*Further Update* - Synology have been in touch regarding this video and were keen to highlight the following statement. I have repeated it below: "We disagree with the statement that is it not possible to disable usage of WDDA services on supported WD Red hard drives. We would like to confirm the following: - You can enable/disable WDDA from Storage Manager at any time from the UI. This will remove any warnings (assuming the drive is healthy otherwise). - Storage Manager has always allowed administrators to "suppress" non-severe drive warnings. This option is also available for this particular warning. Additionally, regarding the support of WD Red Drives with WDDA on-board services, in DSM: - WDDA was only introduced into DSM 7.0 (July 2021). - WDDA is not enabled by default. - Synology has already deprecated WDDA, an _d it is not included on any -22 series or_ newer system (e.g. DS1522+) WDDA, and its triggers and warnings, are not developed or controllable by Synology. So while DSM can ignore warnings thrown by WDDA, this defeats the purpose of the health monitoring tool that the administrator knowingly enabled. " - An Official Synology Source, 9th June 2023
Could you pin this, please? I wish I'd seen this before I wrote my massive thing above, but ... I'm giving this statement the side-eye, still, and not changing my mind. They stepped over the line just as soon as they changed an "out of warranty" error to imply anything else. These products are too expensive for these games. it's a bit too aggressive in its blame shifting. A one-off sentence at least apologizing for any confusion caused, especially where critical data storage is concerned, would have gone a long way towards making them look less defensive and scolding. Synology is mad that they got caught being misleading and intimidating in a way that makes people more likely to buy more of their products that they don't need? That's ... too bad for them? (I'm maybe a bit salty about anything having to do with how they market their HDDs with intimidating warning messages now... ;) ) If it was all optional and not enabled by default, I don't think there'd be quite such an outrage over it? People who don't know what they're doing don't tend to dig deep enough to toggle settings they don't understand on a device like a Synology that's marketed as a "set it and forget it" thing to non-IT people. I'm also not sure why they lead with telling us how to disable it but ... then say it's not enabled by default? That seems backwards. I wonder if it was enabled by default at some point in the past but isn't now. Something seems odd about all that. EDIT: And how convenient that Synology has now retroactively depreciated the whole thing. Yet they haven't stripped it out of the OS. More confusion. Bad form.
Now this is a different reply from Synology than was reported earlier. The original reply posted was this one: "Unfortunately this appears to be an issue that we would not be able to assist with. That information is pulled directly from the drive and as such, you would need to contact Western Digital themselves for assistance with how to stop that reporting if it is even possible (I would suspect they wouldn't want that to occur). On our end, that would require modification of system files and that is not something that we would support nor assist with I am afraid."
Great video! I completely agree with Robbie. The message that WDDA is printing out is not "hey your drive is out of warranty" they are printing out "Your drives have had too many power on hours, consider replacing them soon". No one should be replacing NAS drives that are under 5 years old unless there is actually an issue shown from the smart test. If you read up on WDDA from their site it talks about how it uses AI to predict hard drive failure. When clearly its not doing that... WDDA should be removed from all NAS software, as its not giving useful information
Hey bud! Happy Friday! I am a fan of drive information - GIVE ME ALL THE DRIVE INFO! Just make it useful, pertinent and relevant! An example (that I now wish I had made in the video...damn) - Take the new 20/22TB WD Red Pro drives with OptiNAND (a small area of flash that handles drive data and allows the greater platter density to go towards storage)... I WANT specific drive information and alerts to tell me if/when that small area of NAND/Flash is degrading, getting hot, developing bad sectors, etc. THAT is the kind of drive specific warnings I want. Telling me to bin my HDDs because they are 301 days old isn't on! The Synology warning and extent of affected drives (I have since learning in the last few hours) is little more detailed that information online that has been shared too. All that said, Eddie does have a point that it is about HOW the alerts that this drive (useful or not) that are being sent from the drive are being interrupted and/or acted upon by the host system (regardless of brand). Just getting information on the status of WDDA, if its a setting that is manually OFF by default and effected versions of DSM. Have a great weekend dude.
@@nascompares Completely agree, these third party tests have the capability of being much more accurate than just smart tests because they know their drives. But they are using this to scare their users into buying new drives. WDDA is firmware that is built into the actual drives themselves. All of the messages coming out of it (the actually text string) comes straight from firmware within the drive. On IronWolf heath the only outputs or codes so you have to look them up yourself. With QNAPs update adding in WDDA unless QNAP actually filters out the message, they will see the exact same text. Anyone who sees these videos will know that its fake, but the 90% of home users who dont spent all their time reading about NAS, will think that the drives themselves actually need to be replaced! ** Update ** Actually found the code within Synology reading out this warning and the data sheet from WD to Synology detailing the WDDA test! Video coming soon!
@@SpaceRexWill sadly even with these videos, many users will panic, order a new drive, rebuild the RAID to make the error go away. How many of those people will do a S.M.A.R.T. test and research online before buying and replacing? Not enough! While I keep waiting for my budget 250GB WD Blue NVMe R/W cache to give a warning 18 months in.🤷🏻♂️😂
I found it really disgusting (sorry for the strong word) to see the guest's Bias against Synology, when it clearly didn't make any sense. He kept going on "more info is better" when all one needs to do is going on the drive and click on "show health info" to see the power on hours. So that info was already available. Turning it into a warning is a bad choice by WD and not by Synology. They should treat the WDDA as generic with standard codes. So if it comes as a Warning it should be treated as a Warning, why would they need to change it or mute it ? No, that's introducing more complexity and could have very bad effects on other good warnings that users may mute. That's a rabbit hole right there. The way Synology has implemented it is perfectly fine and has nothing to do with trying to get people to buy their own drives. But again, your guest clearly has his own agenda that he tried to impose in the video. I have 2 Synology NAS-es with 4 WD drives each. Luckily none with WDDA . When upgrading them I will surely also look elsewhere. Just upgraded a few days ago from 6.2 on both. I tend to NOT upgrade to the newest version of a software unless it has point 2 release first.
I have used WD for almost 30 years and exclusively when I was doing IT consulting. It is very concerning to me about the lack of transparency WD is doing. I have Seagate Ironwolf Pro drives in my Synology and they are fast, quiet and so far (3 years) never had an issue. WD needs to learn from this.
I am still kinda surprised that this is not a louder topic than it is.. this is genuinely the first time I have heard of HDDs spitting out this kind of warning
I had been using WD since the 1990s but Seagate seems to have taken the lead from their rough start and bad word of mouth back then. The tables have turned.
I've been a WD user for decades, both in personal and corporate systems. The SMR/CMR thing really softened my stance on WD, as has some reliability issues we've been having with their NVME drives. We will do our own assessment, but this is probably going to be the nail in the coffin for me. I haven't run across it in our systems yet, but if it rises to the level of a "warning" flag that can't be turned off we will change brands. A health warning is something that should only require the attention of an admin for actual reliability concerns, not a notification that a drive is exiting it's warranty period. We have spreadsheets to track that. Any drive health monitoring system instantly becomes useless when it gets used as a sales pitch.
I plan my NAS drives for at least 5 years use, no matter the warranty period. I don't like or want to be confronted with such a warning for years. Since the WD Red SMR debacle/scandal, WD drives are not on my short list anymore.
Why can't this be in "Information" notification? A "Warning" should indicate something is type of notification that something is potentially "out of order" and may need attention. In my opinion an Informational notification would be more appropriate for end of warranty.
