The hole-spacing is also an “issue” on newer 10tb drives. I bought my first 10 tb Elements-drive a month ago. (Drive was made 23. Sep 2019) think it was called 100EMAZ
I've found that any drive that I place into a server back plane does not need the modification but if you connect it with standard sata power and data, you require the third pin to be covered.
The bottom holes were moved when WD went to 8TB drives. This was due to a manufacturing complexity that didn't allow them to keep the original layout that so many other drives/cases use.
The holes being different is so they can fit more platters in the drive without using up space inside the drive for the hole. Seagate drives gave had the new holes for 8TB drives and bigger for a long time now.
100% correct. In order to add more platters you can't have the screw go in that area or it would hit one of the platters. So anything above 8tb will have that screw layout. Anything above 6 platters I believe.
Dude please get a plastic spudger set.... One slip and you'll have 3 inches of knife in your gut or leg.... Its like 10 bucks on amazon and works way better than a knife....
Makes sense I guess as most of the external drives I have opened up only use those 2 end screw holes for the rubber shock absorbers. I guess all those pennies that save from not drilling out those 2 holes, adds up. The base holes do line up with the ones on the bottom of my Icy Box enclosures/caddies, so maybe they are designed all round for external enclosures which kind of makes sense as its likely a more stable mounting to put the screws at the end rather than 2 at the end and 2 in the middle.
It has to do with the number of platters in the drive as you add more, you can't have a screw in that spot or it would come into contact with a platter.
I just ordered some 2.5” drives to use with my Shield. When checking out reviews, I found out that you can’t just shuck the smaller WD portable drives either. They’re using a separate circuit board for some components so the drive won’t work if you take it out of its case. So, if anyone is looking to replace a laptop drive, get a different brand or just buy a bare drive Looks like WD is going to make life difficult for us from now on.
Good day Jason, on Black Friday I ended up getting 5 WD 12TB Drives on sale @ 179.00 ea. That's 100.00 off of regular price. I am using these in a FreeNAS Mini XL+. First NAS and so far am loving having almost 32TB of storage. Would not have done this, had I not have viewed you video. I didn't even have to tape the 3rd pin ether. Thanks for all you sharing with us.
you can be right, backplanes often use molex 4 pin to power them, just 5 and 12 volt or there is some kind of conversion on the backplane itself... will be nice to find out.
It's not necessarily that they use a 4-pin molex the third pen on server enclosures and back planes are for keeping the drive spun down and for staggered spin up. So not all the drives spin up at the same time. The backplane will release one drive at a time so they stagger their startup. With that being said it's very likely that a backplane will work correctly with these type of drives.
It depends on your psu. Some do give 3 volt on that pin and some don't. So i would asume that normal consumer drives do not have this pin connected to anything internally. But normally if the backplanes use molex connectors you should be fine. If they use sata power connectors the plane will just pass trough the 3volts.
@@napsterbater the way you explain it this is a server grade feature on the drives that consumer drives do not have normally. That should mean these drives basicly will function as intended and when using consumer drives this feature does not work.
@@baronvonlimbourgh1716 except these drives are not intended to ever be used outside of their cases which when used in that manner work perfectly fine. Also SATA 3.3 has specified that pin 3 is used for this. So consumer power supplies with the proper power plugs will work fine as intended in consumer installation.
Jason, have you tried using Rain-X on your dome cameras? As a CCTV and general low voltage installer, I can say it works wonders on keeping water spots away!
I recently bought 16 TB OEM Seagates and while the side holes are there I had to cut an alignment peg on my drive holders because of a missing hole at the bottom. So probably just evolution more than wanting to mess with shucking. Anyway WD knows how to do the latter with usb-only PCBs on 2.5 inch drives so if they wanted they'd do it there too...
The changes to the hole locations isn't specific to the USB drives. They did it so they could cram more platters inside the drive. The middle holes interfered with that.
Even if, the closest distance platter-case is USALLY in the upper half. There is no valid reason tho put the platters closer to the middle at all since you need plenty of space for the arm mechanics. Would just be wasted room.
I'll be getting a new WD 10TB Gold drive in a few days so I'll look at where the holes are when it shows up. I'm putting Enterprise drives in my main UnRAID server and using the Easystore/Elements drives in my backup ReadyNAS. The preclear on a WD 10TB Gold drive that I just finished took 14 hours and 20 minutes so not too bad.
I got the new drive and it's actually a WD Ultrastar 10TB DC HC510 drive with an HGST part # of HUH721010ALE604. It has 3 holes on the sides and 2 holes on the bottom just like all of my other drives besides these new 12TB drives in this video. It was $290. documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library/en_us/assets/public/western-digital/product/data-center-drives/ultrastar-dc-hc500-series/data-sheet-ultrastar-dc-hc510.pdf
I'm nervous doing this. What has your failure rate been like with these shucked drives 8-12tb? Do you keep a few spares on hand and replace a failed drive every few months? Thanks!
Purchased 2 12tb from Best Buy, (WD120EMAZ-11BLFA0 white label, made in Thailand, 7200 rpm) both had all three mounting holes and both required to either tape the 3rd rail or use a molex adapter (home built htpc).
I just bought 2 of these last week from Best buy. I did not have to do anything with the pin to get both drives working. Unraid recognized them immediately.
