, period.

[@TopiasSalakka]

@@delindsayNah, better than WD today.

[@Evertb1]

As a FreeNAS/TrueNAS user and also owning a couple of Synology NAS devices I always have promoted the use of WD red drives. But since the SMR scandal a couple of years ago WD is not for me anymore. And I certainly don't advise anybody to use them. WD does not deserve loyal customers. And you are so right about 3 years being nothing for use in a NAS. I always buy drives for a NAS for at least 5 years use.

[@richardlyon67]

Thanks, Will. I stopped buying HP printers years ago when they started monkeying about with the firmware to try and make us buy their refills. Now I've stopped buying Western Digial drives.

[@ahmatrizki5154]

I thought just me, about hp printer😅

[@johnm2012]

Don't forget that there's still a third player in the hard drive market. If you can get them, Toshiba drives are well worth considering.

[@progenitor_amborella]

We can only home Framework makes a printer one day, haha. Their ceo said they get asked that a lot.

[@JasonKaler]

HP's always been the first to employ anti-consumer behavior. Now they want to make home printing a subscription based service

[@TheMack]

Agreed. And HP's scare tactic is to tell the customers that third-party refills can can contain viruses that may spread across the network. Well, how's that for bad marketing. HP can keep their virus-printers and I'll go for another brand.

[@user-tk6rl4hm5p]

I appreciate your videos, and your attempt to warn your viewers of potential issues. However, it appears since you do not have WD drives on your local systems, the advice you provided in this video could not be verified. I have several customers using WD Red, WD Red+, and WD Red Pro drives on a variety of Synology platforms. After watching this video, I attempted to modify the setting you encourage to be turned off (WDDA) and was unable to find the setting where you mentioned or anywhere else on any of the Synology NAS's I administer. Interestingly, where I had installed Seagate Ironwolf drives, the option to enable/disable a unique Ironwolf Health Management (IHM) is found in the Synology Storage Manager - HDD/SSD - Health Info. None of the WD drives show any such options (only standard S.M.A.R.T.) on all of these NAS models (RS815+, DS916+, DS918+, and DS1618+) all running DSM 7.1.1-42962 Update 5. Perhaps some different combo of WD drive, NAS model and DSM will show the elusive WDDA setting, but nothing is showing on any of the systems I administer. I have WD Red drives spanning 4 months in service up through 7+ years, and none show any warnings. So far I have had excellent success with WD drives. Even when I did get a batch of SMR drives a few years ago, WD exchanged them free of charge. BTW, it was one of your videos I watched that clued me into that issue, so thanks again! It is troubling to hear of possible corporate stupidity popping up in their newer drives, If there is a way to bypass WDDA, or verify that it is a looming problem in particular drives manufactured after a certain date, I would love to know. Thanks.

[@pilotbum]

So who’s left? Seagates drives are worse. I’ve had numerous seagate failures but never a WD failure.

[@mso]

Samsung

[@Djabberrr]

@@mso Haha, good one

[@MP_7]

Toshiba?

[@RingwelskiJacek]

I use seagate ironwolf nas drives personally.

[@merlin6r]

I'm here today because my Seagate drive has failed while the older WD drive is still working with 0 bad sectors. I'm still buying WD as the fact is, they're simply the most reliable... Fact.

[@JamieWhitehorn]

I used to buy WD Red drives, but after getting caught by the SMR debacle, I voted with my feet and bought Seagate Ironwolfs when I was kitting out my new Synology. So glad I did 👍🏻

[@HR-wd6cw]

Just so people are aware, the SMR CMR thing is not specific to WD, as companies like Seagate also use the SMR technology. Some drives from WD (some of the new WD Pro drives) are CMR whereas some of the cheaper Seagates are SMR, so it really depends on the drive's use, but is not specific to WD.

[@JamieWhitehorn]

@@HR-wd6cw true, but as far as I am aware, Seagate didn't incorporate SMR into their Ironwolf NAS drives, whereas WD did.

[@stangtennis]

@@HR-wd6cw The problem was not (only) that they used SMR, the problem was that they did not tell their customers! They tried sneaking it in through the backdoor even though a lot of their customers got big problems because of it. And they took a premium price for a sub-standard (in NAS) product without informing. Seagate and other has not (as far as I know) done this...

[@dazztee]

if you buy 8TB or above they will have correct platters , i was lucky with my 3tbs an 6tbs having correct platters as i bought them before that stuff happened, (correct models no's)

[@dan8t669]

@@JamieWhitehorn Not only did Seagate label SMR drives as NAS drives, they were also the first on the market with SMR. I remember it vividly, because I almost bought them. But because most people buy WD, no one paid attention to Seagate.

[@jonidimo]

I am an IT technician, working for a company repairing computers, servers, and maintaining networks for other businesses, including banks and customer service centers. In my personal experience, 90% of the computer and laptop issues that come in for repairs are related to the hard drive. And out of these, 99% of the drives are the WD Blue ones. The most common failure I've encountered is with the WD Blue 1TB. Interestingly, I have also experienced this issue with my personal desktop PC and two notebooks over the years. Around six years ago, I built a TrueNAS server (formerly FreeNAS) and initially installed two Hitachi Ultrastar 7K4000 4TB hard drives. I also equipped my personal PC with the same Hitachi drive and added a Samsung 970 1TB NVMe drive. Surprisingly, I haven't encountered any issues with these drives on my server or personal PC. It's truly incredible how WD performs in comparison. I will no longer recommend their products, not even to my family or friends who frequently seek my advice on purchasing hard drives. Thank you for sharing your experience; I thought it was a problem unique to my region (I'm from Argentina). It's unfortunate that Hitachi is now a part of WD.