Very true. One point that I do not think we have made clear enough here is that we still haven't 100% confirmed whether the WDDA notification utilization in those older version of DSM is on/off by default. I have yet to find confirmation online that WDDA is 'on' by default on the older DSM releases that support it.
Under no circumstances is an expired warranty a warning, because it does not provide the slightest indication of an imminent technical malfunction. The comparison with TBW lags because exceeding the TBW limit indicates a risk of failure. Disabling all warnings is pointless, as real risks remain undetected. So it remains solely WD's responsibility not to trigger meaningless warnings.
What is the problem with your WD drives getting three years old? Just disable the WDDA option in DSM and there is no drama at all. It is Synology who is turning information from a drive into an issue for the user. It is debatable whether WD should have used an INFO message for the drive age information but it will always be the responsibility of Synology's DSM to allow users to deal with info's and warnings appropriately.
Fair point man. But it is worth highlighting that Syn killed off support of WDDA after DSM 7.0. Alot of users still stay on a given version of DSM, as new versions and new sub versions aren't of interest to them more than stability and longevity (see how many users are still on DSM 6.2 for that reason!). I am more interested in the status of WDDA right now on drives right now, as.. outside of Synology NAS, it would be good to know how it's impacting users elsewhere.
Congrats for the channel, a must watch for anyone who follows and loves the NAS subject. Currently I am using a Qnap tvs 473 which shows through the Unlike DA tool a Moderate Risk of Failure for one of the three WDD red drives that I am using. In your opinion , how worried should I be and should I think about replacing that drive asap? Thank you!!!!
I'm always glad to see these videos where y'all don't agree and have a valuable discussion about it. Not only is the information useful, but you're demonstrating a useful skill. ;) I've been using refurbished/decommissioned enterprise WD drives (WD Gold) since I started with NAS, so I'm familiar with them and have really enjoyed the experience so far. Up until all this started, I'd have recommended refurb'd Golds without hesitation. Not anymore. There are too many other options and WD seems to enjoy giving me reasons to look elsewhere. Synology, too, for that matter. I'd absolutely recommend QNAP if I had to choose between them now, even as a QNAP owner and knowing about their security issues. Synology lags on hardware, and is so committed to getting you to buy their brand of HDD that they seem to have no problems intimidating and confusing their customers on purpose. Watching your video made me think of four points, specifically: 1. More information is not better when it's presented in a way that confuses the consumer, and it's catastrophic when it even starts to look like that confusing presentation is on purpose. 2. NAS enthusiasts are technologically sophisticated enough to consider the difference between WDDA's end of warranty warning and a SMART alert. But home users and even small businesses without an IT department do not necessarily have that capability, and need their devices to be honest at minimum and teach them at best. A warning based on WDDA indicating a warranty expiration should say exactly that: "The warranty on Drive X has expired. If you continue to use this drive, you will be using it with no warranty coverage for anything that happens after Y date." That would have been simple, true, and unambiguous, and I don't think anyone could have gotten too mad about it. People could have even decided to keep using the drives because the SMART status was OK and they have backups, depending on their appetite for risk vs. cost of replacement. As it is, Synology, who just happens to sell drives, and WD, who just happens to sell drives, will now benefit financially from less-sophisticated users being (literally) alarmed into buying equipment they might not have needed. 3. Synology is at fault here. If Synology's OS is triggering these alerts, Synology needs to respond. They're a competing drive vendor, so of course it's suspect (and possibly legally anti-competitive?) that they just happen to throw an error when a competing drive goes out of warranty that is worded so as to suggest something is wrong enough that people go out and replace the drive...preferably with Synology equipment. 4. But also: WD is at fault here. I realize they like their extra bolt-on non-standard safety and security features because it lets them raise the price for value add, but storage drives are critical infrastructure. Valuable and sometimes irreplaceable data lives on them. More often than not, spinning rust is being used as a *backup* drive. It's not a product segment where a great deal of experimentation should exist when that experimentation boils down to unproven bolt-on technology that seemingly has more to do with marketing than anything else. By introducing WDDA while knowing full well that a substantial portion of their buyers would not have the deeper technical understanding to evaluate its actual efficacy as a warning system for drive failures, but would be scared by any error it threw, they not only appear to be leveraging potential consumer intimidation to sell more drives (not everything out of warranty needs to be replaced, etc.), but also provided an opening for Synology's own bad behavior. 5. Additionally, WD's behavior is cumulative. SpaceRex mentioned this as a big reason he's now telling people to avoid the brand. It's not just the WDDA thing. After the whole SHR thing, WD cannot really claim to be acting in good faith towards consumers. How much they should be avoided following being hacked is a fair question, but they made a deliberate choice to market an SHR drive in a product line they knew was used for NAS. Consumer confusion in the name of selling their products, even when they know or should know they're selling consumers a product that isn't fit for the advertised purpose, is not the behavior of company that deserves the business of either highly informed consumers, or entry-level consumers who don't yet know enough to protect themselves.
What's the point of better QNAP hardware if your data gets hindered and/or destroyed due to security issues? Probably best to switch to QNAP hardware and run alternative OS on it.
My two 4TB HGST NAS drives lasted me for more than 8 years. In fact, I only replaced them 'coz I wanted to upgrade to bigger HDDs. The HGST dives are still fine with no SMART errors at all. Synology should really stop their greediness of only allowing us to use their own own branded Synology drives that they don't even make themselves and are rebranded Toshiba drives. Why can't they just focus on improving their outdated hardware instead? I like Synology DSM and I've spent at least more than $6k USD of my own money on Synology NAS'es plus upgrades. I'll be looking towards QNAP now for my next NAS. Specifically their i9 8-bay NAS that is worth over $3k USD since at least that one still supports 3rd party HDDs & SSDs unlike the new NAS offerings by Synology. 😩 Edit: I know there are hacks that lets you use 3rd party drives on the newer Synology NAS'es and get rid of the warnings but that doesn't change the fact that it's unacceptable you have to do this just to use perfectly fine 3rd party drives and worst of all, you will most likely loose your warranty too in return. 😢
A month ago, I replaced the two WD Red drives in my WD NAS due to a 'warning'. I replaced them with new WD Red drives (albeit of larger capacity). Now I'm wondering if that was even necessary or did I just spend money I could have better used for other things?
Thanks guys! I think WD should be calling this an ‘info’ rather than a warning And I most certainly think the OS should allow you ‘mute’ it Otherwise, your drive will be in warning status forever; and well; who listens to someone crying wolf…… I.e. you are note likely to miss future, real warnings.
Agreed, or a custom "Old" tag, or maybe just something to show how old the drive is. Except that WD knows full well that a drive just being 3 years old would never actually be a reason to replace a drive. There's no way this was done to inform users, it was done to trick them into spending money they don't need to.
It feels like many companies are force-feeding consumers (they know better than us, like we’re ignorant, we don’t know what’s best for us) and using methods to push product with little or no added value to consumers (ie WD drives pushing warranty expiration, which is not exclusively indicative of failure or imminent failure; compelled auto-installation of windows 11 without user consent; nvidia’s launch of RTX 4060 with little or no improvement over rtx 3060; Synology significantly shrinking their hard drive compatibility list.)
My take is right inline with Eddie on this one. WD might not be the most loved HD manufacturers in the world at the moment, and not unwarrantedly so (pun not intended), but i don't see how you can blame them for doing anything wrong on this one. The info is usefully to have and surely it's down to Synology to give the option to silence the warning in their OS, if they wrote in the code to recognise it in the first place?