Chase Coomer it is a function of your hardware, not the OS. My ThinkServer accepts without modification to pin 3, my old Dell Optiplex requires the modification.
Hey there. I'm looking to buy a 10 - 20TB with an off/on power switch. I bought a 10TB WD one an the so-called power on/off switch simply didn't work. It was damaged, but looked flimsy anyway. I am 65 years' old and far from technically savvy. I would simply like to plug the thing in, and after logging out of it, switch the power off, until I need it again. Please help.
I noticed there are 3 models (Element, My Book and Easy Store). I read the brochure and the differences only seem to be software related and some included items such as cables and of course pricing. Are the physical drives the same? Which is the better drive to purchase?
About the missing center mounting holes -- my 8TB and 10TB HGST Deskstar NAS drives I bought a couple years ago or so are also missing those center holes. (They just have the ones on the end.) In my case (pun maybe intended, or not?) I ended up getting a Fractal Design Define R5 which was compatible with the wide-spaced mounting holes, replacing a Rosewill Thor V2 which only had the smaller-spaced holes like my smaller drives. My 4TB and 5TB HGST NAS drives have all 3 positions, and my older WD (2TB and less) only have the ones near the connectors and the ones in the middle. I could be wrong on this, but I think pretty much all 8TB and larger drives don't have the center mounting holes.
I just bought one of the 12tb drives today. It was a WD120EMAZ. It is a white label 12tb red spec drive with normal mounting holes. I did not need to do the 3.3v mod on it either.
Many older power supplies and systems don't have the 3.3 volt (orange) wire in the drive connector. These drives work fine without the tape on the third pin in this case, since there is no wire connected to the third pin anyway.
Should have mentioned this earlier but if you're using a case with a desktop power supply; a more reliable/easy way of getting around the disabling the 3rd pin is powering the drives with your power supply's molex power using molex to sata adapters 👍🏼👌🏼
look at HGST datasheet, HC510 has both 8TB and 10TB model. 8TB has model number 721008ALE60y, which indicate original capacity 10, usable 08. Thus 8TB is binned and locked 10TB. I would imagine that at some point WD will do the same on 12TB (locked from 14TB). So far HC520 only has 721212 model. HC530 only has 721414 model.
Sometimes they are selling for crazy $169.99 12tb. Few days ago 14tb for $199.99. I missed the 14tb sale but I need to set up a whole new linux gaming with 1tb ssd and 1 large drive so I am getting 8tb instead. Stable price at $139.99. All at Bestbuy which is still cheaper than Amazon. First computer hdd I had was 90MB which was plenty at that time for 386 system. Now 60 TB doesnt seem to be enough for raw photography, development software and space, 4k and 360 camera video captures,storage to run servers, vms, databases, linux distros, steam games, .. They keep growing. Backups of backups especially my raw photos eat up the storage real fast. Good video
Question: I would like to add a 10TB HDD to my personal jack-of-trades windows system. I would like to shuck and "preclear" an external drive. I don't have an unRAID server or a spare x86 system with USB 3 to boot unRAID and preclear. Is there an alternative you would suggest that would serve for "preclearing"? Am I misunderstanding the purpose of preclearing, like it is only for unRAIDing? (I may be able to scrap together an old phenom II system workbench-style but if I don't have to that would be nice.)
In terms of vibration, how have they held up? The other disks from Western Digital and Seagate say they can be in the same box as 8 and 24 disks for example.
Hey Jason, just bought 2 12tb easystores and shucked them. Mine were white label, 3 hole on each side for mounting, and worked just fine on sata power with non 3.3v fix. Just wanted to let you know.
Seagate IronWolf drives are the same. I'm told that 5TB and larger have an additional platter added to the drive shell, which necessitated the mounting holes to be relocated. I have no first-hand knowledge of the 5TB or 6TB drives, but all of my 8TB IronWolf drives were that way.
Is there any market in selling these drives after you shuck them then modify them? I was looking at the Seagate 5TB Expansion Portable External Hard Drive USB 3.0 Model STEA5000402 Black as they are on sale for $100 and noticed that you are only allowed to buy 20 of them. Is it possible that they are putting a limit on how many you can buy as one could buy tons of them, shuck them, modify the pin and then flip them on a market place? Just curious, as most people probably wouldn't want to risk ruining the drive.
As long as the thickness isn't different, a trayless drive cage won't matter where the screw holes are. Thanks for confirming the capacity and the mod needed, maybe. makes me look at sales a bit different now.
Just wanted to say I just got a new 8tb Wd my book and after I shucked it I found out it’s an ultrastar drive not a wd red. It’s been a great drive just thought I’d throw it out there.
I've bought a few seagate 14tb exos drives (also amazon deals, cheaper than the 12tb versions and also less costly than the larger 16+TB drives, at least at time of purchase) and had to modify my chenbro nr12000 case to accept them, originally it utilized the middle and rear mounting holes, I had to drill and shape out the holes for the tops.
Hey man probably stupid question but ....how full is okay? to run hard drives meaning if I have a 10tb harddrive running on plex is it ok to fill it all the way or better to leave a little space on drives ?
I got a couple of seagate 12tb drives retail oem and they also were missing the middle holes so I only have half the screws in my removable hot swap trays installed.
