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Which 4TB Drive? (Pro)

Westyfield2
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Which 4TB Drive? (Pro)

Hi guys,

I've got a few ReadyNAS Pro units, and in all of them I run on the same HDD. This is the Western Digital RE4 2TB (WD2003FYYS), and it is listed on the Hardware Compatibility List for my ReadyNAS Pro units.
My logic for choosing the drive was brand loyalty of WD (personally I've had more Seagate failures than WD failures), the fact that it's from their RAID Edition Enterprise grade line, 5 year warranty, and then the 2TB capacity.
In all my ReadyNAS Pro units I've found these drives to be great and have no complaints.

I'm now looking to upgrade some of the drives in one of the units (ReadyNAS Pro 6) to using 4TB drives. The unit is running the latest RAIDiator.
There were originally no 3TB+ drives listed on the Hardware Compatibility List for the ReadyNAS Pro units, but searching the forum here there's posts going back to 2011 where people were using 3TB and larger drives on x86 units, and looking now it seems that Netgear did eventually update the HCL to include some of them.

I am aware of the ext4 expansion limits of 8TB above original capacity, and 16TB total.

From this thread there are instructions to overcome the 8TB expansion limit which I intend to follow. viewtopic.php?f=66&t=62916 (note that this doesn't fix the 16TB total capacity limit, but that doesn't bother me yet.)

Looking through the Hardware Compatibility List for the ReadyNAS Pro 6, there is only one 4TB drive listed:
  • Hitachi 7k4000 HUS724040ALE640

Whilst this is from Hitachi's Enterprise range, it's only got 3 year warranty and I'm not a fan of Hitachi after the Deathstars.

So looking through the Hardware Compatibility List of the RN516 and RN716 (as that's the new successor model of my Pro 6):
  • Western Digital Caviar Black WD4001FAEX

  • Seagate Desktop HDD ST4000DM000

  • Hitachi 7k4000 HUS724040ALE640

  • Seagate NAS HDD ST4000VN000

  • Western Digital WD Se WD4000F9YZ SATA


Out of those, only the two WD drives have 5 year warranty.

The Western Digital Caviar Black (WD4001FAEX) is a desktop grade drive so I rule it out - but fair play to WD for giving it a decent warranty.

That leaves the Western Digital WD Se WD4000F9YZ. These drives are new since I last looked at the HDD market and, from what I've read, they come in below the RE series in the WD product line up (with the RE being recommended for higher durability and performance), but still under the Enterprise umbrella.

Does anyone have any opinion on the Western Digital Se drives? And particularly the 4TB (WD4000F9YZ) model?

The other thing I'm wondering, is what about the Western Digital Re series? I've found my 2TB models great, and they do a 4TB model… plus it' offers greater endurance with MTBF of 1.4 million hours versus 800,000 hours on the Se, and has a higher suggested workload of 550 TB/yr vs 180 TB/yr of the Se.

Pricing of the 4TB Re (WD4000FYYZ) is about £300, whereas the 4TB Se (WD4000F9YZ) is about £200, so admittedly it is more expensive.

I wonder why the 4TB Re isn't listed on the Hardware Compatibility List… when surely it's a better drive? The 2TB version of the Re is still listed on the Hardware Compatibility List (and intriguingly the 3TB/2TB/1TB versions of the WD RED is also even though the RED was intended for low to mid-range NAS units and WD wanted to make sure that it wasn't used for units with more than 5 bays!).

So… opinions on what 4TB to chose please!
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