Cheers for giving us your thoughts man. The only thing I would add in response is that I want to get it clarified how/if DWWA is enabled by default on the affected versions of DSM, or a setting that is manually enabled by the sys admin. It IS off by default on a few other brands, so I want/need/should-have clarified. Getting a little more info shortly. Cheers for watching bud!
I think the underlying assumption for this whole debacle is that it was WD that provided Synology with the list of things to check for and the specific messages to use as part of the WDDA implementation in DSM. Other NAS vendors having the same messages as Synology for WDDA errors seems to indicate this would indeed be WD-provided info handed out to implementors. The overall concern I have seen is basically two-fold, one is about WDDA crying wolf by triggering an actual warning over a metric that is not a particularly useful prediction of drive failure, and the second one is the specific phrasing of said warning; if it had been phrased as a purely informational message informing you essentially "this drive is out of warranty, in case this matters to you" I don't think people would object at all as much as a ⚠warning message suggesting that you replace the drive.
I very much appreciate the perspective of your guest. It is the operating system's role to interpret data from drives. Information is good, interpreting it incorrectly is bad. WD could have used an INFO message type to convey the information, but then most would not have noticed it, even if they cared. In any event, it would be definitely Synology's fault, if it weren't possible to simply dismiss that particular message.
I agree with Robbie here. My beef is with Synology. Sure they could alert the user to the notification from WDDA but then have the option to clear it. Or even have it show as a flag under the drives themselves. I think this is their(Synology) attempt to push users to use Synology branded drives vs competitor.
Adjudication is in! Rob 1. Ed 0........ WD -1Million! This is like SMR#2 and smells of money!! I'm saying Bye Bye to My My-Cloud now too and especially after the V3 -V5 debacle!? Long Live Wolves of Iron! WD ........ Who's that!?
The hidden cost of photography is the need for large storage space. I used to recommend Western Digital drives but after two failed experiences trying to receive a WD RED NAS HDD and now having read similar stories of bad experiences I can say with assurance I will never buy from them again. I tried to use reputable sellers, Amazon and Wal-Mart, but they passed the buck claiming returns/refunds were the responsibility of third-party resellers. One knew nothing about proper shipping. The other one sent a bad unit and perhaps even a refurbished disguised as new. Now you may say this is not Western Digital's fault. But to understand their role in this is to understand how these manufacturers have changed their distribution channels and vendors for cost cutting measures that leave the consumer poorer quality control and service. Neither Amazon or Wal-Mart represented these as from third party resellers and consequently did not support them with their return policies. All of them are involved in shady business practices. I share this with you for consideration as you make your purchasing decisions.
Honestly, once you lose your data because of ignoring "small" alert makes you feel freaking out with alerts like these, trust me, being rational is hard, it brings you bad memories in a split of a second. I've been there... And that's why it is so seriuos
I’m still rocking 8TB and 10TB wd red drives across 3 synology NASes; however, I have not seen the WDDA as an available option in any of my DSMs. I wonder if my drives are too old or have old firmware.
Unless you are rocking a particular version of DSM (7.0) and drives made after 2019 (still getting clarification on that), you shouldn't see it at alL. Synology have killed support of this feature. However some users do not shift onto the next big release/sub-release for ages (often not until they HAVE TO ), so it's those users who are the ones who should take note of this.
I just purchased a QNAP TS464 with Seagate Ironwolf HDD's and deliberately ignored WD given this situation. I agree that 'more' HDD alerts are good BUT they need to be informative and objective in context so users can decide appropriate action for their own situation. The WD approach is disengenuous and commercially motivated at best and seems cynically aimed at driving premature hardware replacements. My impression is that Eddie really failed to accept this nuance and ultimately puts it to Synology (who clearly suck in thier right) to resolve without a clear argument for his firm views.
It is like buying a new car with a 3 year warranty, getting a check engine warning every time to car starts after 3 years. The card should last 5 to 10 years with only minor maintenance not 3. It gives no useful info. It has no value. Do not buy these drives and Nas. Only least them for 3 year at a discount over owning them.
I use a combination of drives including WD Reds and I ahve never seen that type of alert.... but I'm also still using older drives. My largest is 10TB.
I believe that it's mostly WD's fault and very partially Synology. Those warnings should not exist in the first place, even if they were completely accurate and just said that "the device warranty has expired". The warranty period of hard drives is not really supposed to mean anything, as drives are not expected to fail immediately after the warranty expires. If a certain line of drives were known to fail after about 3 years they would probably be treated as faulty drives and rightfully so. Anyway, as I said, if those warnings were accurate and just said that the drive's warranty has expired, there would be two kinds of people: 1. Those who know what that means will just ignore that warning or disable it if possible, as drives are expected to last 5-6 years at the very least, and in the first place, the warranty only covers the hardware, while in the case of storage media, it's the value of the data on the drive that is orders of magnitude higher than the price of the drive itself, and the data was never under warranty in the first place. 2. Those who don't know exactly what it means might believe that being out of warranty does actually mean that the drive is immediately more likely to fail and they should rush and buy new drives. This is just as bad as the warnings we get now.
I bought 6 Seagate Ironwolf drives in December and all were duds, I returned them and bought Toshiba drives, touchwood to date had no problems. There are plenty of applications out there that can check the drives.
I don't buy this warranty business for one minute. Does the CPU in you NAS or workstation throw a warning when its warranty runs out? What about the RAM sticks, the motherboard, the case (it might just collapse!), etc, etc. But it may speak volumes about WDs faith in their own hardware. As many people have pointed out NAS drives seem to last longer than their warranties. The warranty is a business decision with regards to money charged up front vs repair costs. Does anyone stop trusting their car to drive them safely just because the warranty ran out? On the other hand, I may have just given car manufacturers an evil idea 🙊
It number of power on hrs. So that is expected for Nas drives BUT making it a fixed warning since Synology now flags it is UNACCEPTABLE. WD should correct this or a class action suit should be considered
I'm kinda on the fence to how I would want to be notified. On one hand, yes, nice to know that the drive has run for 3 years. Given that typically INFO, WARNING, and CRITICAL are the only three generic alarm types, I'm not sure what a fourth state would be. I'd ignore INFO. But to be constantly nagged about WARNING for an age related non-issue? I'd say that the firmware on the drives need to look at themselves a bit more closely and see if anything STARTS to go a little wonky and starts to go out of spec IF the drive is beyond that 3 year period. Show the warning of the age, PLUS the warning of what could be going wrong. If everything is running just fine and WELL within spec, but, the age is beyond 3 years, don't notify. So, if a drive metric starts to go 25% out of spec from a normal day, then throw the warning IF it's time is beyond 3 years. If it's within 3 years, SOP on whatever and however warnings should be handled.
From my experience PowerOnHours flag is irrelevant. A 10yo HDD could be in better condition than a 2yo HDD. There are reliable tests (other than SMART) that keep my company safe from losing data. If a company has policy to use only hardware/software with guarantee, there propably are other tools to alarm IT department (because not only HDDs are important).
I just replaced a WD Red yesterday. It failed (critical errors) the day before. It was brand new maybe 5 months ago. Was in my Synology ds220+ also brand new 5 months ago. Replaced it with same sized non WD this time. F WD. My stack of failed drives is most all WDs. 3 years. I wish.
Backblaze nees to start counting drives that report this as 'failed' in their reliability statistics as they are being represented as unsafe to continue using.
