6 TB NAS Drives: WD Red, Seagate Enterprise Capacity and HGST Ultrastar He6 Face-Off
by Ganesh T S on July 21, 2014 11:00 AM ESTMiscellaneous Aspects and Final Words
In the process of reviewing the Western Digital Red 6 TB drives, we did face one hiccup. Our QNAP testbed NAS finished resyncing a RAID-5 volume with three of those drives, but suddenly indicated an I/O error for one of them.
We were a bit surprised (in all our experience with hard drive review units, we had never had one fail that quickly). To check into the issue, we ran the SMART diagnostics and also a short test from within the NAS UI. Even though both of them passed clean, the NAS still refused to accept the disk for inclusion in the RAID volume. Fortunately, we had a spare drive that we could use to rebuild the volume. Putting the 'failed' drive in a PC didn't reveal any problems either. We are chalking this down to compatibility issues, though it is strange that the rebuilt volume with the same disks completed benchmarking without any problems. In any case, I would advise prospective consumers to ensure that their NAS is in the compatibility list for the drive before moving forward with the purchase.
RAID Resync and Power Consumption
The other aspect of interest when it comes to hard drives and NAS units is the RAID rebuild / resync times and the associated power consumption numbers. The following table presents the relevant values for the resyncing of a RAID-5 volume involving the respective drives.
| QNAP TS-EC1279U-SAS-RP RAID-5 Volume Resync | ||||
| Disk Model | Duration | Avg. Power | ||
| Western Digital Red 6 TB | 14h 27m 52s | 90.48 W | ||
| Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5" HDD v4 6 TB | 10h 24m 22s | 105.42 W | ||
| HGST Ultrastar He6 6 TB | 12h 34m 20s | 95.36 W | ||
Update: We also have some power consumption numbers under different scenarios. In each of these cases, we have three of the drives under consideration configured in a RAID-5 volume in the NAS. The access mode is exercised by running the corresponding IOMeter trace from 25 clients simultaneously.
| QNAP TS-EC1279U-SAS-RP RAID-5 Power Consumption | |||
| Workload | WD Red 6 TB | Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5" HDD v4 6 TB | HGST Ultrastar He6 6 TB |
| Idle | 79.34 W | 87.16 W | 84.98 W |
|
Max. Throughput (100% Reads) |
93.90 W | 107.22 W | 97.58 W |
|
Real Life (60% Random, 65% Reads) |
84.04 W | 109.25 W | 94.03 W |
|
Max. Throughput (50% Reads) |
96.74 W | 112.82 W | 99.25 W |
|
Random 8 KB (70% Reads) |
85.22 W | 105.65 W | 91.47 W |
As expected, the Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5" HDD v4 consumes the most power, while the He6 is much better off thanks to its HelioSeal technology while retaining the same rotational speed. The WD Red, on the other hand, wins the power efficiency battle as expected - a good thing for home consumers who value that over pure performance.
Concluding Remarks
We have taken a look at three different 6 TB drives, but it is hard to recommend any particular one as the clear cut choice unless the particular application is known. The interesting aspect here is that none of the three drives have overlapping use-cases. For home consumers who are interested in stashing their media collection / smartphone-captured photos and videos and expect only four or five clients to simultaneously access the NAS, the lower power consumption as well as the price of the WD Red 6 TB is hard to ignore. For users looking for absolute performance and those who need multiple iSCSI LUNs for virtual machines and other such applications would find the Seagate Enterprise Capacity v4 6 TB a good choice. The HGST Ultrastar He6 is based on upcoming technological advancements, and hence, carries a premium. However, the TCO aspect turns out to be in its favour, particularly when multiple drives running 24x7 are needed. It offers the best balance of power consumption, price and performance.
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ganeshts - Tuesday, July 22, 2014 - link
There is no 6 TB WD Red Pro out in the market. The Pro version tops out at 4 TB (for now) - 800 GB x 5 plattersharshw - Monday, July 21, 2014 - link
This week I had a LaCie 5Big NAS Pro barf on my 4TB Seagate NAS HDDs. Reformatting and re-testing them with sector scans revealed nothing. But the LaCie would claim that one disk was bad. Of course LaCie also claims the 4TB NAS HDDs are completely compatible.But to have a 16TB array die after re-synching 80% and having to start from scratch ... yeah it plain sucks.
So yes, it is best to look at evidence from the field and not just rely on manufacturer's recommended & compatible lists. And it's not just WD Red ...
Hrel - Monday, July 21, 2014 - link
It's frustrating that despite the rapid growth in the NAS industry hard drive prices have remained largely stagnant. 4TB drives are basically at the same price point's they were a year ago. It used to be if a drive was released at $200 a year later it was $100 or less.I'm still waiting for 4TB drives to drop to the $100 mark before I make the jump.
What happened to all those 121TB hard drives that we were supposed to be seeing? I specifically remember an article on anandtech like 1+ years ago talking about how 12TB hard drives would be a reality "a year from today". More than a year later, we're talking about 6TB drives. Very upsetting.
Beany2013 - Tuesday, July 22, 2014 - link
The floods in Thialand a few years ago set things back - we're only now seeing the manufacturers get their primary build locations back up to full speed not just in manufacturing existing gear, but developing new stuff.We've had 2tb drives for *years*, but 3tb and above are the results of the 'HDD Homelands' getting back up to speed as I understand it from my works disty/channel contacts, at least. Mebbe one for a pipeline article on the stagnation of HDD capacity, staffers?
extide - Monday, July 21, 2014 - link
When are we going to get 4k native drives!! I hate this stupid 512b emulation crap!Zan Lynx - Monday, July 21, 2014 - link
I am pretty sure 4K native drives are already out there. I recall a Linux Kernel message thread discussing testing 4K drives and there was a tool to turn off 512B emulation.If you want them to turn off emulation, I doubt that will happen. Its too easy to leave the code in the firmware.
edlee - Monday, July 21, 2014 - link
seagate wipes the floor with all other manufactures when it comes to enterprise products.that being said, they are expensive as shit, so I bought WD red for my home Nas, but use seagate in my office server for reliability.
jabber - Monday, July 21, 2014 - link
Liabilities waiting to happen.asmian - Monday, July 21, 2014 - link
Completely agree! The two enterprise-class drives are just about OK to use in arrays (and the Helium tech of the HGST looks very interesting, I hope they bring that to smaller drives as well) but the WD Red at that size is a crazy proposition. See my calculation about the risks of rebuilding arrays with those at http://anandtech.com/comments/8273/western-digital...Anybody building large arrays with these consumer-class 6TB Reds is a fool.
bsd228 - Monday, July 21, 2014 - link
Asmian - you may be taking that URE value too literally. I find it very hard to believe that enterprise drives are exactly 10x as good as consumer drives. When the number is so round as 1x10^14 or 1x10^15, it makes me believe them the same way I do the MTBF values. Consider how many premium or enterprise products we see where the only different is a software setting activating a feature.