I had to do the 3rd pin patch with a standard power supply power connector, but when I use the backplane in my Dell r710, I don't have to do anything to the drive.
I got four of these in the last week or two and all of them worked in my drobo with no mods I don't know if that was an issue ever with the drobo enclosures.
Just purchased four, 12 TB WD RED drives direct from WD to upgrade my WD PR4100 a month or so ago. They were the standard mounting style like the 4 TB you had in the video. I'm happy with em. I thought the drive shucking was a cool hack and I was interesting in seeing the results of the newer tech. Hey, they're still usable high capacity drives... why not. I'm not afraid to do it in the future if I had to.
Great videos! Question ... I just bought a Synology DS1621+ NAS and (6) 14TB Easystores. This is my first time shucking. I know you’ve done Synology videos to, so if I shuck these for my Synology, will I have 3rd pin issues?
Hey there, seems the Model you got twice, 120EMFZ, needs the 3.3v mod. Me and some other viewers apparently got lucky with an 120EMAZ model. No 3.3v pin mod neccessary on these.
I bought my 10tb OEM drives last year, and they did not have the middle holes as well.. That would really affect mounting on some Synology NAS as they only use two screws(top and middle) to mount the drives
mean while wal-wart only stocks up to 4TB external drives and no internal drives. I have not been to any other physical retail stores for around 2 or 3 years. I guess the 128GB flash drives not selling well put a damper on them wanting to get anything bigger though the external hard drives did seem to sell well. The thing is wal-mart is like the last place to get anything of any storage size..
I believe that is a 3.3 volt pin "orange wire coming from your power supply.." some back planes and sata power adapters don't have that wire or they dont bring that pin out to the connector because for most hard drives its not needed. which is why some people can use them unmodified and some cant.
I get that they're a little cheaper, but I have a really hard time getting behind the practice of shucking for file servers. Sure, if you just want a cheap drive in your desktop, have fun, but I'm not going to shuck a dozen or more of these to stick in a NAS. Not only do I value my time more than that, but I also value the warranty for when - not if - they go bad.
So long as you shuck them properly (which is surprisingly easy), then you can put them back together with no signs of shucking at all... maintaining the warranty. In the US, at least, they cannot void the warranty for that.
The shucking takes like 2-3 minutes...maybe faster after a couple. So you're talking like 30min to save hundreds of dollars...I'd consider that time well spent since you probably waste more than that in the bathroom everyday.
So I just decided to shuck both of the Elements drives (4TB, 12TB) that I had collecting dust to transfer them into my PC instead of my 2x2TB drives that I currently have. Surprisingly, my 4TB drive wasn't a white label drive but instead a Blue label drive, with a manufacture date of April 26th 2018 (guess this was before the white label switch?). Additionally, the 12TB drive is different than yours as mine does have the middle holes on the side (manufacture date of Dec 24th 2019). Same model name, WD120EMAZ. That's a curious difference.
This is a great Drive, 220Mb/Sec. Read and 218 write speed 👍 But the missing middle whole and the 3,3V Fix needing is a little bit annoying, i have to mounting this drive in the computer with only one screw
The problem with taking drives out of a small nas is that they wont be rated for these types of configurations, they are usually rated for around 6-10 drives next to each other making it more likely to fail
I also noticed they were a bit slower when running the parity process compared to the 10tb models. Averaging about 90-100mbs compared to 130 mbs or so for the 10’s
Mr. Jason , can you make a video about IpTV connection with Plex , for seeing live tv channels on plex cause i did not see any on your youtube channel , and i would much love that (what pluggins, configurations you would use and what not)
Retail sales. He posts them on his Twitter when the 8TB, 10TB and 12TB WD drives go on sale. Usually via Amazon, B&H Photo, NewEgg or BestBuy. They are usually single day sales and are random.
Can any1 explain the way/want of a personal server pls. I like learning but reading info wont stay in my brain, sucks to read a page an by the end if forgotten all i read. But hands on an personal info stays for ever so any links would be very helpful.
I am also building a new server and wanted to use 2nd gen tread-ripper until I came across this SuperMicro MBD-H11SSL-NC-O ATX Server Motherboard EPYC 7000-series Trying to find a reason not to go this path beside style matching it to my gaming rig. Greater than 128 ram support (yes treadripper can go up to 1TB but no chipset I know for treadripper can) Built in SAS3 controller so no extra HBA needed for my backplane. Money saved on HBA can go to faster CPU High amp fan pins Looks like SP3 socket isn't going anywhere so long upgrade life.
EPYC is the proper server platform and superior to Threadripper in a server environment. The mainboards are better suited (all should have IPMI management ports, for example), more RAM, more PCIe lanes, more geared towards server loads.
All you have to do is remove the controller board. This board is an adapter for the enclosure. Once you connect drive w/o the board your bios will detect it. Works on all external drive shucking.
@@Bytemybits For UNRAID usage not that much, because it's not RAID and read / write performance is rather limited without the cache anyway. But it's still not ideal, because write performance of SMR drives can be substantially lower.
