Extremely Poor Transfer Speed WD 6TB Red SATA 6Gb/s 64MB 3.5" Hard Drive WD60EFRX

[golasze]

Hi,

I have bought a a hard drive WD 6TB Red WD60EFRX. The transfer data rate is:

• big file 9GB game after 30 seconds the transfer speed drops to 25MB/s
• smaller files like mp3 music - size 4-8MB the bulk transfer speed is reduced to around 10MB/s.

It’s extremely low if I compare to my other hard drives, example

• WD 4TB Red WD40EFRX is around 130MB/s,
• WD 2TB Green WD20EZRX around 95MB/s.

PS. I setup default cluster 4KB, then change for 64KB and 32KB
I have formatted partition as GPT

• 1st one partition 5.46TB with three size of clusters as above
• 2nd create two partitions on 2,73TB each

The transfer speed is always the same and is unacceptable.

[Hamlet]

Hello,

I recommend you run a diagnostic (using WD DLG) on your drive to verify its health.

• Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows

[golasze]

I have done the test as you recommended and is shown below.

[golasze]

Test results for quick test and extended test: pass

[DavidSucesso]

If the speed doesnt change try on another computer please and confirm that the drive itself is bad and not the sata port or cable… i would see the cable

if the problem continues… RMA

[DavidSucesso]

My WD20efrx transfer maximum at 160MB/s and the green wd40ezrx at 155 MB/s

Yes your drive should give a better transfer and its unaceptable like you say

[Ryley]

HI golasze, I’ve also just bougth at 6TB Red (WD60EFRX).

I’ve had the same issues as you regarding transfer speeds. I’ve had a look online I found this: http://www.pcper.com/news/Storage/Western-Digital-launches-6TB-Red-and-4TB-Red-Pro-configuration-issue .

Apparently there is a known “configuration issue” with the first batches of 6TB Red drives. From what I can tell, part of the issue is due to the drives having NCQ (Native Command Queuing) disabled.

WD was quoted in the linked article as working on a firmware update to fix this issue, so I guess now we just have to wait for this. Hopefully it’ll be sooner rather than later.

Ryley

[deemon]

Is there any way to detect if I have the “bad” firmware? my WD60EFRX-68MYMN0 seems to work quite well out of the box, but now a bit concerned. HD Tune 2.55 says I have firmware 82.00A82 and in supported features it does show checkbox with NCQ enabled. Although it reports the drive size wrong (probably due to being 6 years old software).

[Ryley]

That’s interesting deemon, my drive is also running firmware version 82.00A82. As my NAS is running Linux, I can’t use HD Tune, but every indication I have from the kernel/drive utilities available is that NCQ is “Supported” by the drive but just not in use.

Could you please post some benchmarks or let me know of what sort of transfer speeds you’ve been getting?

Ryley

[deemon]

Transfer rate: minimum 117.9MB/s; maximum 170.9MB/s; average 156.2MB/s
Access time: 17.4ms
Burst Rate: 140.0 MB/s
CPU Usage 13.8%

Which seems quite ok to me, as being far better than all my previous older drives.

[Ryley]

I’m not sure why, but I just realised I can’t see any of the attached images on this forum… But if you find the transfer speeds close to your expectations thats good to hear.

I’d love to hear from WD on this issue as it still seems to be affecting several users.

Ryley

[deemon]

Hi Ryley.

a bit out of topic, but same is true for me. I can’t see also pictures uploaded by other people. My own pictures I see. When I uploaded them, I specifically removed the flag from “private”, so they should be public. When I viewed my image gallery (where it stores all the pictures I have uploaded) both images were public, yes the newer one was “flagged for review”. Older one wasn’t. So I guess they do not automatically show all the new uploaded images but have some moderator to review them first. So if you still can not see either of my uploaded images still, then I guess the system is broken and regardless if moderator accepted the picture, it still does not show to anyone…

[Ryley]

Hi deemon, I can now see the image you uploaded. I guess before I was looking too soon after you posted.

I’m not too familiar with HD Tune, but from what I can tell that benchmark is testing transfer speeds from the drive (reading). Is this correct?

Regardless, your benchmark is very close to the HD Tune benchmark from my earlier link ( http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storage/Western-Digital-Red-6TB-and-Red-Pro-4TB-Full-Review-Bigger-and-Faster/HDTune-Pro ). So it seems that the poorly performing drives post similar results to yours on HD Tune.

The main test where the 6TB Red performed very poorly was the IOMeter test ( http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storage/Western-Digital-Red-6TB-and-Red-Pro-4TB-Full-Review-Bigger-and-Faster/IOMeter-IOps ). IOMeter is freeware, could you please run it against the 6TB Red?

If you have the time, the PCMarkdrive test would be interesting as well. The earlier tests that show the impaired performane are here: http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storage/Western-Digital-Red-6TB-and-Red-Pro-4TB-Full-Review-Bigger-and-Faster/PCMark-Vantage .

Ryley

[deemon]

Yes, HD Tune 2.55 (only free version) does only test read speed.

Downloaded iometer and it was too confusing for me. I don’t even understand what I am suposed to do with it or what settings to enter. Also the results page you linked does not explain with what settings they tested, so any kind of comparison would be impossible.

PCMARK Basic version (the only free version) didnt provide any results either, as the HDD suite is not part of the free program.

[jubei04]

deemon wrote:

Hi Ryley.

a bit out of topic, but same is true for me. I can’t see also pictures uploaded by other people. My own pictures I see. When I uploaded them, I specifically removed the flag from “private”, so they should be public. When I viewed my image gallery (where it stores all the pictures I have uploaded) both images were public, yes the newer one was “flagged for review”. Older one wasn’t. So I guess they do not automatically show all the new uploaded images but have some moderator to review them first. So if you still can not see either of my uploaded images still, then I guess the system is broken and regardless if moderator accepted the picture, it still does not show to anyone…

Hi guys, all images are moderated before being approved. If the image contains the hard drive serial number, it will be rejected and requested to be uploaded again without the serial number.

[Ryley]

EDIT: Wow is this embarassing, but I just realised my whole issue was due to a misconfiguration on my part. Full apologies to WD! The drive is now working perfectly.

[Bill_S]

Ryley wrote:

EDIT: Wow is this embarassing, but I just realised my whole issue was due to a misconfiguration on my part. Full apologies to WD! The drive is now working perfectly.

Awesome.  Glad to hear it.

[petethemeat]

I have a 4TB drive and the upload speeds to are very slow, how did you resolve your problem and reconfigure the settings? I can not seem to see how this was achieved in the posts?

Thank you.

[petethemeat]

Sorry, I should say I am uploading to Dropbox.

Thank you.