SSD Cache = slower transfer speed?

[SteveJY]

WD120EMFZ

Try a Raid5

Is that known to be more stable than RAID10?

[SteveJY]

I've just had another crash - this time it lasted for nearly 13 hours of normal use transferring and accessing files before falling over.

[TMroy]

Is this a "white label" desktop hard drive from WD? I can't even find this model from WD website. So I made a search, I found that WD120EMFZ is actually a downgrade model from 14TB drive, and WD use this drive in their USB element portable drives. This is not recommended hard drive, it is not even on our compatibility list. This drive is not recommended for NAS.
Desktop drive like Seagate Barracuda, WD blue can cause a lot of issues when you use it in a NAS device, especially you set them as RAID configuration.

Here you can find more explains from Seagate:
https://www.seagate.com/tech-insights/w ... master-ti/
https://blog.seagate.com/special-ized/w ... -your-nas/

[Hardfecx]

WD120EMFZ

Try a Raid5

Is that known to be more stable than RAID10?

less stable is it not i am usng it but you have more harddrive space

[SteveJY]

Is this a "white label" desktop hard drive from WD?

My understanding is that they're basically the same as WD Red HDDs - i.e. 5400RPM helium filled drives that are suitable for NAS use.

I'd previously used some of the same drives in RAID5 in a 3-bay QNAP NAS. Other than the limited bays and bottlenecked performance due to 1Gbe that worked fine.

I've seen a few comments online where people have used them successfully in a Terramaster NAS, e.g. this post here mentions using them in a F4-422: viewtopic.php?p=4819#p4819

To me it seems strange that they'd cause random crashes that need a hard reset despite reading/writing files perfectly the rest of the time. That said, if you think it's definitely drive compatibility that's the issue I'll stop messing around trying to get the F5-422 working and send it back while I'm still within the Amazon returns period.

[TMroy]

There is no official state that the WD120EMFZ is RED. By instead, what I know is, this drive is downgraded from 14TB 7200RPM to 12TB 5400RPM by shielding bad sectors and replacing firmware. This is why it is being sold in black market with very cheap price.
Again, this is not recommended hard drive, no matter who is using it. Returning hard drive or TNAS, you need to make your own decision.

[joeh]

There is no official state that the WD120EMFZ is RED. By instead, what I know is, this drive is downgraded from 14TB 7200RPM to 12TB 5400RPM by shielding bad sectors and replacing firmware. This is why it is being sold in black market with very cheap price.
Again, this is not recommended hard drive, no matter who is using it. Returning hard drive or TNAS, you need to make your own decision.

"Sold in black market" Really? He bought legit WD USB drives and took them out of their enclosure. It worked on a QNAP NAS as he stated and I'm sure QNAP doesn't list them in their compatibility list either. His drives or one of the drives might be defective, which I would recommend he runs a diagnostic on each to get confirmation. If the drives are fine it might be that his NAS is acting up or defective. Maybe updating the firmware on the NAS could help? There's multiple things to troubleshoot rather than giving this statement.

[SteveJY]

There is no official state that the WD120EMFZ is RED. By instead, what I know is, this drive is downgraded from 14TB 7200RPM to 12TB 5400RPM by shielding bad sectors and replacing firmware. This is why it is being sold in black market with very cheap price.
Again, this is not recommended hard drive, no matter who is using it. Returning hard drive or TNAS, you need to make your own decision.

"Sold in black market" Really? He bought legit WD USB drives and took them out of their enclosure. It worked on a QNAP NAS as he stated and I'm sure QNAP doesn't list them in their compatibility list either. His drives or one of the drives might be defective, which I would recommend he runs a diagnostic on each to get confirmation. If the drives are fine it might be that his NAS is acting up or defective. Maybe updating the firmware on the NAS could help? There's multiple things to troubleshoot rather than giving this statement.

I did try updating the firmware, but unfortunately there wasn't any stability improvement. I ended up sending back the F5-422 and replacing it with a 2.5GbE 4-bay QNAP NAS. That has now been running flawlessly for a couple of weeks with the same 4 drives, so I don't think any of them are defective.

As you say, it could have just been a defective NAS, but considering the the SSD cache issue I had as well, I get the impression that TNAS gear is just more picky about drive compatibility. I suppose it's more sensible to stick to compatibility lists, but for me the cost saving of "shucking" the external USB drives was hard to resist - when they were on offer they were about half the price of genuine 12Tb WD Reds.