Western Digital Defends DM-SMR on WD Red HDDs, Points Users to WD Red Pro or WD Gold

[lexluthermiester]

Bull. In this application, they are regularly significantly slower.

Ok, let's see an example. Test a non-SMR drive versus an SMR version and let's see the results. If you have both, you can test and show us the results.

 

[Fujikoma]

Ok, let's see an example. Test a non-SMR drive versus an SMR version and let's see the results. If you have both, you can test and show us the results.

MIght want to look up WD papers on the subject yourself... they're pretty clear on error rates being higher. I have ~60TB to my workstation and 40TB+ in NAS for backup. Does not include off-site (800 miles away for environmental conditions) or data stored in fire files. SMR is not as reliable and I can't afford that for my projects. Just because you don't have an affected use case, doesn't change the physics of reality.

 

[newtekie1]

Ok, let's see an example. Test a non-SMR drive versus an SMR version and let's see the results. If you have both, you can test and show us the results.

1. I'm not going to pull a drive out of an array or risk putting one of these in an array just to prove a point to you.
2. The originally issue, the reason all of this was discovered, was because the drives were so slow the RAID controllers assumed they were bad drives.
3. If I break the seal on the drives I have I can't return them, and I'm not keeping these piles of garbage.

 

[Stoatwblr]

Disclosure: I'm the one who put all this together for media after purchasing three reds and finding repeatable results

DM-SMR drives aren't just "a little" slower - and to top it off DM-SMR REDs have a serious firmware bug which makes them throw hard IO errors at the host system

How much slower?
Well if you put one in an existing parity RAIDset (RAID5/6 or RAIDZ1/2/3) to replace a failed or aging drive, you can see 90-98% degradation in rebuild times
RAID rebuilds which used to take a day or less can easily take 8-19 DAYS
RAID scrub/verification passes can take 8-12 DAYS

In the case of WD REDs, they won't get that far - because during the raid rebuild process they will generate drive internal errors:
smartctl -x will show drive internal error logs like this:
" 10 -- 51 00 00 00 00 1f 3b c0 b0 40 00 Error: IDNF at LBA = 0x1f3bc0b0 = 524009648 "

Linux reports them like this (samples):
"blk_update_request: I/O error, dev sdd, sector 734925768 op 0x1WRITE) flags 0x700 phys_seg 1 prio class 0
blk_update_request: critical target error, dev sdd, sector 734925408 op 0x1WRITE) flags 0x700 phys_seg 1 prio class "

And the results above ARE ON AN IDLE ARRAY - the only thing going on is the rebuild or the scrub


It goes well beyond DM-SMR in NAS drives.

Here's why DM-SMR in "desktop drives" is a spectacularly bad idea:

If you know what you're doing and treat them "just right", then DM-SMR drives will have a performance hit of between 40-60% - which isn't minor.

The problem is this: Virtually every filesystem (except FAT) writes a metadata update back to the filesystem every time a file is read, updating the last read time of that file.
ie: Every file read, causes a write

THIS is the WORST POSSIBLE CASE for DM-SMR drives - and why operators MUST know what they have, as you need to be able to turn off "last accessed" times.

On linux, that's easy: "noatime" mount options - but doing this on the OS mounts and in areas where atime monitoring is critical WILL cause secondary issues
On Windows, it appears to be an "all or nothing" proposition across the entire system, which destroys the functionality of a lot of system automation utilty builtins.

 

[dragontamer5788]

They needed to clear the air more. Is it huge? No. But an SMR drive being a Red is a bigger deal than any other drive being SMR.

WD Black has an SMR. And WD Black is their "high performance" line of hard drives.

Someone in WD messed up bad. SMR shouldn't be in NAS (Red) or Performance (Black) lines.

 

[Stoatwblr]

Western Digital had it pointed out to them that changing the innards of a prosumer product such that it performs substantially differently from its predecessor without drawing attention to that fact - let alone when that "substantially differently" is the kind of degradation I've documented - is a consumer protection law matter in most countries

It was also pointed out that their combative stance will probably result in exemplary damages awards and the only hope they have of migitating judgements now is to come utterly clean on everything including their entire DM-SMR range and future plans

They had a radical change of tune in public shortly afterwards - but still dodging full responsibility on this.

Seagate and Toshiba aren't immune to legal action either. Seagate in particular have been gaslighting complaints about the exact same issues for the last 18 months, whilst Toshiba have simply been "stealthy", but as the affected items are no longer "business products" they have fewer legal roadblocks they can throw up to small claims actions.

Consumer and market regulators need to swoop in and deal with this.

 

[Octopuss]

I hope they will get sued to no end and will get fined some obscene sum.

 

[RobIII]

If anyone is interested: I ran into the same issue, 7 WD Red drives (WD60EFAX) with sub-par performance. I have contacted WD about it and am documenting the entire ordeal as the story unfolds. You can read about it here: http://riii.me/wd60efax

 

[lexluthermiester]

Well if you put one in an existing parity RAIDset (RAID5/6 or RAIDZ1/2/3) to replace a failed or aging drive, you can see 90-98% degradation in rebuild times

If you know what you're doing and treat them "just right", then DM-SMR drives will have a performance hit of between 40-60% - which isn't minor.

