Storage Shucking WD external drives questions

I need more storage for my two Synology NAS'. The storage size needs to be identical as the seconday backs up the primary.

Does anyone have any recommendations (based on personal experience) of shucking particular WD external drives? I need PMR/CMR drives (not SMR) and am not comfortable with taping over pins to fix power "issues" as I have read in various places.

I'm looking at 4TB, 6TB and 8TB drive sizes.

Can anyone help?

 

I've shucked loads over the years.

Pro tip: WD don't make WD Blues in anything bigger than 6TB, so buying a 8TB MyBook will get you a white-labelled WD Red.

You can open most of them with a pair of old credit cards, guitar picks etc..

 

One thing to watch out is the fact that WD does SMR on 2-6TB Reds now, which makes them unusable for actual NAS with RAID.

 

Cheers, the model of the WD external drives is what I was looking for, I can get a WD My Book 4TB for £92.54 from Amazon whereas the cheapest I can find a retail WD40EFRX is £106 from AWD-IT. I could get 4 x 4TB My Books for my secondary NAS and 2 x 4TB retail ERFX's for the primary (for the warranty) and save £57.

Yup, I have also read that you have to go 8TB or higher to get the PMR/CMR drives. Do you know if they are doing SMR drives in their My Book series yet?

I could live with SMR drives in my secondary NAS as it is only used to backup (rsync) the primary) - it's not accessed any other way.

 

IIRC the BestBuy-only 'Easystore' line were the ones that reliably had the WD REDs [or white label version] inside.

Not sure if the Essentials line are/were the same.

 

I'm happy with white label EFRX drives, the Easystore drives are Best Buy (US) exclusive so I can't get them in the UK.

 

Avoid the ones with 256MB of Cache, iirc they're the SMR models, and iirc the 128MB versions are the PMR models.

 

Just edited my above post to reflect that I can live with SMR drives on the secondary.

 

Anyone shucked a WD Elements drive? They are even cheaper than the My Book's.

 

Yeah, I have a 10tb Elements

 

What about the 4TB models? Are they "normal" drives inside? Was it easy to shuck?

 

Yes it was easy to shuck. They've all been easy to shuck - has someone told you it's difficult?

What do you mean "normal"?

 

Never mind, I re-read and get it - ignore the moron question.

I've had another thought that would save me even more money...

I could buy 2 x retail EFRX drives to take my DS918+ to 12TB usable with SHR, then get a WD 12TB My Book and simply back up the DS918+ over USB 3.0, for a total of £443. I could get rid of the secondary NAS.

@David - you ever used a USB external on a Synology to backup?

 

just seen your wanted thread - are you still looking for used drives or ar you going for shucked externals?

 

I am undecided as I have multiple options...

1. 6 x new retail 4TB EFRX drives @ £641
2. 2 x new retail 4TB EFRX drives plus a 12TB WD My Book @ £443 (and get rid of my secondary NAS)
3. 2 x new retail 4TB EFRX drives plus 4 shucked enternals @ circa $584
4. 2 x new retail 4TB EFRX drives plus 4 second hand 4TB drives @ ???

I am currently leaning towards getting rid of my secondary NAS (DS413) as it is only used to backup the DS918+ primary and reverting to a single external 12TB USB drive for backup would be simpler and would save me money in the future if I upgraded the primary drive sizes. The price on Amazon for the 12TB My Book is only £229 at present.

The 2 x 4TB WD Green drives in the secondary NAS need replacing, they are very high mileage plus as I am currently mirroring 2 x 4TB & 2 x 2TB, I need more space (e.g. 4 x 4TB to use SHR for 12TB usable).

Why do you ask, do you have some drives?

 

I have a couple of 8TB WD Red WD80EFZX drives that I may not need, but I won't know for sure for another week at least. So, if you're looking for a quick solution, I'm probably not able to help.

 

What sort of mileage have they done? I am not in any panic yet, I can manage for a bit, just bored at present and planning for the future.

If I was to get a couple of 8TB drives, I could reuse the existing 4TB pair, have the primary NAS continue to run 2 pairs of drives in RAID 1 and get a 12TB external to cover the backup duties.

 

Roughly 7,400 & 7,500 hours each.

Much depends on some experimentation next week after some new bits arrive. If it doesn't work out as I plan/hope, I'll be hanging on to them.

 

Mileage sounds good, let me know how you get on.

 

Out of interest (and for the sake of learning something useful today), why do you have to have a specific xMR-type drive for NAS stuff?