Difference between WD40EFRX-68N32N0 and WD40EFRX-68WTONO

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
1

Hi everybody

Does somebody knows the difference between those reference :

WD40EFRX-68N32N0
WD40EFRX-68WTONO

I have 4 WD 4To red disk in a Synology DS916+ since one year

It 's already my third RMA !

The new disk that was provided is now WD40EFRX-68N32N0

I just want to know if those numbers can tell someting like the date of production

Thank’s for help

2

Hi technosaure,

Both Model Number indicates same WD Red drives. The only difference are the numbers after “-” (dash) which depicts the country of manufacturing and concerned warehouse details from where it was dispatched. These details can be accessed by WD Warehouse only during drive validation.

3

This thread has aged a bit, but for the benefit of people coming here from a search engine, here’s the difference between the two models:

  • The 68WT0N0 has 4 x 1TB platters and 8 heads. It is a heavy drive at about 700g. I’ve also personally had RMAs involving this model, but of course WD would never admit to a systemic issue.
  • The 68N32N0 is a newer model with 3 x 1.33TB platters and only 6 heads. It is lighter, at around 638g in the anti-static bag, and marginally faster than the older model. The top cover is quite different as well.

On average less platters/heads means better reliability (less things that can fail), so the 68N32N0 should be a better drive overall.

2 Likes
4

What jsilva said, and I would add …

I use 2x WD40EFRX-68WT0N0 and 2x WD40EFRX-68N32N0

Under light load the two WD40EFRX-68WT0N0 run at 43° C and the two newer run at 40° C.
Also it is noticeable that the older model is noisier and vibrates more than the newer model.
Both models are relatively silent compared to WD Blue or others, but you can tell the difference between the two reds above.

A single one shown 3-5 unreadable bad sectors while still working fine and without funny noises.
It was the newer model but also the one used the most at that time.

5

now thats making sense

6

I can confirm!

Originally I had 4 x WD40EFRX-68WT0N0 however two of them where showing bad sectors right after 2 weeks of usage. From this reason I bought two replacement WD RED drives from different supplier. The two new drivers were 68N32N0. All 4 drives are part of a single Synology NAS device RAID and showing a rather significant temperature difference.

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The 68WT0N0 appears to have approximately 5C higher temperature in comparison to 68N32N0 drives. From this experience, my bet would be that 68WT0N0 drives would have a shorter lifespan than 68N32N0. Hence if you have a choice you should opt for the WD40EFRX-68N32N0 drive.

I hope this helps…

7

I have to say that 43º is too high for a 5xxx rpm HDD
either your room temeprature must be over 30º or those HDD require a good cooler.

8

this temperature difference is not normal… but a NAS usually has a small fan so it’s quite possible that they are not getting the same amount of fresh air

I have also tracked my Red drives statistics from the beginning but after 2000 power on hours or so they were no longer showing the same running hours.
I got in touch with WD and they wanted to refund my money for this minor bug… those drives are still working perfect so far

9

Granted! To get the more accurate results I could swap the drivers slots and perform the comparison again. However, given that before I already had 4x 68WT0N0 drivers located on the same exact slots and the HDD temperature was quite high even then, I can conclude that the temperature difference is not caused by different HDD slot, air etc.

In any case the temperature is well within the recommended operating specifications so I do not worry about that.

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The only worrying part was that 2/4 68WT0N0 drives were showing bad sectors right after 2 weeks in production. Yes, it could be coincidence! Or perhaps the higher temperate could be a sign of something more sinister?

10

I opened this topic one year ago

I bougth 4 WD40EFRX-68WTONO disk two years ago

Rigth now I finished my fifth RMA (for the first one they provided me a 68WTONO again)

I have now 4 WD40EFRX-68N32N0 all provided after RMA

Either i was really unlucky neither 68WTONO disk were suffered a conception problem

11

yup you had bad luck my friend… try to not buy them in the same place at the same time to avoid that…

12

60ºC is usually the limit of most electronic components but that doesn’t mean a HDD should go up so high.
at over 40º it’s already very hot, mainly the Shitgate ones… (upper cover)
do you know what happens when metal parts get heated ?

13

I bought 2 WD40EFRX-68WT0N0 3 years ago. 1 failed after 2,5 months. RMAed. Got another WD40EFRX-68WT0N0. The RMAed one lived nearly 2 years and failed again. RMAed again and this time I got WD40EFRX-68N32N0 - purportedly the newer one. This time I bought additional warranty so I should have 5 years of peace if it fails.
This was 1 year ago…too long to have peace and no HDD failure… the second one I bought at the beginning failed 1 month ago - lived 3 years and 1 month (wow! :expressionless: ). Unfortunately it failed 1 month after warranty expiry… :frowning: Lessons learned - bought Seagate IronWolf this time for a change. I work over 20 years with computers and during this time NO drive has failed (had had at least 5,6 PCs/laptops) excluding these aforementioned super-bulletproof-high-performance-mega-NAS-drives. WD RED? Never again.

14

@justlinux Where i can find in synology this table with disks

15

For anyone arriving at this thread, go to WD’s warranty page and enter the serial number.

https://support-en.wd.com/app/warrantystatus

You will see the family name (Giant or Apollo), number of heads (8 or 6), capacity, RPM, SATA link rate.

WD40EFRX-68WT0N0
GIANT
5400 RPM
64M cache
SATA3 6GB/S
4.0 TB
8HD
NAS

WD40EFRX-68N32N0
APOLLO
5400 RPM
64M cache
SATA3 6GB/S
4.0 TB
6HD
NAS

16

On my Synology desktop I open “storage manager”,
then on left column I open “HDD/SSD”,
disks list opens, if I go to top right corner and change view …

I now see a table with disk vendor, model, size, temperature, etc.
Click the dots on top right corner of the list to select data to be shown in table (serial number, bad sector count, etc).

synology_hdd_list
synology_hdd_list1291×628 112 KB

17

Just to throw in my reliability experience with WD40-EFRX drives…

I’ve had 5x WD40EFRX-68WTONO running ZFS in a server since December 2014 and only just got my first failure in Feb 2024 (bad sectors)

I noticed the problem due to poor write performance a day or two after a series (10-12 in 10mins) of short grid power outages. Maybe that’'s related as I have no UPS or surge protection.

The drives were ZFS and properly backed up so no data loss or unplanned downtime occurred.

None of the other drives show any signs of failure yet according to SMART, but after the first failure I swapped them all for brand new more modern drives as they are getting quite old.