[@Wagoo]

The old Hitachi drives are incredible. When WD bought Hitachi, then Toshiba set up shop in the old Hitachi factory Model Family: Hitachi Travelstar 5K500.B User Capacity: 160,041,885,696 bytes [160 GB] 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0012 001 001 000 Old_age Always - 107684 12.3 years powered on and still rocking

[@wanyelandy8847]

You are fortunately enough NOT to use Seagate 7200.11 hard drives, they are trash. All my 5 HDD of them failed with 3 years. WD 1TB is SMR, which is trash. I will always go to WD's dat center line like HC530/HC550/HC560, they are PMR and the lowest rate of failure rates.

[@Wagoo]

Backblaze do indeed still publish stats on their drives a few times a year. They’ve also started one for SSDs although they seem to have an odd selection of those so far (eg. no Samsung yet)

[@jonidimo]

​@@Wagoo I think the best SSD nowadays is the Seagate Firecuda 530.

[@elijahnoah]

Agree. I used both Seagate and WD. My Seagate died on me at 5th year. While WD Blue died on me after just 1yr. Its ridiculous. WD Black so far so good tho.

[@clmims100]

I had been burned by Seagate many times over ten years ago. I have used Toshiba drives in many builds and while a little noisy they have not failed in six years. I switched to 4 12 TB Iron Wolf drives to up the capacity in my NAS. No noise and no errors.

[@awesomeferret]

Am I the only one who finds the noise genuinely appealing? I view Toshiba drives being loud as a plus.

[@TheHighborn]

wait aren't Iron Wolves seagate?

[@davidwensboposaric5498]

Thanks for an important update! Guess there is going to be a lot of refurbished WD-drives on the secondary market - "Hardly used high quality drives for your NAS, only 3 years old...".

[@royalexander5437]

My linux ZFS RaidZ2 will grab those 3 year old drives and do as it pleases with them. Never commit to one of these premade nas, lazy.

[@samwight]

Absolutely insane. Was thinking about purchasing some WD Reds for my first NAS but I guess I'll be sticking with my Seagate Ironwolfs.

[@Mae-nr7wr]

few years ago WD tried sneaking in SMR drives on their red line, i never bought any WD after that

[@michaelpearson9]

Just buy iron wolf so much better

[@coolcat23]

As long as you are not buying one of three WD models that are affected by this warning issue, you should be good. Other manufacturers have their issues as well, I don't see any support for the "black sheep" theory put forward here.

[@mil3k]

​@@Mae-nr7wrIt took me a month to find a supplier who sells non SMR WD Reds. But still at first time I received SMR disc. I he'd to complain and send it back to receive correct one. And still this disc died in less then half a year. Swap to Iron Wolfs and didn't have any problems.

[@wanyelandy8847]

Simple, all WD over 8TB are all CMR. You should definitely buy Helium models like 14TB+. WD HC 530/HC550/HC560 are quite good drive, low temperature and super reliable according to BackBlaze's data center disk report.

[@tbone9405]

Thank you for this content! It helps as I was wondering why so many of my drives have warnings. Have spent a lot of money replacing them.

[@johnh1353]

It's the never ending battle every engineer that works at a medium to large company goes through, the tug-of-war between product/sales and engineering ... of course this concern was probably brought up by engineering staff but whomever is at the top of the ORG chart thought otherwise ... we'll see if this gets corrected or not

[@j.b.2561]

I used to buy WD Red drives in the past but 2 of them died shortly after the warranty period. Since then I never bought any Reds again. Today I am using Toshiba MG09 drives and I am completely satiesfied with them. They are relatively silent, consume less power than Reds and Iron Wolfs and not a single one has died on me for many years now and I am using 6 disks in a RaidZ1.

[@wattfource]

Nice update! I've had amazing success with a 250TB array with WD Gold drives but will be preparing for budget adjustment if problems arise next year @ 3yr mark.

[@frankfix247]

As I wrote earlier, just wait till you pass the magic 40k hrs (~4.5 years) mark.

[@judgementalmedia]

Thank you Will, valuable information. Happy that the CMR/SMR debacle of WD already made me chose to go with Seagate drives. With this video I am extra happy I did. Keep up the good work!

[@microdesigns2000]

Wasn't Seagate also shipping SMR IronWolf drives? I thought they were both guilty.

[@mttkl]

@@microdesigns2000 As far as I know no, Seagate claims they never made IronWolf drives with SMR. I think they just weren't open about the recording tech used on their drives (they have a comprehensive table on their site now)

[@SocialWorkProfessor]

​@@microdesigns2000 Seagate explicitly stated that all their NAS drives are CMR.