I personally have several of the drives in question and my testing shows LESS than 5% difference. The enterprise array we have where I work also has several of these drives and we are not experiencing any of the problems you describe. Certainly not 90%-98%(?!?) degradation, let alone 40% to 60%.

I'm calling BS on the numbers you are stating as they do not jive with the numbers I/we are seeing. I think this problem very much depends on array configurations on case by case basis.

 

[Stoatwblr]

I personally have several of the drives in question and my testing shows LESS than 5% difference. The enterprise array we have where I work also has several of these drives and we are not experiencing any of the problems you describe. Certainly not 90%-98%(?!?) degradation, let alone 40% to 60%.

I'm calling BS on the numbers you are stating as they do not jive with the numbers I/we are seeing. I think this problem very much depends on array configurations on case by case basis.

WD REDs (all sizes) are _NOT_ enterprise drives, so claims of having these in "enterprise arrays" makes your claims fail the smell test.
Kindly stump up and state the EXACT MODELS of the "drives in question" in your work enterprise arrays
Then let us know if you have atime enabled or disabled on your arrays at work, or if the admins have performed other optimizations to take SMR into account such as copious write caching


In any case:

Try knocking out a drive from an array of CMR drives and rebuilding your array with a clean DM-SMR one - bearing in mind that WD have been going out of their way to HIDE that these drives are DM-SMR up until now, so this is a valid scenario (replacing a failed older "red drive" with a new "red drive")

Report back on what you see.

DM-SMR drives will work "OK" for very small quantities of writes, but as soon as given sustained writes (such as when rebuilding parity RAID5/6 arrays), sustained random seeks and writes (rebuilding ZFS RAIDZ arrays) or lots of read/writes (normal filesystem access gives a metadata update write for every file read) the performance goes down the toilet

The last case is why they're giving such awful performance as desktop drives.

Use as a NAS drive under _normal_ conditions (write occasionally/read mostly) can be mitigated by turning off access time metadata updates completely (relatime is not good enough), BUT you have to know what you are dealing with in order to do that.

In the case of REDs, raid rebuilds of the kinds described ALSO tickles a firmware bug which will throw critical write IO errors back to the host system - which is invariably fatal for the rebuild

 

[newtekie1]

DM-SMR drives will work "OK" for very small quantities of writes, but as soon as given sustained writes (such as when rebuilding parity RAID5/6 arrays), sustained random seeks and writes (rebuilding ZFS RAIDZ arrays) or lots of read/writes (normal filesystem access gives a metadata update write for every file read) the performance goes down the toilet

Exactly what I experienced when running SMR drives in RAID5. Initially it ran just fine, though the original initialization took over 2 weeks. But when one of the drives failed, I could never get it to rebuild. The new drive was just too slow or started throwing I/O errors and got kicked from the array. And to be perfectly clear, this was with Seagate SMR drives.

 

[lexluthermiester]

WD REDs (all sizes) are _NOT_ enterprise drives, so claims of having these in "enterprise arrays" makes your claims fail the smell test.

That statement only proves you do not work in IT administration in the real world. Everyone is always looking to save money, WD Reds are very reliable drives and cost effective.

 

[Octopuss]

That statement only proves you do not work in IT administration in the real world. Everyone is always looking to save money, WD Reds are very reliable drives and cost effective.

Funny how you avoided answering the question and instead babbled your usual BS.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Funny how you avoided answering the question and instead babbled your usual BS.

You need a mirror. Crawl back under your bridge.

 

[holyprof]

Seagate now welcomes WD to my blacklist for storage ... I have one underperforming new 4TB Seagate drive (it's slower than my 8 yr old 2TB 5400 RPM WD Green in both random and sequential writes). Now i know why. I just presumed a new 4TB drive should be faster or at least on par with an old 2TB WD Green (which are the slowest, least reliable disks in WD's HDD line).

Instead of buying a second 4TB Seagate drive for mirroring, bought two 1TB SATA SSDs.

 

[Octopuss]

You need a mirror. Crawl back under your bridge.

I knew there was a good reason why I had you ignored. Arrogant hostile idiots get the treatment.

 

[mcraygsx]

I did purchased the WD WD60EZAZ on 3/30/2020 . Drive seems fine except it makes very annoying clicking noise at a constant pace. Wish I had picked a different variant.

 

[bonehead123]

Die, spinners, die....

Haven't used one in many many years since I switched to ssd's initially then to nvme, not goin back no wayz no howz, that wayz I gotz no worries about all this here nonsense, hahaha

And speakin of WD, all 6 of my Black SN750's are screaming along at 3500MB/s this very second, have been since day 1.... so in case you didn't catch it the 1st time....

Die, spinners, die