@@nerdstrangler4804 From seasonic's website: "Each PRIME Ultra Series power supply will also ship with a SATA 3.3 adapter to support the “Power Disable” (PWDIS) feature of the newer, high-capacity hard drives." Dunno why they hadn't implemented sata 3.3 directly in the psu. Sata revision 3.3 was released in 2016: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#SATA_revision_3.3
It appears in your video that the SATA connector you used has an Orange (3 volt) wire where my SATA connector only uses the 12 volt and 5 volt wires (yellow and red). I don't have to cover the #3 pin probably because there's no 3 volt supply and I assume the same holds true for others too. There are many cabling solutions on Amazon to address this issue without using tape or other more radical mods. I wonder if your storage SATA connectors are supplied 3 volts so you don't have to worry either?
@@leexgx That's more radical than needed. I find that many SATA adapter cables don't offer 3v access. I built a chassis to hold 8 drives without 3v connection. I could easily do the same for another chassis for 15 drives. I suspect his chassis doesn't either.
@@leexgx Perhaps, but easier and less permanent solutions are available. I'm doing it now, and if I need to sell my PC or otherwise return it to normal, I just pull out a cable.
Bought two 12TB WD Easystore drives for $180 each from BestBuy, last night. (You have to signup for an account on the BestBuy website to get the $180 price.) Shucked the drives - got two WD120EMAZ white label drives. Popped the first in an HP Z820, and the drive was recognized immediately. (No need to tape a pin or special power cable.) Benchmarks nicely: Average rate read: 181 MB/s write: 151 MB/s Which makes these the fastest spinning drives I own. Tempted to buy two more (fill the other bays in the Z820), though not sure that I need 48TB (or 24TB) of spinning storage.
If you have a more recent PSU that was built after the update to the SATA spec that added in Power DIsable it will most likely work just fine without covering the 3.3v pin. And some older ones.
The 3.3v tends to be used to out the drive into an idle state. Server backplanes on the other hand do not do this. Servers are not really designed to be low power anything at all. My Norco 4224 recognizes everything I put into it even the SAS3 (10Gb/s speeds) run at full speed now that I have swapped out all the backplanes and controllers
I wonder how many headaches that 3rd pin has caused people. Some people never have the problem and some do. I hear that some power cables have that pin disabled (probably just not there in those ones).
A lot of modern PSU's don't send power down that pin at all because it basically isn't used at all in consumer level equipment. It is mostly older PSU's that do.
The hole-spacing is also an “issue” on newer 10tb drives. I bought my first 10 tb Elements-drive a month ago. (Drive was made 23. Sep 2019) think it was called 100EMAZ
Yup it’s 100EMAZ, but I didn’t have issues putting them in the my regular pc case drive sleds.
@@andrewskaterrr Same here, wonder what this guy smoked. Fits just fine. 3.3v mod was neccessary though.
Honestly, Linus would've dropped a few of them by now
FYI, 12TB drives work fine with Synology NAS (1815+)
'Mount'em with duct tape, who needs screws' -Red Green
If it move and it is not meant to, Duck tape. If it doesn't move, and it is meant to, WD 40.
"If she don't find ya handsome, she should at least find ya handy."
thank you sir
Having just scraped duct tape off of a window that was on there holding something yeah
Love it :) -RedGreen
I've found that any drive that I place into a server back plane does not need the modification but if you connect it with standard sata power and data, you require the third pin to be covered.
The bottom holes were moved when WD went to 8TB drives. This was due to a manufacturing complexity that didn't allow them to keep the original layout that so many other drives/cases use.
The holes being different is so they can fit more platters in the drive without using up space inside the drive for the hole.
Seagate drives gave had the new holes for 8TB drives and bigger for a long time now.
100% correct. In order to add more platters you can't have the screw go in that area or it would hit one of the platters. So anything above 8tb will have that screw layout. Anything above 6 platters I believe.
Oh, he's schucking again...
Thank you for mentioning the mounting hole differences in my server there is a need for the non-standard middle hole for the drive to remain fixed.
Plot twist, I got one anyway
Dude please get a plastic spudger set.... One slip and you'll have 3 inches of knife in your gut or leg....
Its like 10 bucks on amazon and works way better than a knife....
what is better easystore or elements? in external hdd 10tb or superior
Makes sense I guess as most of the external drives I have opened up only use those 2 end screw holes for the rubber shock absorbers. I guess all those pennies that save from not drilling out those 2 holes, adds up. The base holes do line up with the ones on the bottom of my Icy Box enclosures/caddies, so maybe they are designed all round for external enclosures which kind of makes sense as its likely a more stable mounting to put the screws at the end rather than 2 at the end and 2 in the middle.
It has to do with the number of platters in the drive as you add more, you can't have a screw in that spot or it would come into contact with a platter.
I just ordered some 2.5” drives to use with my Shield. When checking out reviews, I found out that you can’t just shuck the smaller WD portable drives either. They’re using a separate circuit board for some components so the drive won’t work if you take it out of its case. So, if anyone is looking to replace a laptop drive, get a different brand or just buy a bare drive Looks like WD is going to make life difficult for us from now on.
Kattz what disks do you use to attach in the usb of the nvidia? Do you know which usb hub is good for the shield?
A question. WD 10TB Elements Desktop External I saw that this same model has blue packaging instead of yellow. Is there any difference? Thanks
and which is newer ?