[@wanyelandy8847]

Any WD NAS drive over 8TB is CMR, under is SMR. I only brought 14TB WD NAS external drive and shack them. They are cheap and actually it is actually a WD Red/RedPro, very reliable so far, helium, low temperature and very durable. Seagate's reputation has been ruined on me as all my 5 Seagate 7200.11 all gone within 3 years of time. All my 4 WD Hitachi 4TB runs Raid0 perfectly for multiple years. According to the BackBlaze report, Seagate hard drives have much higher failure rate than WD/HC series in general. For data, reliability is most important, the time for data recovery is too longer and error prone.

[@SmallSpoonBrigade]

That is bad, but it's gotten extremely hard to find decent drives in recent years. I've had so many drives just inexplicably fail when they shouldn't fail over the years that I just keep switching brands, and given how few companies even make drives, it means looping back to ones that I've previously blacklisted.

[@dfloper]

Even with all the red flags i still found WD to be the most reliable hdd at present.

[@DJRonnieG]

I don't really maintain any brand loyalty anymore, but instead I use a variety of brands. I do have some preferred brands and product-lines so it's not like a complete random hodgepodge. In theory, if I only bought one brand and one model it would open me up to a potential cascade failure. Like if a group of drives were manufactured on the same line, and were in the same batch... they might all share a common defect that causes failures at roughly the same time. This would be undesirable during rebuilds. So a little variety could help to hedge against that sort scenario.

[@neoasura]

@@dfloper Me too, my WD Red drives are still going fine after years, and I haven't had to replace them yet.

[@meXoBER]

Went with HGST. no failures till now.

[@katrinabryce]

There's only about 2.5 companies now: Seagate Western Digital + Hitachi which is part of Western Digital, and Toshiba whch is also sort-of part of Western Digital.

[@N.A._McBee]

I have two 8-slot Synology NASes. One was equipped with Toshiba HD's, the other one with WD's. ALL of the WD's died prematurely after one or two years, whereas the Toshibas ran for more than a decade and do so up to now.

[@SpaceRexWill]

Update: Looks like not all WD drives currently support the test: kb.synology.com/en-us/DSM/tutorial/Which_Synology_NAS_supports_WDDA Update2: Looks like Reddit found how to disable it via SSH (disclaimer, I have not tested this, do so at your own risk) www.reddit.com/r/synology/comments/13uyk41/comment/jm441a0/?context=3 Update3: Looks like QNAP is including same WD Device Analytics in the most recent update. I have been unable to test, but from the description in the change notes it looks like it may have the exact same issues with WDDA drives: www.qnap.com/en-us/release-notes/qts/overview/5.1.0

[@Mae-nr7wr]

these NAS channels needs to address the 108 TB limit on synology, its becoming a big problem

[@rbrought]

My 14TB WD Red Pro doesn't seem to have the WDDA settings either on Synology.

[@McMurdo]

Thank you for the video and posting this update.

[@terryleasa161]

Ah, My drives are too little. :) 4tb

[@Jays1ndone]

Only ones affected are below, doesn’t look like my Red Plus 10TB isn’t Red™ Pro 12 TB WD121KFBX - 68EF5N0 Red™ Plus (formerly known as Red™) 12 TB WD120EFAX - 68UNTN0 Purple™ 8 TB WD82PURZ - 85TEUY0

[@mattyourmom]

Thanks for the update Will, your videos have been a godsend for new NAS owners. The whole SMR NAS drive thing was enough for me to make Seagate my go too going forward but this is even more shady. Its a shame too because the only few drives I've ever had die on me (without a good reason) have been non WD drives so it doesn't seem like they necessarily make bad drives.

[@BrianGarside]

Seagate all the way. Exos line in particular

[@ryanjay6241]

Yep WD has been shady recently, makes me not really want to deal with them. However, I will never buy a Seagate. I've only had 2 drives outright die on me in my entire life and both of them were Seagate's. I've had some WDs in continuous operation for 14 years with no major issues (which is why I bought a Synology last year lol). I guess there's aways still Toshiba? I've had 2 of those with no issues either.

[@BrianGarside]

@@ryanjay6241 I have both. I have More Seagate and none have failed and have passed the long drive test each time and still operate. Exos line is what I use, perhaps you had a bad batch.

[@renefrijhoff2484]

@@BrianGarside The amount of Seagate drives that died (electronically) on me is too much to count. So if they were just bad batches, then Seagate made either a whole lot of bad batches, starting from 1986 or I was just unlucky to get all of them? Only 1 Seagate lasted about 7 years, all the others died within 2 years or just above (except my 1st, which was D.O.A. and the 2nd, which was a replacement for my 1st, lasted 6 months). On the other hand, my oldest W.D. is currently running for 123200 hours and 1 below that is currently running for 100238 hours.

[@BrianGarside]

@@renefrijhoff2484 I can only tell you based on my experience. 10 Exos in counting all good for me. WD gold edition still going strong as well.

[@fran2911]

Literally losing lifetime customers over a couple of bucks

[@kien9350]

"Me just bought 2 WD NAD Drive yesterday" SpaceRex: Stop Buying WD NAS Drives.