There's nothing wrong with a mfg giving you a head's up warranty status. However, it should not be an involuntary nag screen. Just offer it when the user requests a drive status, such as SMART etc. Thanks guys ! 👍👍👍
Look at the Backblaze HDD usage reports, a Hard Drive (NAS or Server Drives) runs easily more then 3 years. A warning after 3 years to replace the drives is not the best way to recommend WD Drives. You just throw away perfectly fine drive who could run a few years more. A more discreet info or warning after 3 years would be much more appropriate.
I'm not 100% in agreement with you there (or Eddie, as the vid goes on lol). I think Synology has the right of reply here and we still don't know if the versions of DSM that supported WDDA had it on or off by default. I 'assumed' it was 'on' by default, but I am in the process of getting further info on this and I think that needs to be confirmed. On a side note, I have to give QNAP credit here, they are seemingly approaching WDDA supported Drive on their system a more open/customizable approach. Again though, still getting some finer Syn details confirmed. Have a great weekend bud!
Yep, only DSM 7.0 seemingly had support of WDDA and it's analytics/notification recognition. However, it is still worth discussing the broader impact of a drive that spits a 'warning out' on the included drive analytics tool, that might make a user go out and buy new drives unnecessarily. We discuss surveillance alot, most of those cameras have a 1-3 year warranty. Can you imagine the fall out if all of those brands starting pushing notifications from their cameras to their owners after the warranty period that suggested replacement or that the hardware was no longer up to snuff? It's an oddly aggressive move/tactic.
@@nascompares I'm on DSM7.1, WDDA is not common, only a select combination of WD drives and Synology machines are effected. Nobody has a clear list of effected combinations, but it's easy to look at the DSM drive health dashboard to see if you're effected. I have DS920+, DSM7 & 8TB WD Red Pro drives. WDDA is not shown or going to give any errors. That's probably why not many people are as upset as the SHR disaster that effected so many people.
I got a better idea than to fix DSM to interpret these warnings properly ... just dont buy WD. I stopped buying anything from them back in the SMR scam days, and I see no reason to start buying them now. At the end of the day I dont need a warning at my home NAS here, that my drive may be getting close to warranty ... if it fails ... I'll replace it. I dont need to be told by WD that I should auto spend more money with them. Regarding DSM? If I dont buy WD drives, I dont have a problem with DSM not running these warnings properly.
Great content, this sort of problems are very common on enterprise storage.. Sinology just needs to work with WD, develop a fix and push it to all their units that are potentially affected by this.. .is not a big deal in the end
tbh it's not exactly a 'current issue'. It affects a specific revision of DSM (DSM 7.0) and has been disabled+unavailable in later DSM releases. Also, Syn are saying that it is off by default and is enabled by the user (something I have been unable to confirm/deny, despite testing drives since this video with an older release of DSM). Right now, the question mark for me is the motivation by WD for this alert at 3YR of hours...
Avoided WD because of their SMR debacle and when i might give them my money again there's this happens. I'm not running any synology system but this has me avoid WD again and choosing Seagate/Toshiba.
I agree, up to a point. I want lots of stats and information on my storage. Plus, some users need assistance in translating the details of warning signs. It's always gonna be tough to find a balance between TMI and 'ONLY TELL ME THE IMPORTANT STUFF'.
HDDs are expensive. I use them until they are dead. Smart whatsoever . That's the reason why there's RAID6 & Backup. Are they really swap the HDDs after a Warning or the Warranty.😅
Generally, for me, WD discussion is dead for me, WD products is something i dont care anymore, its not that much worth it, i would not buy any WD product.
"More information to the user" is a rubbish argument, because the user is not in the position to interpret all that information. The more information there is, the noisier it becomes. Particularly with this "power-on hours" limit, it is especially meaningless, because the limit is arbitrary. They might as well set it to 2 years, 1 year, or 1 hour - there is nothing inherent with the drives themselves that makes them more likely to fail after exactly 3 years of use but not before.
As a software developer I don't think its cut and dry who is at fault here. These are two large companies that should have some communication when implementing software like this. WD will have at least provided documentation to Synology but whether the documentation was clear enough is a question. This could simply be an oversight from both companies or it could be that one or both companies see saw it as an opportunity to make some extra cash. Its disappointing that so far that doesn't seem to be any reps out there able to comment on whats happening.
Thanks for commenting bud. tbh I am reaching out to WD (nothing yet), but Synology have been in communication (pinned comment). The main thing that erked me was that we are talking about implementation of a on-drive software from 3+ years ago, integration and then removal of the integration in DSM in that time.... but SERIOUSLY NOTHING online about this beyond 2-3 official pages. For something with such a large potential impact (albeit on a particular % of users out of the larger user base), it's wildly under covered! And that isn't even discussing how/if WDDA is implemented on other NAS brands and NVR systems.
I only used to purchase WD external hard drives, the portable kind and home Elements. They've been okay over the years But I always purchase them from Costco so with such a generous return policy it was never a worry. Only purchased Seagate drives for my NAS. Recently was briefly considering a 16TB WD Red instead of an Exos as I was under the impression they were quieter, better etc except maybe for the price I guess? Now having just purchased a SanDisk cruiser SSD drive for Prme days I didn't realize they were owned by Western digital, so I will be returning that as it seems very problematic. Will be skipping any other WD purchases I was already hesitant due to their cmr issue.. actually it should be a scandal. The company sounds like it's a complete shit show actually not sure why anyone would buy anything from them anymore.
To be fair, *had* . They removed WDDA support after DSM 7.0. They still should not have been ok with implementing this 3yr hours warning into the DSM Storage Manager (whether users choose to opt in/out of WDDA), but it's worth noting that its not a thing i nDSM 7.1 or DSM 7.2
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*Further Update* - Synology have been in touch regarding this video and were keen to highlight the following statement. I have repeated it below:
"We disagree with the statement that is it not possible to disable usage of WDDA services on supported WD Red hard drives. We would like to confirm the following:
- You can enable/disable WDDA from Storage Manager at any time from the UI. This will remove any warnings (assuming the drive is healthy otherwise).
- Storage Manager has always allowed administrators to "suppress" non-severe drive warnings. This option is also available for this particular warning.
Additionally, regarding the support of WD Red Drives with WDDA on-board services, in DSM:
- WDDA was only introduced into DSM 7.0 (July 2021).
- WDDA is not enabled by default.
- Synology has already deprecated WDDA, an _d it is not included on any -22 series or_ newer system (e.g. DS1522+)
WDDA, and its triggers and warnings, are not developed or controllable by Synology. So while DSM can ignore warnings thrown by WDDA, this defeats the purpose of the health monitoring tool that the administrator knowingly enabled. " - An Official Synology Source, 9th June 2023
"An Official Synology Source, 9th May 2023" - are you sure that was May and not June?
WELL SPOTTED! Corrected!
Could you pin this, please?
I wish I'd seen this before I wrote my massive thing above, but ... I'm giving this statement the side-eye, still, and not changing my mind. They stepped over the line just as soon as they changed an "out of warranty" error to imply anything else. These products are too expensive for these games.
it's a bit too aggressive in its blame shifting. A one-off sentence at least apologizing for any confusion caused, especially where critical data storage is concerned, would have gone a long way towards making them look less defensive and scolding. Synology is mad that they got caught being misleading and intimidating in a way that makes people more likely to buy more of their products that they don't need? That's ... too bad for them? (I'm maybe a bit salty about anything having to do with how they market their HDDs with intimidating warning messages now... ;) )
If it was all optional and not enabled by default, I don't think there'd be quite such an outrage over it? People who don't know what they're doing don't tend to dig deep enough to toggle settings they don't understand on a device like a Synology that's marketed as a "set it and forget it" thing to non-IT people.
