Are 8 TB HDDs supportet with EX2100/EX4100?

[megaheld]

Hi,

I wonder if 8 TB-HDDs like this:  Seagate ST8000AS0002 8 TB  are supported with EX2100/EX4100. I couldn’t find any information in the knowledge-base or the product-informations. The HDD above is certified for 24/7 usage and has 5900rpm, so it shouldn’t get too hot.

Or are there software- or hardware-limitations that prevent those large HDDs to work properly?

Thx in advance 

[ArMak]

Hi there,

Well i do not have this information since the biggest drive WD has is a 6 TB drive right now, i wouldn’t tell you to try it out in order to test this, lets see if perhaps another use has tried this type of drive with the unit and can answer this for you. 

[megaheld]

ok, I tried it out and the 8TB HDD works without any problems. I will add a second one later to have RAID 1. But I don’t expect any problems.

[crazy_boy2]

Hey megaheld,

It’s great to know that the first drive worked properly, and thanks for letting us know.

Did you add the second drive? How is the performance? Did you experience any issues or oddities so far?

I have 2 x “WD Red (WD40EFRX) SATA 6Gb/s IntelliPower 4TB” drives in my current configuration and might have to consider 2 x 8TB drives in the future. It’s great to know that those drives did actually work. And now I wonder that since some time passed, if you had any issues with them.

Thank you!

[megaheld]

Hi crazy_boy2,
right now I still have only one HDD installed. There have been no problems so far. I have attached 3 pictures to this post. 8 TB were recognized, temperature is low (limit of this HDD-model is 60°), max. workload per year is 180TB (maybe that can become a problem for excessive use). HDD is designed for 24/7 use with low or medium traffic. I plan to install a second one (and switch from JBOD to RAID1) within the next 2 weeks. That’s the reason why there is still a lot of free space on the HDD because maybe the NAS will install HDDs again and erase everything on them. I don’t know if it will happen but I don’t want to move 8TB in case^^. I wanted to use WD-Red-Drives first but the Seagate has a better cost-per-gb-ratio and I heared of some problems with the red-series.

The pictures show the main panel, the installed HDD and the device infos. Language is German (my native language) but shouldn’t be a big problem for you to understand I will keep you informed once I have installed the second drive. Btw. the price at my preferred online-dealer went down from ~250 to ~220 EUR meanwhile.

[crazy_boy2]

Wow megaheld, that looks great. Couldn’t spot anyting wrong with it. Nearly seems like it was designed to work with them from the beginning .

It’s amazing to see that it can even read the temperature, firmware version etc. from the hard drive.

I wonder if official WD updates were updating the firmware for the drives previously. I assume it won’t be possible on your configuration, since the code package wouldn’t include the firmware for the drives. However, I don’t expect to see many firmware updates for a hard drive anyway. Also it should be possible to apply them (if it really was necessary) outside of the NAS by plugging them into something else.

I also wonder if EX2100 would be able to read, evaluate and act accordingly with regards to the S.M.A.R.T. data. Right now it seems “Gut” .

I am starting to wonder if having WD drives has any benefits at all! Like pro-active failure prediction etc.

The price point for 8 TB hard drives is still too much for me, considering that I should buy at least 2 at the same time, and the technology is relatively new. I, however, will definitely have to consider them in the next years, when my 2 x 4 TB RAID 1 setup would get full, hopefully, at that time, 8 TB drives would be much more common and cheap as well .

And hey, thanks so much for the reply, and the time you spent for the screenshots ! You helped the community make a safe choice!

Cheers!

[megaheld]

It will always say “good” as long as the SMART data and temperatures are ok - my guess.
I have installed the second 8TB-drive meanwhile and changed to RAID1. Everything is still fine. When switching from JBOD to RAID1 you have two options. To build a new RAID or to migrate to RAID1. If you choose to build a new one it will format both drives afterwards (took me about 2 hours with 2x8TB). If you choose to migrate, the data from drive 1 is copied sector by sector to the second drive. I’ve tested that too - took about 12 hours but does not erase the data from drive 1.
Here are two pics of my RAID with 2 8TB-drives:

[crazy_boy2]

Wow, that’s excellent news. Great to know that all is well, and thanks for the update!