[@raycollington4310]

This is public service broadcasting. Thank you Will

[@SteveFulemule]

Great stuff, Will. Here is my short story: recently switched from DROBO 5N (future release and support issues related reasons) to DS1522+. All 4 HDD moved to DS, all WD RED. The oldest is 2014, most recent is 2021. All healthy as we speak, no warnings. But there is no WD analytics in the advanced settings in SM in DSM so I guess they probably removed this since this video was published(?).

[@crhvideo]

Good info, thanks! I ended up buying used Ultrastars for my TrueNAS instead of new WD Red a few days ago, now I am glad that I did that.

[@mitchellsmith4601]

Will, we have been using HGST drives for years, but after WD bought them, we began using Iron Wolf Pro drives. We’ve been using them for three or four years in our Synology, QNAP, and TrueNAS systems and have been very pleased.

[@didierhubercoachingconsulting]

Thank you Mitchell. Can you say what capacity you use? and what the noise level is? Noise level is a big consideration since I use my Synology NAS in our primary residence.

[@AWOL_ODST]

WD Red drives in my Synology do not currently have the WDDA option. Will keep an eye out, thanks for the heads up. Very shady WD

[@moobox]

Same here

[@michal_szymanski]

Mayb this problem exists in DSM 7.2 ?

[@leexgx]

Usually only available on 12tb and higher wd red pro (and needs to be 22+ nas models I believe) yet my Synology 1812+ can use Iron wolf health report on supported models of drives

[@JackBanka]

Same

[@JoelMyaer]

Same here, no WDDA option on my 2 WD Red drives

[@Tugela60]

WDDA is not available for all WD drives, and is not available on Synology NAS boxes from the 22 series on, so this is probably not an issue for most people. It does not show up on my NAS boxes for example.

[@MikkoRantalainen]

7:10 The important point to notice is that AFR doesn't meaningfully increase for 1 year old drives vs 7 year old drives. Having a hardcoded S.M.A.R.T. warning appear on 3 year powered-on time is either bad firmware or they're using known bad caps in the electronics which detoriate in known calendar time.

[@philrod1]

Good point. If a drive is still fine after a year, it's probably going to be fine after ten years.

[@MikkoRantalainen]

@@philrod1 HDDs have failure rates surprisingly close to Poisson distribution even thought there are multiple mechanical parts which should make it more like natural distribution. That's why you should always create backups: it doesn't matter if the drive is 1 year or 8 years old, it can fail without a warning. And SSDs seem to fail every time without a warning. HDDs sometimes started to make weird sounds before failing but I think that's pretty rare nowadays because the mechanical parts are manufactured with such a fine tolerances so the PCB components start to become the weakest link even for HDDs.

[@HR-wd6cw]

But isn't DSM part of Synology's NAS software? If so, is this really WD's fault, or would Seagate drives trigger the same thing). In non-NAS applications (I run a PC that acts as a NAS with a RAID card but is basically a computer that runs a regular OS, and is used for home file storage) I have not run into this, so it's likely related specifically to DSM in the NAS boxes.

[@coolcat23]

DSM is Synology's NAS software. They could just interpret the information from the hard drive differently. It's Synology that turns the information into a problem, not WD, AFAIC.

[@geoffc7941]

Hey Will, thanks for the heads-up! And also for the link from Synology. @Stephen Sears is right, they are trashing themselves. I'd be OK with them telling the user their warranty has expired. That's a whole lot different than saying "WARNING" and all that implies.

[@SmurfHunter]

Imagine if cars permanently had a check engine light at 50,000 miles

[@RodrigoMiranda1903]

Hi Will, I'm running DS1522+ with two 14TB WD Red Pro (WD141KFGX-68FH9N0) and the WDDA options is not available. I also found a topic at Synology Knowledge Center informing WDDA is available only for a few HDD models and only for older Synology Devices released before 22 series. The WD Red Pro drives also has 5 year warranty, so it will be under warranty if this warning comes out.

[@coolcat23]

Warning consumers is good. However, the issue you uncovered affects three (3) drive models only. There is no need to advise against a whole line up when three models are affected only. Perhaps there is a good reason for why these three models issue that warning? Why is Synology making a Warning out of this, instead of a notification? Isn't Synology partially to blame as well? I also get that you are against anti-consumer behaviour as a principle, but WD weren't the only company trying to sell SMR drives as regular drives.

[@wanyelandy8847]

Actually, only 3 models(WD Red/Pro 12TB and Purple 8TB) are affected, not the whole WD Red/Pro line. More like an attempt from Synology with WD's testing support.

[@idontnodouno]

Thanks - they also had an email leak of all personal details of customers who bought on their website - that happened a couple of month ago.

[@SpaceRexWill]

Yeah, they got completely hacked a few months ago. The WD cloud NAS units they sell could not log on for a few days

[@reviews2you]

I just bought six new 16TB wd Red drives. Thanks for letting me know, shipping them back on Monday and going with Seagate.

[@joshc44]

I don't see how they could think this will have their desired effect of moving more drives in the long run. If I had a bunch of WD drives that all went bad at the same time and I didn't understand why I would immediately go out and buy anything else not more WD drives. Then even if I had it explained to me by WD that they aren't failed they are just reaching the end of their expected life, I would still switch because they are tassetly admitting their product sucks since they think it can't last more than 3 years.