Good day Jason, on Black Friday I ended up getting 5 WD 12TB Drives on sale @ 179.00 ea. That's 100.00 off of regular price. I am using these in a FreeNAS Mini XL+. First NAS and so far am loving having almost 32TB of storage. Would not have done this, had I not have viewed you video. I didn't even have to tape the 3rd pin ether. Thanks for all you sharing with us.
That's funny. I bought a 10TB last week that also had that plastic piece rattling inside of it. I think it was the mount to one of the rubber feet.
I shucked a WD_ Black 8TB game drive that had those plastic mount pieces.
Try powering it through your cage's backplane. My guess is you won't need to do the 3rd pin modification if you use the backplane. Worth a shot.
you can be right, backplanes often use molex 4 pin to power them, just 5 and 12 volt or there is some kind of conversion on the backplane itself... will be nice to find out.
It's not necessarily that they use a 4-pin molex the third pen on server enclosures and back planes are for keeping the drive spun down and for staggered spin up. So not all the drives spin up at the same time. The backplane will release one drive at a time so they stagger their startup. With that being said it's very likely that a backplane will work correctly with these type of drives.
It depends on your psu. Some do give 3 volt on that pin and some don't. So i would asume that normal consumer drives do not have this pin connected to anything internally.
But normally if the backplanes use molex connectors you should be fine. If they use sata power connectors the plane will just pass trough the 3volts.
@@napsterbater the way you explain it this is a server grade feature on the drives that consumer drives do not have normally.
That should mean these drives basicly will function as intended and when using consumer drives this feature does not work.
@@baronvonlimbourgh1716 except these drives are not intended to ever be used outside of their cases which when used in that manner work perfectly fine. Also SATA 3.3 has specified that pin 3 is used for this. So consumer power supplies with the proper power plugs will work fine as intended in consumer installation.
Hey dude, can you link that video about the third pin mod, please?
yeah now i have to google it still
th-cam.com/video/1YqMn1pCRd8/w-d-xo.html
Jason, have you tried using Rain-X on your dome cameras? As a CCTV and general low voltage installer, I can say it works wonders on keeping water spots away!
I just watched a recommended video on IMAX film projector set up and they use Rain-X to clean the lens on one part of it.
I recently bought 16 TB OEM Seagates and while the side holes are there I had to cut an alignment peg on my drive holders because of a missing hole at the bottom. So probably just evolution more than wanting to mess with shucking. Anyway WD knows how to do the latter with usb-only PCBs on 2.5 inch drives so if they wanted they'd do it there too...
The changes to the hole locations isn't specific to the USB drives. They did it so they could cram more platters inside the drive. The middle holes interfered with that.
More platters doent mean bigger diameter
Even if, the closest distance platter-case is USALLY in the upper half. There is no valid reason tho put the platters closer to the middle at all since you need plenty of space for the arm mechanics. Would just be wasted room.
It depends on the psu. Some do give the 3 volt on the pin, some don't.
A question. WD 10TB Elements Desktop External I saw that this same model has blue packaging instead of yellow. Is there any difference? Thanks
I'll be getting a new WD 10TB Gold drive in a few days so I'll look at where the holes are when it shows up.
I'm putting Enterprise drives in my main UnRAID server and using the Easystore/Elements drives in my backup ReadyNAS.
The preclear on a WD 10TB Gold drive that I just finished took 14 hours and 20 minutes so not too bad.
I got the new drive and it's actually a WD Ultrastar 10TB DC HC510 drive with an HGST part # of HUH721010ALE604. It has 3 holes on the sides and 2 holes on the bottom just like all of my other drives besides these new 12TB drives in this video. It was $290.
documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library/en_us/assets/public/western-digital/product/data-center-drives/ultrastar-dc-hc500-series/data-sheet-ultrastar-dc-hc510.pdf
I'm nervous doing this. What has your failure rate been like with these shucked drives 8-12tb? Do you keep a few spares on hand and replace a failed drive every few months? Thanks!
hi, tell me what is this chest and where can i buy it, thanks
Purchased 2 12tb from Best Buy, (WD120EMAZ-11BLFA0 white label, made in Thailand, 7200 rpm) both had all three mounting holes and both required to either tape the 3rd rail or use a molex adapter (home built htpc).
I just bought 2 of these last week from Best buy. I did not have to do anything with the pin to get both drives working. Unraid recognized them immediately.
Chase Coomer it is a function of your hardware, not the OS. My ThinkServer accepts without modification to pin 3, my old Dell Optiplex requires the modification.
Different hole layout is on all drives that are over 8TB (or 6TB in some cases) it doesn't mater if its OEM, USB enclosure or other source.
I disagree. I bought one of these 12tb drives today and it had all three traditional mounting holes.
Hey there. I'm looking to buy a 10 - 20TB with an off/on power switch. I bought a 10TB WD one an the so-called power on/off switch simply didn't work. It was damaged, but looked flimsy anyway. I am 65 years' old and far from technically savvy. I would simply like to plug the thing in, and after logging out of it, switch the power off, until I need it again. Please help.
Interestingly I just bought and shucked 2 of these 12TB Easystores and my Synology NAS (DS1819+) recognized them without any modification
Daniel von Seckendorff
So does my older Drobo S despite the fact it isn’t even supposed to support drives over like 6tb.
I got two last week, one required the pin mod the other didn't.