I'm also not sure why they lead with telling us how to disable it but ... then say it's not enabled by default? That seems backwards. I wonder if it was enabled by default at some point in the past but isn't now. Something seems odd about all that.
EDIT: And how convenient that Synology has now retroactively depreciated the whole thing. Yet they haven't stripped it out of the OS. More confusion. Bad form.
Now this is a different reply from Synology than was reported earlier. The original reply posted was this one:
"Unfortunately this appears to be an issue that we would not be able to assist with.
That information is pulled directly from the drive and as such, you would need to contact Western Digital themselves for assistance with how to stop that reporting if it is even possible (I would suspect they wouldn't want that to occur).
On our end, that would require modification of system files and that is not something that we would support nor assist with I am afraid."
Great video! I completely agree with Robbie. The message that WDDA is printing out is not "hey your drive is out of warranty" they are printing out "Your drives have had too many power on hours, consider replacing them soon".
No one should be replacing NAS drives that are under 5 years old unless there is actually an issue shown from the smart test. If you read up on WDDA from their site it talks about how it uses AI to predict hard drive failure. When clearly its not doing that...
WDDA should be removed from all NAS software, as its not giving useful information
Hey bud! Happy Friday! I am a fan of drive information - GIVE ME ALL THE DRIVE INFO! Just make it useful, pertinent and relevant! An example (that I now wish I had made in the video...damn) - Take the new 20/22TB WD Red Pro drives with OptiNAND (a small area of flash that handles drive data and allows the greater platter density to go towards storage)... I WANT specific drive information and alerts to tell me if/when that small area of NAND/Flash is degrading, getting hot, developing bad sectors, etc. THAT is the kind of drive specific warnings I want. Telling me to bin my HDDs because they are 301 days old isn't on! The Synology warning and extent of affected drives (I have since learning in the last few hours) is little more detailed that information online that has been shared too. All that said, Eddie does have a point that it is about HOW the alerts that this drive (useful or not) that are being sent from the drive are being interrupted and/or acted upon by the host system (regardless of brand). Just getting information on the status of WDDA, if its a setting that is manually OFF by default and effected versions of DSM. Have a great weekend dude.
@@nascompares Completely agree, these third party tests have the capability of being much more accurate than just smart tests because they know their drives. But they are using this to scare their users into buying new drives.
WDDA is firmware that is built into the actual drives themselves. All of the messages coming out of it (the actually text string) comes straight from firmware within the drive. On IronWolf heath the only outputs or codes so you have to look them up yourself. With QNAPs update adding in WDDA unless QNAP actually filters out the message, they will see the exact same text.
Anyone who sees these videos will know that its fake, but the 90% of home users who dont spent all their time reading about NAS, will think that the drives themselves actually need to be replaced!
** Update ** Actually found the code within Synology reading out this warning and the data sheet from WD to Synology detailing the WDDA test! Video coming soon!
@@SpaceRexWill sadly even with these videos, many users will panic, order a new drive, rebuild the RAID to make the error go away. How many of those people will do a S.M.A.R.T. test and research online before buying and replacing? Not enough!
While I keep waiting for my budget 250GB WD Blue NVMe R/W cache to give a warning 18 months in.🤷🏻♂️😂
I found it really disgusting (sorry for the strong word) to see the guest's Bias against Synology, when it clearly didn't make any sense. He kept going on "more info is better" when all one needs to do is going on the drive and click on "show health info" to see the power on hours. So that info was already available. Turning it into a warning is a bad choice by WD and not by Synology. They should treat the WDDA as generic with standard codes. So if it comes as a Warning it should be treated as a Warning, why would they need to change it or mute it ? No, that's introducing more complexity and could have very bad effects on other good warnings that users may mute. That's a rabbit hole right there. The way Synology has implemented it is perfectly fine and has nothing to do with trying to get people to buy their own drives.
But again, your guest clearly has his own agenda that he tried to impose in the video.
I have 2 Synology NAS-es with 4 WD drives each. Luckily none with WDDA . When upgrading them I will surely also look elsewhere.
Just upgraded a few days ago from 6.2 on both. I tend to NOT upgrade to the newest version of a software unless it has point 2 release first.
I have used WD for almost 30 years and exclusively when I was doing IT consulting. It is very concerning to me about the lack of transparency WD is doing. I have Seagate Ironwolf Pro drives in my Synology and they are fast, quiet and so far (3 years) never had an issue. WD needs to learn from this.
I am still kinda surprised that this is not a louder topic than it is.. this is genuinely the first time I have heard of HDDs spitting out this kind of warning
I had been using WD since the 1990s but Seagate seems to have taken the lead from their rough start and bad word of mouth back then. The tables have turned.
I've been a WD user for decades, both in personal and corporate systems. The SMR/CMR thing really softened my stance on WD, as has some reliability issues we've been having with their NVME drives. We will do our own assessment, but this is probably going to be the nail in the coffin for me. I haven't run across it in our systems yet, but if it rises to the level of a "warning" flag that can't be turned off we will change brands. A health warning is something that should only require the attention of an admin for actual reliability concerns, not a notification that a drive is exiting it's warranty period. We have spreadsheets to track that. Any drive health monitoring system instantly becomes useless when it gets used as a sales pitch.
I plan my NAS drives for at least 5 years use, no matter the warranty period. I don't like or want to be confronted with such a warning for years. Since the WD Red SMR debacle/scandal, WD drives are not on my short list anymore.
They are having quite a rough time of it, PR wise!
Ive got few 16tb drives wD gold that I bought few years ago. They are running perfectly to this day.
Why can't this be in "Information" notification? A "Warning" should indicate something is type of notification that something is potentially "out of order" and may need attention. In my opinion an Informational notification would be more appropriate for end of warranty.
Very true. One point that I do not think we have made clear enough here is that we still haven't 100% confirmed whether the WDDA notification utilization in those older version of DSM is on/off by default. I have yet to find confirmation online that WDDA is 'on' by default on the older DSM releases that support it.
Under no circumstances is an expired warranty a warning, because it does not provide the slightest indication of an imminent technical malfunction. The comparison with TBW lags because exceeding the TBW limit indicates a risk of failure. Disabling all warnings is pointless, as real risks remain undetected. So it remains solely WD's responsibility not to trigger meaningless warnings.
I’m with spacerex. This is a wd issue and I’m regretting buying their drives cuz mine are coming up on three years. This is awful business practice.
What is the problem with your WD drives getting three years old? Just disable the WDDA option in DSM and there is no drama at all. It is Synology who is turning information from a drive into an issue for the user. It is debatable whether WD should have used an INFO message for the drive age information but it will always be the responsibility of Synology's DSM to allow users to deal with info's and warnings appropriately.
Fair point man. But it is worth highlighting that Syn killed off support of WDDA after DSM 7.0. Alot of users still stay on a given version of DSM, as new versions and new sub versions aren't of interest to them more than stability and longevity (see how many users are still on DSM 6.2 for that reason!). I am more interested in the status of WDDA right now on drives right now, as.. outside of Synology NAS, it would be good to know how it's impacting users elsewhere.