[@michal_szymanski]

I think that Synology should handle this situation in DSM in different way, maybe they prepare such fix or maybe such fix is in 7.2?

[@DavidM2002]

Maybe they aren't doing this to get us to buy more WD drives. Maybe the message is WD acknowledging that their drives are crap and the 3 year warning is based on their own testing. I've checked both my Synology and my QNAP and see no way to turn off (or on) the WD tests.

[@don_cc123]

My Synology DSM doesn't seem to have a way to change the WD test either.

[@gavinblackford4219]

Thanks for the update, looks like I am going to need to look at other manufacturers when I need to replace my disks next. I have had problems with seagate being noisy and several failures after short use to that takes out the two biggest known brands for me

[@SpaceRexWill]

I have been using IronWolfs / exos without issue. Other option is toshiba

[@DerSystematiker]

Update: WD stopped deploying this feature pretty quickly. Only a handful of models ever got this. Synology also removed WDDA support in September 23. WD got the shitstorm they deserved and it worked. I sill go with WD Red CMR drives, because Seagate are so freaking loud. p.s. Statisticly irrelevant... but of close to 100 HDD I bought since the 90s for my personal use, the only drives every failed completly were Seagate drives. I had also defect sectors on IBM, Maxtor, Toshiba, Samsung and WD drives but they could all be recovered and so the only drives that had actual data loss were Seagate.

[@jrfjosh]

Important info about WD drive analytics: WDDA is only available on DSM 7.0 and above, and only on specific Synology NAS models released before the 22-series. And only drives that have WDDA are 12TB and up red pro and red plus, and 8TB and up purple. Luckily I currently only have 4TB red pro drives and they are not affected by this. 😅

[@webmail4]

Your information and clarification is very helpful, thank you.

[@wpattison]

Ahh interesting - explains why I'm not seeing it. Thank you.

[@SpaceRexWill]

^explains the chaos with which units have it

[@sr71ramjet44]

Wait, forgive my confusion but are you saying that I’m not effected if I have the 8TB Red Plus? I’ve had various WD NAS drives for over 20 years. I really like my DS920+ NAS and stayed with the WD drives but if these are an issue in the near future (currently showing normal) will switching to a Seagate one drive at a time work? Thanks for the heads up!😊

[@JoelFabiani]

I have four 16Tb WD161KFGX on a DS920+ and I don't see WDDA (running latest DSM). Based on your information I believe I should be impacted right?

[@Gigaloader]

Considering how may users they left hanging with major security issues of their WDmycloud storage......I'm not surprised. Trash.

[@philg3914]

If I already had WD, these drives becoming in a state that makes them unusable, will just make me buy another reliable brand that doesn't do this. Thanks for the heads up on WD and Synology. Two brands that have made the "DO NOT BUY" list

[@BenkArtist]

As someone that already has 8 WD drives in my NASs, I have to ask: When the drives eventually fail, can I replace individual WD drives with IronWolf drives? or is it better to stick with only one brand? Side note, I can't see any settings or mention of WDDA in Storage Manager settings or Health Info.

[@blkspade23]

See I was ready to give up on WD after the whole SMR debacle, because I too generally refuse to support anti-consumer behavior. The problem is, the only other option is Segate. I've been relying on WD black drives that I generally have bought in pairs over the past 20+ years. I've also specced out components for family members computers where they've gone for the Segate drives. Not a single Segate has lasted as long as a WD I've used. I retired my 1st Gen SATA 80GB drives before they failed moving to 1TB WD blacks that had 10years of power on time before I replaced them. Now I'm using 4 6TB WD blacks in truenas. I can deal with slightly lower performance or a lacking feature set or ecosystem to not support other anti-consumer companies. DATA is irreplaceable, and stupid expensive to recover. I came so close to picking up some Iron wolfs after the SMR thing, but it wasn't worth the risk to me. Segates have the highest failure rate in the industry, and I personally experience them failing far too much for them to get my money. I've also worked in IT just as long and see them failing the most. Every one of my WD drives has outlived its usefulness.

[@carltaylor1497]

Same here. Stopped using Seagate drives in my system builds over 10 years ago. Still to this day clients with 3rd party system not purchased from me that have hard drive failures are often Seagate and rarely WD.

[@aelidrissi3584]

Same here! I've seen too many Seagate failures and never a WD. Although I am completely against WD in this regard. A NAS drive with a 36-month lifespan?? Are you kidding me? Put it in CAPS LOCK on the box then... Morons!

[@fookingsog]

I concur on WD being a good company otherwise!!! ...and when WD bought HGST that was a pretty smart move!!! I can't tell you how many HGST HDD's I've recovered from copy machines I scrapped...IDE & SATA and still working too!!! Just curious on how much influence WD has had on HGST techwise?!🤔

[@FromSergio]

Thanks! I'm assuming for those of us that have never enabled WD analytics there should be no warning popping up?

[@SpaceRexWill]

If you have the test disabled, it should not flag it as warning. But it have not had enough units to test to be sure

[@FromSergio]

@@SpaceRexWill Thanks, thanks for letting us know!