Same here. I bought two 10TB easystores at same time but only one required the mod.
Just put 3 x 12TB into my 1019+ without modification.
I noticed there are 3 models (Element, My Book and Easy Store). I read the brochure and the differences only seem to be software related and some included items such as cables and of course pricing. Are the physical drives the same? Which is the better drive to purchase?
About the missing center mounting holes -- my 8TB and 10TB HGST Deskstar NAS drives I bought a couple years ago or so are also missing those center holes. (They just have the ones on the end.) In my case (pun maybe intended, or not?) I ended up getting a Fractal Design Define R5 which was compatible with the wide-spaced mounting holes, replacing a Rosewill Thor V2 which only had the smaller-spaced holes like my smaller drives.
My 4TB and 5TB HGST NAS drives have all 3 positions, and my older WD (2TB and less) only have the ones near the connectors and the ones in the middle. I could be wrong on this, but I think pretty much all 8TB and larger drives don't have the center mounting holes.
I just bought one of the 12tb drives today. It was a WD120EMAZ. It is a white label 12tb red spec drive with normal mounting holes. I did not need to do the 3.3v mod on it either.
what case you use?
That thing is what's put around shock absorbers in WD D10 drives (shuckable to get HGST Ultrastar). Not sure if it's used in any other drive models.
Why would you name a server Loki? Sounds like a recipe for being unreliable!
Loki is a mess... ;)
this aged well.. Loki giving Jason fits now
Many older power supplies and systems don't have the 3.3 volt (orange) wire in the drive connector. These drives work fine without the tape on the third pin in this case, since there is no wire connected to the third pin anyway.
What do u do with the outer cover?
Should have mentioned this earlier but if you're using a case with a desktop power supply; a more reliable/easy way of getting around the disabling the 3rd pin is powering the drives with your power supply's molex power using molex to sata adapters 👍🏼👌🏼
Are these 14TB drives with bad sectors sold as 12TB drives? Hard drive binning?
That I don’t know for sure
look at HGST datasheet, HC510 has both 8TB and 10TB model. 8TB has model number 721008ALE60y, which indicate original capacity 10, usable 08. Thus 8TB is binned and locked 10TB. I would imagine that at some point WD will do the same on 12TB (locked from 14TB). So far HC520 only has 721212 model. HC530 only has 721414 model.
What server case is this? looks good.
Sometimes they are selling for crazy $169.99 12tb. Few days ago 14tb for $199.99. I missed the 14tb sale but I need to set up a whole new linux gaming with 1tb ssd and 1 large drive so I am getting 8tb instead. Stable price at $139.99. All at Bestbuy which is still cheaper than Amazon. First computer hdd I had was 90MB which was plenty at that time for 386 system. Now 60 TB doesnt seem to be enough for raw photography, development software and space, 4k and 360 camera video captures,storage to run servers, vms, databases, linux distros, steam games, .. They keep growing. Backups of backups especially my raw photos eat up the storage real fast. Good video
Question: I would like to add a 10TB HDD to my personal jack-of-trades windows system. I would like to shuck and "preclear" an external drive. I don't have an unRAID server or a spare x86 system with USB 3 to boot unRAID and preclear. Is there an alternative you would suggest that would serve for "preclearing"? Am I misunderstanding the purpose of preclearing, like it is only for unRAIDing? (I may be able to scrap together an old phenom II system workbench-style but if I don't have to that would be nice.)
In terms of vibration, how have they held up? The other disks from Western Digital and Seagate say they can be in the same box as 8 and 24 disks for example.
What RPM are the disk ?
Hey Jason, just bought 2 12tb easystores and shucked them. Mine were white label, 3 hole on each side for mounting, and worked just fine on sata power with non 3.3v fix. Just wanted to let you know.
Are the 14tb shucked drive mounting holes any different?
I just watched another vid on the same drives but 8GB and they both just plugged in and worked. One was a white label and the other a red label.
Seagate IronWolf drives are the same. I'm told that 5TB and larger have an additional platter added to the drive shell, which necessitated the mounting holes to be relocated. I have no first-hand knowledge of the 5TB or 6TB drives, but all of my 8TB IronWolf drives were that way.
Is there any market in selling these drives after you shuck them then modify them?
I was looking at the Seagate 5TB Expansion Portable External Hard Drive USB 3.0 Model STEA5000402 Black as they are on sale for $100 and noticed that you are only allowed to buy 20 of them.
Is it possible that they are putting a limit on how many you can buy as one could buy tons of them, shuck them, modify the pin and then flip them on a market place? Just curious, as most people probably wouldn't want to risk ruining the drive.
I think the 12TB drive (and other high capacity HDD) doesn't have a middle screw because all the platters take up too much room for a screw to fit.
As long as the thickness isn't different, a trayless drive cage won't matter where the screw holes are. Thanks for confirming the capacity and the mod needed, maybe. makes me look at sales a bit different now.
The sound pick-up is your video is very pleasing. What type of microphone are you using?
Just wanted to say I just got a new 8tb Wd my book and after I shucked it I found out it’s an ultrastar drive not a wd red. It’s been a great drive just thought I’d throw it out there.
Will these drive work in a Synology NAS enclosure, with out doing the third pin mod?