Congrats for the channel, a must watch for anyone who follows and loves the NAS subject. Currently I am using a Qnap tvs 473 which shows through the Unlike DA tool a Moderate Risk of Failure for one of the three WDD red drives that I am using. In your opinion , how worried should I be and should I think about replacing that drive asap? Thank you!!!!
I'm always glad to see these videos where y'all don't agree and have a valuable discussion about it. Not only is the information useful, but you're demonstrating a useful skill. ;)
I've been using refurbished/decommissioned enterprise WD drives (WD Gold) since I started with NAS, so I'm familiar with them and have really enjoyed the experience so far. Up until all this started, I'd have recommended refurb'd Golds without hesitation.
Not anymore. There are too many other options and WD seems to enjoy giving me reasons to look elsewhere. Synology, too, for that matter. I'd absolutely recommend QNAP if I had to choose between them now, even as a QNAP owner and knowing about their security issues. Synology lags on hardware, and is so committed to getting you to buy their brand of HDD that they seem to have no problems intimidating and confusing their customers on purpose.
Watching your video made me think of four points, specifically:
1. More information is not better when it's presented in a way that confuses the consumer, and it's catastrophic when it even starts to look like that confusing presentation is on purpose.
2. NAS enthusiasts are technologically sophisticated enough to consider the difference between WDDA's end of warranty warning and a SMART alert. But home users and even small businesses without an IT department do not necessarily have that capability, and need their devices to be honest at minimum and teach them at best. A warning based on WDDA indicating a warranty expiration should say exactly that: "The warranty on Drive X has expired. If you continue to use this drive, you will be using it with no warranty coverage for anything that happens after Y date." That would have been simple, true, and unambiguous, and I don't think anyone could have gotten too mad about it. People could have even decided to keep using the drives because the SMART status was OK and they have backups, depending on their appetite for risk vs. cost of replacement. As it is, Synology, who just happens to sell drives, and WD, who just happens to sell drives, will now benefit financially from less-sophisticated users being (literally) alarmed into buying equipment they might not have needed.
3. Synology is at fault here. If Synology's OS is triggering these alerts, Synology needs to respond. They're a competing drive vendor, so of course it's suspect (and possibly legally anti-competitive?) that they just happen to throw an error when a competing drive goes out of warranty that is worded so as to suggest something is wrong enough that people go out and replace the drive...preferably with Synology equipment.
4. But also: WD is at fault here. I realize they like their extra bolt-on non-standard safety and security features because it lets them raise the price for value add, but storage drives are critical infrastructure. Valuable and sometimes irreplaceable data lives on them. More often than not, spinning rust is being used as a *backup* drive. It's not a product segment where a great deal of experimentation should exist when that experimentation boils down to unproven bolt-on technology that seemingly has more to do with marketing than anything else. By introducing WDDA while knowing full well that a substantial portion of their buyers would not have the deeper technical understanding to evaluate its actual efficacy as a warning system for drive failures, but would be scared by any error it threw, they not only appear to be leveraging potential consumer intimidation to sell more drives (not everything out of warranty needs to be replaced, etc.), but also provided an opening for Synology's own bad behavior.
5. Additionally, WD's behavior is cumulative. SpaceRex mentioned this as a big reason he's now telling people to avoid the brand. It's not just the WDDA thing. After the whole SHR thing, WD cannot really claim to be acting in good faith towards consumers. How much they should be avoided following being hacked is a fair question, but they made a deliberate choice to market an SHR drive in a product line they knew was used for NAS. Consumer confusion in the name of selling their products, even when they know or should know they're selling consumers a product that isn't fit for the advertised purpose, is not the behavior of company that deserves the business of either highly informed consumers, or entry-level consumers who don't yet know enough to protect themselves.
What's the point of better QNAP hardware if your data gets hindered and/or destroyed due to security issues? Probably best to switch to QNAP hardware and run alternative OS on it.
@@Cowicide That's my plan with my QNAP hardware. :)
I’ve been looking at buying new, larger wd red pro drives, but I’m holding off until this gets cleaned up and regains my confidence.
My two 4TB HGST NAS drives lasted me for more than 8 years. In fact, I only replaced them 'coz I wanted to upgrade to bigger HDDs. The HGST dives are still fine with no SMART errors at all.
Synology should really stop their greediness of only allowing us to use their own own branded Synology drives that they don't even make themselves and are rebranded Toshiba drives. Why can't they just focus on improving their outdated hardware instead?
I like Synology DSM and I've spent at least more than $6k USD of my own money on Synology NAS'es plus upgrades. I'll be looking towards QNAP now for my next NAS. Specifically their i9 8-bay NAS that is worth over $3k USD since at least that one still supports 3rd party HDDs & SSDs unlike the new NAS offerings by Synology. 😩
Edit:
I know there are hacks that lets you use 3rd party drives on the newer Synology NAS'es and get rid of the warnings but that doesn't change the fact that it's unacceptable you have to do this just to use perfectly fine 3rd party drives and worst of all, you will most likely loose your warranty too in return. 😢
A month ago, I replaced the two WD Red drives in my WD NAS due to a 'warning'. I replaced them with new WD Red drives (albeit of larger capacity). Now I'm wondering if that was even necessary or did I just spend money I could have better used for other things?
Thanks guys!
I think WD should be calling this an ‘info’ rather than a warning
And I most certainly think the OS should allow you ‘mute’ it
Otherwise, your drive will be in warning status forever; and well; who listens to someone crying wolf…… I.e. you are note likely to miss future, real warnings.
Agreed, or a custom "Old" tag, or maybe just something to show how old the drive is.
Except that WD knows full well that a drive just being 3 years old would never actually be a reason to replace a drive. There's no way this was done to inform users, it was done to trick them into spending money they don't need to.
I bought a wd red last week, it was broken.
Hopefully I can switch it to a seagate.
It feels like many companies are force-feeding consumers (they know better than us, like we’re ignorant, we don’t know what’s best for us) and using methods to push product with little or no added value to consumers (ie WD drives pushing warranty expiration, which is not exclusively indicative of failure or imminent failure; compelled auto-installation of windows 11 without user consent; nvidia’s launch of RTX 4060 with little or no improvement over rtx 3060; Synology significantly shrinking their hard drive compatibility list.)
My take is right inline with Eddie on this one. WD might not be the most loved HD manufacturers in the world at the moment, and not unwarrantedly so (pun not intended), but i don't see how you can blame them for doing anything wrong on this one. The info is usefully to have and surely it's down to Synology to give the option to silence the warning in their OS, if they wrote in the code to recognise it in the first place?
Cheers for giving us your thoughts man. The only thing I would add in response is that I want to get it clarified how/if DWWA is enabled by default on the affected versions of DSM, or a setting that is manually enabled by the sys admin. It IS off by default on a few other brands, so I want/need/should-have clarified. Getting a little more info shortly. Cheers for watching bud!
I think the underlying assumption for this whole debacle is that it was WD that provided Synology with the list of things to check for and the specific messages to use as part of the WDDA implementation in DSM. Other NAS vendors having the same messages as Synology for WDDA errors seems to indicate this would indeed be WD-provided info handed out to implementors.
The overall concern I have seen is basically two-fold, one is about WDDA crying wolf by triggering an actual warning over a metric that is not a particularly useful prediction of drive failure, and the second one is the specific phrasing of said warning; if it had been phrased as a purely informational message informing you essentially "this drive is out of warranty, in case this matters to you" I don't think people would object at all as much as a ⚠warning message suggesting that you replace the drive.
