WD4000FYYZ

I doubt you'll ever see it in the compatibility list, because the cooling system of the ReadyNAS 516 probably is not sufficient.

I'm administrating two ReadyNAS 516 devices, both 12 TB units preconfigured from Netgear. They came equipped with 6x 2TB Western Digital WD2003FYYS drives, which is the old SATA-II series of RE4 drives. Even these much slower drives with fewer platters show temperatures of 47°C for the 4 drives in the middle and 45-46°C for the first and last drive when running idle inside a 516 located in an office basement. And I'm not living in a hot or tropic area, but in cool Middle Europe :D

The WD4000FYYZ is a real high performance Enterprise drive, with its dual processor probably the fastest in its size on the market, but unfortunately due to these extraordinary specs also one of the hottest drives I know. I own several of these, and my first problem was to find an appropriate enclosure, because 95% of all enclosures can't handle 4TB drives due to their old 32bit controller hardware (they are not able to format or even see the full size). I started with a Stardom i310 enclosure with passive cooling system, but during the surface tests and full format the drive's temperature rose up to 55°C and I had to stop testing to prevent damage from this very expensive drive. You'll need strong active cooling for this drive and I finally got happy with the new Icy Dock MB080U3S-1SB Blizzard enclosure, which is able to keep the drive's temperature below 45°C under all circumstances.

If you read some reviews testing this drive, you'll find that it's surface temperature is generally 3-4°C above the hottest older drives. The three certified 4TB drives for the 516,

Western Digital WD4001FAEX
41°C surface temperature, 127MB/s Average Read
(http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/wd4001faex-4tb-review,3368-6.html),

Seagate ST4000DM000
32°C surface temperature, 132MB/s Average Read
(http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/desktop-hdd.15-st4000dm000-4tb,3494-6.html),

Hitachi Deskstar 7k4000
41°C surface temperature, 132MB/s Average Read
(http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/desktop-hdd.15-st4000dm000-4tb,3494-6.html)

clearly are either Desktop drives (WD, Seagate) without any RAID approval, low speed-low temperature drives (Seagate, 5900 rpm) or low temperature Enterprise drives (Hitachi). Compared to these certified drives the WD4000FYYZ is easily 20% faster (http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=766&pgno=6, http://theharddriveblog.blogspot.de/2013/04/western-digital-re-4tb-wd4000fyyz-hard.html).

To see only low-temperature drives in the HCL, combined with the fact, that the preconfigured aged 2TB SATA-II WD2003FYYS drives already have an idle temperature of 47°C, shows IMHO clearly that the ReadyNAS 516 device has an insufficient cooling system for high performance 4TB drives like the WD4000FYYZ. This is probably a result of the unnecessary stylish design, where the complete front is covered by a closed "screen" with small 6mm ventilation slots around the edges, which prevents an unhindered airflow to the drives and thus makes effective cooling a serious challenge.

I wouldn't risk my WD4000FYYZ drives in the ReadyNAS 516, because surely the 6 drives will be over 50°C when idle and I wouldn't like to know what will happen under heavy load. And don't forget, for six of these expensive drives you easily can get two new empty ReadyNAS 516, thus the NAS enclosure follows always the disks.

And even if they should, for any reason, come into the HCL list they would make the 516 much more noisy due to the increased fan speed. Now at this stage with 6x 2TB the 516 is definitely not quiet. It is not extremely loud, but I wouldn't like to sleep 2-3 m around (the noise level is comparable to an old PC with various fans). And BTW, Netgear "forgot" to implement in this lousy OS6 a "Disk Spin Down after xx hours idle" button, thus your 516 will never sleep and will be noisy blowing day and night.

Of course in a RAID system the disk speed is not so important as for a single drive, but the 516 is advertised as a High Performance NAS at a High Performance Price Level, and at least I expect for such a device to be able to use the the fastest drives around. With the optional 10GbE Card for the 516 you probably will get every bit of performance your NAS can deliver, thus a 20% performance increase with faster disks is not negligible.

Has anyone else had any experience using the wd re drives in the 516 since ramses post a year ago. He said not to expect the drives ever getting into the hcl which is correct at writing and after a year (with various updates to OS) still does no sign.

Are there any other limitation using these drives in the 516 after from obvious heat issue
?

Korky wrote:
...Are there any other limitation using these drives in the 516 after from obvious heat issue...

Power maybe? Hotter temps mean more watts used (simple physics).

What about the WD Se WD4000F9YZ which is on the HCL and has similar spec feature set to the WD RE drive WD4000FYYZ.

If there were heat issues when using WD4000FYYZ drives in the 516 unit then I imagine it would also be true for the WD Se WD4000F9YZ drive yet its on the HCL.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7258/batt ... -faceoff/5

4 TB NAS Hard Drive Face-Off: LenovoEMC PX2-300D Power Consumption
Model WD Red Seagate NAS HDD WD Se WD Re
WD40EFRX ST4000VN000 WD4000F9YZ WD4000FYYZ
Idle 18.25 W 19.29 W 22.67 W 23.68 W
Max. 19.51 W 20.56 W 23.54 W 24.53 W

WDC specs the WD4000F9YZ at 9.5W for random I/O, they spec the WD4000FYYZ at 10.9. So the WD4000FYYZ will run hotter and draw about 8 more watts if you have 6 of them.

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/S ... 771444.pdf
http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/S ... 771475.pdf

They are also noisier than the WD40EFRX and the Seagate ST4000VN000 (about 6 dbA)

Note I'm not saying they won't work - I don't have an RN516, and have no personal experience with these drives. Just answering your question on potential issues after looking at the datasheet...

I have a 516 with six of these drives WD4000F9YZ. Temperature run from 39°C on disk one up to 46°C on disk 6. The fan speed stays at about 2100. Unit is noisier with all six drives than it was two or three drives. The 516 is quieter than the pro 6 with six 2 TB FYSS drives by about 25% but no more.
Hope this helps.
Bigbearf


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Korky wrote:
Has anyone else had any experience using the wd re drives in the 516 since ramses post a year ago. He said not to expect the drives ever getting into the hcl which is correct at writing and after a year (with various updates to OS) still does no sign. Are there any other limitation using these drives in the 516 after from obvious heat issue ?

See viewtopic.php?f=66&t=75187#p440674 for my experience with the temperatures for WD4000FYYZ-01ULB0 4TB. Note that operating temperature is 5-55 degrees C, so eventhough they have higher temperature compared to other disks, it's still within normal operating parameters. Pay attention to keep ample room behind the RN516 to allow unobstructed airflow out of the fan. And make sure to occasionly clean out gathered dust behind and below the front panel and around the disks.

Ramses wrote:
I doubt you'll ever see it in the compatibility list, because the cooling system of the ReadyNAS 516 probably is not sufficient.

My experience is that the disks stay within a relatively narrow range of 4 degrees arround their running temperature. The variation is in the RPM of the fan, e.g. 800 RPM on an autumn day and 1400 or higher on a summer's day. Looks to me the cooling system of the ReadyNas 516 is doing exactly what it is supposed to do, i.e. keeping things at a constant temperature.