Yes
I've bought a few seagate 14tb exos drives (also amazon deals, cheaper than the 12tb versions and also less costly than the larger 16+TB drives, at least at time of purchase) and had to modify my chenbro nr12000 case to accept them, originally it utilized the middle and rear mounting holes, I had to drill and shape out the holes for the tops.
Hey man probably stupid question but ....how full is okay? to run hard drives meaning if I have a 10tb harddrive running on plex is it ok to fill it all the way or better to leave a little space on drives ?
I got a couple of seagate 12tb drives retail oem and they also were missing the middle holes so I only have half the screws in my removable hot swap trays installed.
I had to do the 3rd pin patch with a standard power supply power connector, but when I use the backplane in my Dell r710, I don't have to do anything to the drive.
I got four of these in the last week or two and all of them worked in my drobo with no mods I don't know if that was an issue ever with the drobo enclosures.
are the middle mounting holes missing due to the space being needed internally for the extra platters ?
Just purchased four, 12 TB WD RED drives direct from WD to upgrade my WD PR4100 a month or so ago. They were the standard mounting style like the 4 TB you had in the video. I'm happy with em. I thought the drive shucking was a cool hack and I was interesting in seeing the results of the newer tech. Hey, they're still usable high capacity drives... why not. I'm not afraid to do it in the future if I had to.
A question. WD 10TB Elements Desktop External I saw that this same model has blue packaging instead of yellow. Is there any difference? Thanks
Great videos! Question ... I just bought a Synology DS1621+ NAS and (6) 14TB Easystores. This is my first time shucking. I know you’ve done Synology videos to, so if I shuck these for my Synology, will I have 3rd pin issues?
Hey there, seems the Model you got twice, 120EMFZ, needs the 3.3v mod. Me and some other viewers apparently got lucky with an 120EMAZ model. No 3.3v pin mod neccessary on these.
I bought my 10tb OEM drives last year, and they did not have the middle holes as well.. That would really affect mounting on some Synology NAS as they only use two screws(top and middle) to mount the drives
mean while wal-wart only stocks up to 4TB external drives and no internal drives. I have not been to any other physical retail stores for around 2 or 3 years. I guess the 128GB flash drives not selling well put a damper on them wanting to get anything bigger though the external hard drives did seem to sell well. The thing is wal-mart is like the last place to get anything of any storage size..
I believe that is a 3.3 volt pin "orange wire coming from your power supply.." some back planes and sata power adapters don't have that wire or they dont bring that pin out to the connector because for most hard drives its not needed. which is why some people can use them unmodified and some cant.
I get that they're a little cheaper, but I have a really hard time getting behind the practice of shucking for file servers. Sure, if you just want a cheap drive in your desktop, have fun, but I'm not going to shuck a dozen or more of these to stick in a NAS. Not only do I value my time more than that, but I also value the warranty for when - not if - they go bad.
So long as you shuck them properly (which is surprisingly easy), then you can put them back together with no signs of shucking at all... maintaining the warranty. In the US, at least, they cannot void the warranty for that.
The shucking takes like 2-3 minutes...maybe faster after a couple. So you're talking like 30min to save hundreds of dollars...I'd consider that time well spent since you probably waste more than that in the bathroom everyday.
What kind of computer case are you using?
I think it's going to take a lot of hard disks.
So I just decided to shuck both of the Elements drives (4TB, 12TB) that I had collecting dust to transfer them into my PC instead of my 2x2TB drives that I currently have. Surprisingly, my 4TB drive wasn't a white label drive but instead a Blue label drive, with a manufacture date of April 26th 2018 (guess this was before the white label switch?). Additionally, the 12TB drive is different than yours as mine does have the middle holes on the side (manufacture date of Dec 24th 2019). Same model name, WD120EMAZ. That's a curious difference.
Would a regular insulating tape work for 3rd pin mod?
He made another video using "electrical tape" - so I guess so.
Where did you get these for $180? Amazon price is $220 now...
Thanks a lot for this video, I didn't even know these were out!
This is a great Drive, 220Mb/Sec. Read and 218 write speed 👍 But the missing middle whole and the 3,3V Fix needing is a little bit annoying, i have to mounting this drive in the computer with only one screw
The problem with taking drives out of a small nas is that they wont be rated for these types of configurations, they are usually rated for around 6-10 drives next to each other making it more likely to fail
the easiest way to do disable the third power pin is to use a molex to sata adapter - or use a sas backplane that takes molex for power.
I also noticed they were a bit slower when running the parity process compared to the 10tb models. Averaging about 90-100mbs compared to 130 mbs or so for the 10’s
tip: if u put tape on the 2 and 3 ping from the left its working (i didn't figure this i saw on the internet and it worked)
Mr. Jason , can you make a video about IpTV connection with Plex , for seeing live tv channels on plex cause i did not see any on your youtube channel , and i would much love that (what pluggins, configurations you would use and what not)
The ten tb one I shucked had the same mounting holes as this 12tb one.
Hey man, how are you getting the price you quoted? Or is that door buster Black Friday price?
Retail sales. He posts them on his Twitter when the 8TB, 10TB and 12TB WD drives go on sale. Usually via Amazon, B&H Photo, NewEgg or BestBuy. They are usually single day sales and are random.
@@LiquidCipher Super helpful. Thanks.