[@Beni_777]

I have two 3TB WD reds still running perfectly fine from 2013!! Really disappointing to see what happens to a company in 10 years.

[@MikeyRussell88]

I have noticed this on my personal nas. As my old Red 2013 drives started to fail I naturally replaced these, I seem to be having faults reported with these new ones. The old drives outlived multiple nas boxes, operating systems, raid configurations and only now after 10 years have failed. Over time I've added new drives to the array and these have also started to fail, conveniently these ones are as you have pointed out near the 3 year warranty period. Noting the 2013 drives had a 10+ year warranty. This is anti-consumer planned obsolesce.

[@aviosmedia]

Thanks for the info. I guess they are just hoping people will replace them even though there is nothing wrong with them. It's like when car dealers put a 3,000 mile service sticker in the windows of cars that have 15,000 mile service intervals.

[@AFiB1999]

Thank you for the heads up! I was planning to upgrade my four disks, so I will definitely keep that in mind. Are the Iron Wolves good? I've heard some concerns about their noise levels.

[@alessandrozigliani2615]

I used to think so. But I had a lot of problems recently on my backup nas with ironwolf 4tb drives, so I switched to Toshiba n300 and mg08 there. Besides I am in the process of substituting with 8tb drives so. Problems were sudden smart errors - reported uncorrect - that went away by doing repair with seatools and then the drives are still working perfectly in another nas so it seems bad firmware as they don't have any bad sector or anything, no errors in the pool whatsoever. Weird. I also ruled out cable problems as the errors never came up again. But I won't have any errors whatsoever in my backup nas. So I am still buying some wd red plus but I love to mix models from different companies and also within the same vendor to avoid being fucked by one wrong choice. However I am using a custom build truenas system and not synology, so this problem does not affect me much. It is still a bummer.

[@bluered3228]

Do t have any idea who you are or what your channel is about but saw a thumbnail and just needed to say that is some head of hair you've got there. Downright luxurious

[@yourneighborhood]

I'll let you in on a secret, I have over 100 NVRs with 4tb drives I maintain. They all run 24 hours and record 16 cameras each. I ONLY use white label cheap hard drives in my boxes and they work perfect. There is NO reason to buy purple drives. White label drives are {apparently} made at the same factory as all other consumer sold drives. Save yourself the $$$.

[@revealingfacts4all]

I have WD RED drives in a Synology NAS and don't see that option. But my drives are purchased sometime in 2018 so roughly (as of this post) 5 years ago. Any idea when this was added to their drives? Curious if the WD drives I have pre-date this practice. EXCELLENT video, thank you for keeping us abreast of this.

[@PrinceLX]

Yet I’ve had nothing but trouble with customer Iron Wolf drives… I get they’re all mechanical and prone to failure, but WD have been significantly more reliably in my own anecdotal experience.

[@carltaylor1497]

Same here. I stopped using Seagate drives a bit over a decade ago as I was seeing many more failures in them and any other brand that I had seen in client's desktop computers (I only build my systems with enterprise level drives). I have been using WD Enterprise level drives since then and have had practically zero failures.

[@jonspoonamore3721]

Long time Network/System Admin since the early 90's. I've had like 3 WD drives fail in the past 3 decades. WD just has the best track record... PERIOD!!! I stopped using Seagate drives in the mid-2000's. In a server environment, Uptime is KING! If you don't do your research before deploying new hardware, you will get bitten every time! If you don't test before deploying new hardware, you are in for a rude awakening and possibly job loss! Someone always harps on any given company from time 2 time. It's up to you to decide if the info/rumor is something you need to deal with. If you need to see why you should stop using Seagate drives.... Just watch the Linux Tech Tips Page for their RAID Server builds. Seagate was sponsoring them. Linus had to rebuild that server several times because of bad Iron Wolf drives. They were brand new each time!!!! Just about every WD drive I have ever used in my lifetime has lasted at least 2 years past their warranties. Recently.... On a non-important home media server, I had several WD Green drives last just over 7 years before they started to fail. They ran 24/7 and were not Enterprise Drives!!!

[@Wannes_]

Same here No confidence in Seagate at all - the one drive I bought from them in years, was DoA (I buy my spinning drives at a big, physical store so they aren't trashed around during shipping)

[@massimo79mmm]

same here. do you want to abandon wd for seagate? awesome move 😂

[@dfloper]

I had the same experience Iron Wolf are not long lasting and i don't trust them. WD RED Pro very good success with them.

[@LeoNNanoC]

Hi Will, thank you for your video. However, I need some help. You see, I have a DS720+ with a 12TB WD Red Plus hard drive. After watching the video, I looked for the WD Analytics option in the storage manager to find out if it's enabled or not, but I couldn't find it. Is there any other way to know (without having to wait for 3 years) if the WD Analytics option is enabled? And if it is enabled, is there a way to disable it? I appreciate your assistance in advance.

[@richardrodgers1009]

Same here; nothing in DSM 7.1.1 Settings for my DS1821+ filled with eight 16TB WD Red Pro drives

[@sanguineel]

I have never had a home use hard drive go bad. Ever. These electronic companies need to be smacked with fines and regulation.