I very much appreciate the perspective of your guest. It is the operating system's role to interpret data from drives. Information is good, interpreting it incorrectly is bad. WD could have used an INFO message type to convey the information, but then most would not have noticed it, even if they cared. In any event, it would be definitely Synology's fault, if it weren't possible to simply dismiss that particular message.
Thanks for your balanced and fair input mate!
@@nascompares Thank you(!) for your balanced video. You presented two valid perspectives. Well done!
How would a "WARNING" information interpreted as a "Warning" by the OS be bad ?
I agree with Robbie here. My beef is with Synology. Sure they could alert the user to the notification from WDDA but then have the option to clear it. Or even have it show as a flag under the drives themselves. I think this is their(Synology) attempt to push users to use Synology branded drives vs competitor.
Adjudication is in!
Rob 1. Ed 0........ WD -1Million!
This is like SMR#2 and smells of money!!
I'm saying Bye Bye to My My-Cloud now too and especially after the V3 -V5 debacle!?
Long Live Wolves of Iron! WD ........ Who's that!?
The hidden cost of photography is the need for large storage space. I used to recommend Western Digital drives but after two failed experiences trying to receive a WD RED NAS HDD and now having read similar stories of bad experiences I can say with assurance I will never buy from them again. I tried to use reputable sellers, Amazon and Wal-Mart, but they passed the buck claiming returns/refunds were the responsibility of third-party resellers. One knew nothing about proper shipping. The other one sent a bad unit and perhaps even a refurbished disguised as new.
Now you may say this is not Western Digital's fault. But to understand their role in this is to understand how these manufacturers have changed their distribution channels and vendors for cost cutting measures that leave the consumer poorer quality control and service.
Neither Amazon or Wal-Mart represented these as from third party resellers and consequently did not support them with their return policies. All of them are involved in shady business practices. I share this with you for consideration as you make your purchasing decisions.
If the OS gets the type of warning transmitted, then it could just classify this as a info.
Or is WD also transmitting the the warning level?
Honestly, once you lose your data because of ignoring "small" alert makes you feel freaking out with alerts like these, trust me, being rational is hard, it brings you bad memories in a split of a second. I've been there... And that's why it is so seriuos
So true.
that is why a remote backup is important.
Lose your data ? If you worry about losing your data because of a disk failure, you should move to cloud storage.
I’m still rocking 8TB and 10TB wd red drives across 3 synology NASes; however, I have not seen the WDDA as an available option in any of my DSMs. I wonder if my drives are too old or have old firmware.
Unless you are rocking a particular version of DSM (7.0) and drives made after 2019 (still getting clarification on that), you shouldn't see it at alL. Synology have killed support of this feature. However some users do not shift onto the next big release/sub-release for ages (often not until they HAVE TO ), so it's those users who are the ones who should take note of this.
SMR, WDDA...This isn't the way WDC!
I just purchased a QNAP TS464 with Seagate Ironwolf HDD's and deliberately ignored WD given this situation. I agree that 'more' HDD alerts are good BUT they need to be informative and objective in context so users can decide appropriate action for their own situation. The WD approach is disengenuous and commercially motivated at best and seems cynically aimed at driving premature hardware replacements. My impression is that Eddie really failed to accept this nuance and ultimately puts it to Synology (who clearly suck in thier right) to resolve without a clear argument for his firm views.
It is like buying a new car with a 3 year warranty, getting a check engine warning every time to car starts after 3 years. The card should last 5 to 10 years with only minor maintenance not 3. It gives no useful info. It has no value. Do not buy these drives and Nas. Only least them for 3 year at a discount over owning them.
I use a combination of drives including WD Reds and I ahve never seen that type of alert.... but I'm also still using older drives. My largest is 10TB.
If you have upgraded beyond DSM 7.0 (so, DSM 7.1 or DSM 7.2), you should not see the option and Synology is not using the WDDA on-drive system
Why wouldn't Synology just handle that warning by showing an "Out of Warranty" status, either as an active drive status or an event log entry?
At least we arent being charged monthly subscription fees to acces SMART diagnostics... Yet😅😅
I believe that it's mostly WD's fault and very partially Synology. Those warnings should not exist in the first place, even if they were completely accurate and just said that "the device warranty has expired". The warranty period of hard drives is not really supposed to mean anything, as drives are not expected to fail immediately after the warranty expires. If a certain line of drives were known to fail after about 3 years they would probably be treated as faulty drives and rightfully so.
Anyway, as I said, if those warnings were accurate and just said that the drive's warranty has expired, there would be two kinds of people:
1. Those who know what that means will just ignore that warning or disable it if possible, as drives are expected to last 5-6 years at the very least, and in the first place, the warranty only covers the hardware, while in the case of storage media, it's the value of the data on the drive that is orders of magnitude higher than the price of the drive itself, and the data was never under warranty in the first place.
2. Those who don't know exactly what it means might believe that being out of warranty does actually mean that the drive is immediately more likely to fail and they should rush and buy new drives. This is just as bad as the warnings we get now.
I bought 6 Seagate Ironwolf drives in December and all were duds, I returned them and bought Toshiba drives, touchwood to date had no problems. There are plenty of applications out there that can check the drives.
That worrying, I bought a red last week and that was broken, was looking to buy Seagates because of it.
its not been a year and its been a nightmare that its showing that my HD is critical, shame WD
I don't buy this warranty business for one minute. Does the CPU in you NAS or workstation throw a warning when its warranty runs out? What about the RAM sticks, the motherboard, the case (it might just collapse!), etc, etc.
But it may speak volumes about WDs faith in their own hardware.
As many people have pointed out NAS drives seem to last longer than their warranties. The warranty is a business decision with regards to money charged up front vs repair costs. Does anyone stop trusting their car to drive them safely just because the warranty ran out? On the other hand, I may have just given car manufacturers an evil idea 🙊
*throws car keys into the river* NICE TRY!
It number of power on hrs. So that is expected for Nas drives BUT making it a fixed warning since Synology now flags it is UNACCEPTABLE. WD should correct this or a class action suit should be considered
after watch Spacerex video last week about the WD drives, i will not be buying WD anymore. TEAM SEAGATE NOW!!
I'm kinda on the fence to how I would want to be notified. On one hand, yes, nice to know that the drive has run for 3 years. Given that typically INFO, WARNING, and CRITICAL are the only three generic alarm types, I'm not sure what a fourth state would be. I'd ignore INFO. But to be constantly nagged about WARNING for an age related non-issue?
I'd say that the firmware on the drives need to look at themselves a bit more closely and see if anything STARTS to go a little wonky and starts to go out of spec IF the drive is beyond that 3 year period. Show the warning of the age, PLUS the warning of what could be going wrong. If everything is running just fine and WELL within spec, but, the age is beyond 3 years, don't notify.
So, if a drive metric starts to go 25% out of spec from a normal day, then throw the warning IF it's time is beyond 3 years. If it's within 3 years, SOP on whatever and however warnings should be handled.
From my experience PowerOnHours flag is irrelevant. A 10yo HDD could be in better condition than a 2yo HDD. There are reliable tests (other than SMART) that keep my company safe from losing data. If a company has policy to use only hardware/software with guarantee, there propably are other tools to alarm IT department (because not only HDDs are important).
So,do we ignore the warning ?
Time for a massive lawsuit to shut that down.