Yeah follow me on twitter @_ByteMyBits
I try to post anything i find/sent to me
But how are they for vibration resistance? I imagine if I get 5 or 6 of these going in my storage server they'll be prone to early error/death.
They are a Red (NAS Grade) drive
Can any1 explain the way/want of a personal server pls. I like learning but reading info wont stay in my brain, sucks to read a page an by the end if forgotten all i read. But hands on an personal info stays for ever so any links would be very helpful.
I am also building a new server and wanted to use 2nd gen tread-ripper until I came across this
SuperMicro MBD-H11SSL-NC-O ATX Server Motherboard EPYC 7000-series
Trying to find a reason not to go this path beside style matching it to my gaming rig.
Greater than 128 ram support (yes treadripper can go up to 1TB but no chipset I know for treadripper can)
Built in SAS3 controller so no extra HBA needed for my backplane.
Money saved on HBA can go to faster CPU
High amp fan pins
Looks like SP3 socket isn't going anywhere so long upgrade life.
EPYC is the proper server platform and superior to Threadripper in a server environment. The mainboards are better suited (all should have IPMI management ports, for example), more RAM, more PCIe lanes, more geared towards server loads.
All you have to do is remove the controller board. This board is an adapter for the enclosure. Once you connect drive w/o the board your bios will detect it. Works on all external drive shucking.
Break out the drill press and make your own holes. Tap them out with bottoming 6-32 tap and your done.
What about warranty ?
I was also reading that the 12TB easystore drives might be SMR. That's a turn off for me not that it would effect me much in my nas.
I need to find out for sure if smr is bad for me
@@Bytemybits For UNRAID usage not that much, because it's not RAID and read / write performance is rather limited without the cache anyway. But it's still not ideal, because write performance of SMR drives can be substantially lower.
ESD wrist strap?
maybe they needed the space internally so the screw had to go....
This, many more platters.
I just shucked my 12tb and it has the middle mounting hole
Yeah same here. My Model number is also different from the one in the video. (Model # WD120EMAZ)
I also bought an EMAZ and have all three mounting holes. I did not need to do the 3.3v mod either.
The 3.3 pin mod depends also on the PSU, if is not old (1-2 years) the mod is not needed.
Dunno how accurate that is.
Just did a new build this month with Seasonic's 750w titanium PSU, would not spin up the drives without the mod.
@@nerdstrangler4804 From seasonic's website: "Each PRIME Ultra Series power supply will also ship with a SATA 3.3 adapter to support the “Power Disable” (PWDIS) feature of the newer, high-capacity hard drives."
Dunno why they hadn't implemented sata 3.3 directly in the psu.
Sata revision 3.3 was released in 2016: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#SATA_revision_3.3
What's the rpm? Is it meant to be used as a regular drive? What's the catch?
5400 rpm; it's a storage drive.
My new 10TB drives have the screws in the same location as your 12TB. Man this sux, I had to do a custom job just to mount them into my case.
It appears in your video that the SATA connector you used has an Orange (3 volt) wire where my SATA connector only uses the 12 volt and 5 volt wires (yellow and red). I don't have to cover the #3 pin probably because there's no 3 volt supply and I assume the same holds true for others too. There are many cabling solutions on Amazon to address this issue without using tape or other more radical mods. I wonder if your storage SATA connectors are supplied 3 volts so you don't have to worry either?
Just cut the 3v line on the moduler cable if the psu has the 3v cable on the sata leads (I guess Normally orange cable)
@@leexgx That's more radical than needed. I find that many SATA adapter cables don't offer 3v access. I built a chassis to hold 8 drives without 3v connection. I could easily do the same for another chassis for 15 drives. I suspect his chassis doesn't either.
@@84Actionjack there are like no normal drive that uses the 3v so not really that important to have
@@leexgx Perhaps, but easier and less permanent solutions are available. I'm doing it now, and if I need to sell my PC or otherwise return it to normal, I just pull out a cable.
Bought two 12TB WD Easystore drives for $180 each from BestBuy, last night. (You have to signup for an account on the BestBuy website to get the $180 price.) Shucked the drives - got two WD120EMAZ white label drives. Popped the first in an HP Z820, and the drive was recognized immediately. (No need to tape a pin or special power cable.)
Benchmarks nicely:
Average rate read: 181 MB/s write: 151 MB/s
Which makes these the fastest spinning drives I own. Tempted to buy two more (fill the other bays in the Z820), though not sure that I need 48TB (or 24TB) of spinning storage.
If you have a more recent PSU that was built after the update to the SATA spec that added in Power DIsable it will most likely work just fine without covering the 3.3v pin. And some older ones.
the 4TB drive you are comparing to is air filled, the shucked 12TB is helium sealed
The 3.3v tends to be used to out the drive into an idle state. Server backplanes on the other hand do not do this. Servers are not really designed to be low power anything at all. My Norco 4224 recognizes everything I put into it even the SAS3 (10Gb/s speeds) run at full speed now that I have swapped out all the backplanes and controllers
I wonder how many headaches that 3rd pin has caused people. Some people never have the problem and some do. I hear that some power cables have that pin disabled (probably just not there in those ones).
A lot of modern PSU's don't send power down that pin at all because it basically isn't used at all in consumer level equipment. It is mostly older PSU's that do.