[@PeterBrockie]

I've absolutely noticed a drop in WD quality in general in a last while. Everything from the public scandle type stuff (selling drives with wrong rpm listed, the hidden SMR crap, etc), but also problems with warranty replacements, etc. I sent in a 14tb drive under warranty and they kept it for 3 weeks without shipping a replacement. Nothing happened until I called them and they told me there was a problem with the serial number, but couldn't tell me what because the RMA department wasn't open. I made 3 calls until they just told me RMA wouldn't say and they shipped me a new drive. After a month... Seagate has gotten a lot better from their crap 1-3tb drives. They even include bytes read+written on their HDD SMART data. Which is a really nice bonus when getting used drives and whatnot.

[@wanyelandy8847]

Just checked my WD smart info, they also have read/write info, they are in the unit of sector: Logical Sectors Written/Logical Sectors Read. Just multiply it by the sector size 512 bytes. The result is the bytes read/written.

[@IanButterworthyyc]

It’s always best to have a mix of dries from different manufacturers, so the same bug doesn’t kill all of them at once, or this kind of vendor obstreperousness.

[@roychongg]

This comment is so true. I always stagger and buy different drives nowadays after I had a batch of Seagate 1TB Barracuda drives fail on me all at once around 2010.

[@teamground0229]

I learned a new word - obstreperousness!

[@wanyelandy8847]

@@roychongg In addition, ST 3TB/4TB Barracuda 7200.11 are also trash. Experience from my past experience.

[@rightwingsafetysquad9872]

This could be partially forgiven as laziness if they fix it quickly, bur coupled with the SMR deception, it's pretty clear WD has taken an anti-consumer mindset in management. Even if other products remain high quality, we must not buy anything from this company. Not just to punish them, but because we can't trust them.

[@rollafilmllc2587]

Hi @spacerex thanks for posting this video before I purchase some drives for my new synology. Quick few questions do you know if they're are issues with the WD Reds SSDs or WD black NVMe's?

[@El.Duder-ino]

Would u recommend Seagate Skyhawk CMR drives for NAS use instead? I have bad experience with WD as well... thx for making this unbiased vid based on your experience!

[@ISCMfoundation]

Thank you Will. WD should thank you for this video; an opportunity for them to significantly improve.

[@Devo_gx]

Now they're going to offer a "Red Ultra" drive that won't have the warning after 3 years (that's what they eventually did after being called out for the Red SMR drives)😊

[@JamesEC1981]

@SpaceRex I kinda notice this too. But it took me 9 years to notice it (3 WD Drives) My first 2TB drive for movie files was a WD Green way back 2012 and after a little over 3 years of use it gave up in 2015. Then I bought a WD Red in 2015 and again after a little over 3 years it gave up on 2018. I never noticed the pattern, so in 2018 as a replacement I bought a WD purple and after only a little over 3 years it gave up also in 2021. After that last one I kinda realized that maybe hard drives nowadays only last a little over 3 years. So I never again bought a hard drive. I just switched to 2pcs 1TB Sata SSD for my Movie files.. I remember way back 2004 I have a Seagate drive that lasted for more than 5 years ( 2004-2009). I guess They don't build Hard drives as tough as before.. Thank you for spilling this information out in the public!

[@momaaytah6269]

Very strange, I have 8TB Red Pros bought March 2023 and I don’t see the option to enable/disable.

[@DaystromDataConcepts]

I've always been a "WD man" for all my hard drive needs over the past 30 years. WD was always my "go to" choice. However, after the SMR scandal with their Red range of NAS oriented drives, I voted with my wallet and replaced all four of my WD Red's with Seagate Ironwolfs. For me, it was a matter of principle. If WD could stoop to such a business practice and not tell the paying public, especially on drives consumers typically spend more on for 24/7 NAS operation, it was a step too far. WD are good drives, very good drives. But I'm not going to reward WD with my business when they continue to employ such anti-consumer business practices.

[@giornikitop5373]

funny thing is, most of WD's extreme low failure rates come from actually HGST (hitachi) drives, which WD bought around 2015 and silently integrated them in their lineup. lol, go figure. there is only seagate left now and if they also start to misbehave, we are screwed.

[@ryanjay6241]

Still Toshiba no?

[@TechnocraticBushman]

It just so happens i wanted to change my drives in my nas and decided to research a bit. Been great help, thanks. Ps: nowadays people don't own anything anymore and Amazon can lock you out of your home if you call them names.

[@gan247]

WD Red is currently advertised to have an MTBF of up to 1 million hours. That’s over 100 years. Even if we take only 1/10th of it, it is still at least 10 years of MTBF.

[@fookingsog]

Sounds like Synology got "trigger happy" with the "warning" data points!!!🙄

[@ThemeParkDelight]

Thanks for the warning, not you WD

[@theterriblegamer1228]

I stopped using them a few years back due to a high failure rate.

[@TheGoodContent37]

I support you BUT what would you think is a better aproach to keep businesses from going bankrupt? Genuine question because I think for us to block companies from doing these practices, including banning right to repair, we need to find solutions to help them stay a float.

[@agw5425]

So buying used WD red drives marked as warning should be fine if you don´t care about the warning and just want a cheap external storage drive?