I just replaced a WD Red yesterday. It failed (critical errors) the day before. It was brand new maybe 5 months ago. Was in my Synology ds220+ also brand new 5 months ago. Replaced it with same sized non WD this time. F WD. My stack of failed drives is most all WDs. 3 years. I wish.
Backblaze nees to start counting drives that report this as 'failed' in their reliability statistics as they are being represented as unsafe to continue using.
There's nothing wrong with a mfg giving you a head's up warranty status. However, it should not be an involuntary nag screen. Just offer it when the user requests a drive status, such as SMART etc. Thanks guys ! 👍👍👍
Cheers for the props bud. Still getting more info on this and will update!
@@nascompares Another factor I forgot was will they use mfg or install date ?
Look at the Backblaze HDD usage reports, a Hard Drive (NAS or Server Drives) runs easily more then 3 years. A warning after 3 years to replace the drives is not the best way to recommend WD Drives. You just throw away perfectly fine drive who could run a few years more. A more discreet info or warning after 3 years would be much more appropriate.
It is a rather...umm...contrived alert by the WD drive. Yes, that's a polite way to describe the 'three years' warning!
The fix is after warranty, need a WD hack to reset the drives life clock.
I'm with Eddie, Synology is the narrative here and not WD.
I'm not 100% in agreement with you there (or Eddie, as the vid goes on lol). I think Synology has the right of reply here and we still don't know if the versions of DSM that supported WDDA had it on or off by default. I 'assumed' it was 'on' by default, but I am in the process of getting further info on this and I think that needs to be confirmed. On a side note, I have to give QNAP credit here, they are seemingly approaching WDDA supported Drive on their system a more open/customizable approach. Again though, still getting some finer Syn details confirmed. Have a great weekend bud!
@@nascompares Good points Robbie. My jaded view of Synology can come into the picture as well :). Thanks and a great weekend to you!
*waves in an aggressively British fashion* Have a good one man
I have WD red drives in a 1520+ running DSM 7.1. I can confirm that the WDDA was off by default.
Cheers for sharing bud!
WDDA is only on a few Synology systems, my DS920+ with WD Red drives does not have WDDA, so I'm not concerned.
Yep, only DSM 7.0 seemingly had support of WDDA and it's analytics/notification recognition. However, it is still worth discussing the broader impact of a drive that spits a 'warning out' on the included drive analytics tool, that might make a user go out and buy new drives unnecessarily. We discuss surveillance alot, most of those cameras have a 1-3 year warranty. Can you imagine the fall out if all of those brands starting pushing notifications from their cameras to their owners after the warranty period that suggested replacement or that the hardware was no longer up to snuff? It's an oddly aggressive move/tactic.
@@nascompares I'm on DSM7.1, WDDA is not common, only a select combination of WD drives and Synology machines are effected. Nobody has a clear list of effected combinations, but it's easy to look at the DSM drive health dashboard to see if you're effected. I have DS920+, DSM7 & 8TB WD Red Pro drives. WDDA is not shown or going to give any errors. That's probably why not many people are as upset as the SHR disaster that effected so many people.
I got a better idea than to fix DSM to interpret these warnings properly ... just dont buy WD. I stopped buying anything from them back in the SMR scam days, and I see no reason to start buying them now. At the end of the day I dont need a warning at my home NAS here, that my drive may be getting close to warranty ... if it fails ... I'll replace it. I dont need to be told by WD that I should auto spend more money with them. Regarding DSM? If I dont buy WD drives, I dont have a problem with DSM not running these warnings properly.
Great content, this sort of problems are very common on enterprise storage.. Sinology just needs to work with WD, develop a fix and push it to all their units that are potentially affected by this.. .is not a big deal in the end
tbh it's not exactly a 'current issue'. It affects a specific revision of DSM (DSM 7.0) and has been disabled+unavailable in later DSM releases. Also, Syn are saying that it is off by default and is enabled by the user (something I have been unable to confirm/deny, despite testing drives since this video with an older release of DSM). Right now, the question mark for me is the motivation by WD for this alert at 3YR of hours...
Avoided WD because of their SMR debacle and when i might give them my money again there's this happens. I'm not running any synology system but this has me avoid WD again and choosing Seagate/Toshiba.
From what I hear, I'm more inclined to avoid Synology NAS devices than WD drives.
Same here.
Just let S.M.A.R.T. do its proper job and the user make its own decision. No need for more useless noise on the line...
I agree, up to a point. I want lots of stats and information on my storage. Plus, some users need assistance in translating the details of warning signs. It's always gonna be tough to find a balance between TMI and 'ONLY TELL ME THE IMPORTANT STUFF'.
HDDs are expensive. I use them until they are dead. Smart whatsoever . That's the reason why there's RAID6 & Backup. Are they really swap the HDDs after a Warning or the Warranty.😅
Generally, for me, WD discussion is dead for me, WD products is something i dont care anymore, its not that much worth it, i would not buy any WD product.
Sorry to hear that bud, but I respect your reasoning.
Absolutnie nie polecam WD, nie typowe dziwne rozwiązania.
"More information to the user" is a rubbish argument, because the user is not in the position to interpret all that information. The more information there is, the noisier it becomes. Particularly with this "power-on hours" limit, it is especially meaningless, because the limit is arbitrary. They might as well set it to 2 years, 1 year, or 1 hour - there is nothing inherent with the drives themselves that makes them more likely to fail after exactly 3 years of use but not before.
I have few WD Reds running over 3300 days. And they are OK. Running in decent redundancy system.
As a software developer I don't think its cut and dry who is at fault here. These are two large companies that should have some communication when implementing software like this. WD will have at least provided documentation to Synology but whether the documentation was clear enough is a question. This could simply be an oversight from both companies or it could be that one or both companies see saw it as an opportunity to make some extra cash. Its disappointing that so far that doesn't seem to be any reps out there able to comment on whats happening.
Thanks for commenting bud. tbh I am reaching out to WD (nothing yet), but Synology have been in communication (pinned comment). The main thing that erked me was that we are talking about implementation of a on-drive software from 3+ years ago, integration and then removal of the integration in DSM in that time.... but SERIOUSLY NOTHING online about this beyond 2-3 official pages. For something with such a large potential impact (albeit on a particular % of users out of the larger user base), it's wildly under covered! And that isn't even discussing how/if WDDA is implemented on other NAS brands and NVR systems.
I only used to purchase WD external hard drives, the portable kind and home Elements. They've been okay over the years But I always purchase them from Costco so with such a generous return policy it was never a worry. Only purchased Seagate drives for my NAS. Recently was briefly considering a 16TB WD Red instead of an Exos as I was under the impression they were quieter, better etc except maybe for the price I guess? Now having just purchased a SanDisk cruiser SSD drive for Prme days I didn't realize they were owned by Western digital, so I will be returning that as it seems very problematic. Will be skipping any other WD purchases I was already hesitant due to their cmr issue.. actually it should be a scandal. The company sounds like it's a complete shit show actually not sure why anyone would buy anything from them anymore.
No we dont !!!
Eddie is right.
Synology's DSM has a implementation error.
To be fair, *had* . They removed WDDA support after DSM 7.0. They still should not have been ok with implementing this 3yr hours warning into the DSM Storage Manager (whether users choose to opt in/out of WDDA), but it's worth noting that its not a thing i nDSM 7.1 or DSM 7.2
hm
3 years is a long time for a little motor to spin on a hdd that's brutal work! After 3 i replace em.