[@Allanator]

I stopped using WD NAS drives a few years ago. I now use Seagate.

[@phillipsusi1791]

How about just using the regular Blue drives instead of the specialty marketed BS with the upcharge?

[@didierhubercoachingconsulting]

Thank you so much for the info. Great video, especially since I am considering increasing the capacity of my DS 1817+. I currently have 8 x WD Red 4TB (WD 40EFRX) in my DS 1817+ and they have been running each on of them all for about 77165 hours or 8.8 years!!! In addition they moved twice over the Atlantic with my moves lol. And these are not the Pro nor the Plus version. So limiting these drives to 3 years is a "felony". I was looking to upgrade my 4TB drives over time with WD Red Plus 14TB. The reason why I picked the WD Red Plus 14TB is 1) bc of capacity, 2)bc of the positive experience with my current drives and 3) bc of noise. I am working mainly from home and have our server where we live. So noise is a very big consideration. From what I read, WD 14TB plus are the quietest at least in the 14TB capacity. I hear that the Seagate Ironwolf 14TB and up sound like freight trains! So I would rather avoid if possible. Based on your great video, I am definitively reconsidering the WD Red Plus 14TB. Any advice what to consider instead? Thank you

[@terryhopkins8059]

When setting up a 5, 6 or maybe 8 bay Synology NAS for home use mainly for photos and video, (I will be using Seagate Ironwolf drives), what size drive would you consider the most reliable drive? I'm thinking, and maybe I'm wrong that when drives get real big they can loose some reliability.

[@samshingler8186]

Just a QQ - if I buy a Synology NAS (Lets say DS223) and buy Seagate IronWolf HD - would you recommend this? It would be for a personal set up

[@ROFLMAOwithExtraCheese]

WTF the Red Pros come with a 5 year warranty.

[@SpaceRexWill]

These were with Red Pro’s, but they may have been sold back when there was a 3 year warranty on them

[@koraykinik9989]

I have seagate NAS pro and EXOS drives and work just fine for 3 years

[@explorewithgeoff]

In the next week or 2 I planned to purchase a WD Red Plus 12TB. I already have one inside an external drive, and it's so quiet that I looked into which drive it used and found it was the aforementioned model. I'm aware of WD's previous "issues" regarding SMR and CMR and that did put me off the brand, but now with this latest thing I'm questioning my recent decision. The alternative is a Seagate IronWolf or IronWolf Pro, but I keep reading that they're not as quiet as the spec sheet suggests, especially when seeking. I really want as quiet as possible and need it inside my case so I'm not considering a NAS for now. So now I'm unsure what to do. Why can't these companies just be honest and open for goodness sake?

[@nssSmooge]

I read that 12 TB and above Seagate are quite, as they should be filled with Helium and not air.

[@explorewithgeoff]

@@nssSmooge I have bought the WD Red Plus 12TB since my post. It is almost silent inside my case. I would have preferred Seagate but the WD seemed best, and cheapest, that had the lowest reported noise levels.

[@BryanDoesCinema]

WD Red Pro's are the best drives I've ever had, I've had them for 7 years. I just bought 6 18TB Ultrastar's and they are great.

[@ibendover4817]

ffs missed out on an insane ironwolf deal because I was waiting for wd drives. Wish we could just drag these greedy CEOs out to the streets and publicly flog them. Getting decent brands pulling random crap like this.

[@mrkeeny]

Apart from anything else, I couldn’t deal with seeing the warning on all my drives, would feel compelled to replace just to cope with the OCD

[@frankfix247]

Four WD-Gold Enterprise 4TB from different batches all got to around 40k hours (~4.5 years) before errors began to manifest. Another one just died around 20k hrs. Pending uncorrectable sectors -> Uncorrectable sectors -> ATA errors counting up every day. Enterprise my a**. None of them were ever heavily loaded, so no more WD for me. Going Seagate Ironwolf Pro or preferably SAS-drives that are much more robust and reliable than SATA in general, even used ones.

[@NickToumpelis]

Thank you @SpaceRexWill for the video (and your entire channel). I recently bought a Synology NAS and narrowly avoided buying a WD disk.

[@WestSarly]

that's pretty ironic about anti-consumer behaviour as you're using apple products

[@Jtstien]

This comment is annoying.

[@fran2911]

Not defending Apple, but you know what you're buying when you get an iphone or macbook. Although I learned firsthand that Apple's security is shit.

[@MitchellEarl]

Last year I bought 4, 8TB WD Reds in February and all of them were defective. At first I wasted time thinking it was a Synology issue since they don't keep their drive compatibility up to date. But then I noticed they didn't even read as drives properly on a PC. Sent them all back and bought 4, Seagate 8TB IronWolf 7200 rpm drives and they worked perfectly. No more WD for me.

[@phoneindustrydesign]

thanks for the heads up, I was on the verge of buying one

[@OlivierGabin]

Thanks for the info ! I have WD Red drives bought 10 years ago, with a running time close to 94.000 hours for the oldest, in a Synology DS 412+ NAS. And zero problems by now... My next NAS in 1 year or 2 will be with Toshiba NAS drives, WD had lost a faithfull customer with this practice.