WD60EFRX-68L0BN1 - different firmware, different sizes!

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
1

So the WD60EFRX-68L0BN1 is the WD 6 TB Red Drive (non-pro).

I recently bought 4 for use in my Synology DS1213+ NAS.

Out of the 4 disks, I’ve got 3 different firmware versions:

  • 1 x 03.01F.0
  • 2 x 80.00A80
  • 1 x 01.00F.4

And interestingly, they’re reporting strange total disk sizes (i.e. the capacity of the disk as reported to the controller):

  • The 03.01F.0 firmware and 01.00F.4 firmware disk reports 5589.26 GB as total capacity.
  • Of the 2 x 80.00A80, one reports 5589.03 GB as total capacity, the other reports 5588.43 GB

I ran these disk serial numbers through the website and they are all correctly identified as in-warranty WD RED disks. While different firmwares or even revision numbers are not unheard of on a single model of disk, I have never seen the same model disks report different total capacity to the controller. Anyone have any idea what’s going on here?

I have created an official support ticket but thought I’d post here for more visibility & for future reference.

Here is the output of fdisk -l (you will see the disk sectors are different)

Disk /dev/sdf: 5.5 TiB, 6001175126016 bytes, 11721045168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 5639AC93-9D45-469C-9D77-80932E7ECD5F

Disk /dev/sde: 5.5 TiB, 6001424400384 bytes, 11721532032 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: A64A728A-549E-4F87-BF95-7CE60B96EB5E

Disk /dev/sdg: 5.5 TiB, 6000527425536 bytes, 11719780128 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: F9E66E5D-E21A-41B0-9485-1D36BBE2D1E6

Disk /dev/sdh: 5.5 TiB, 6001424400384 bytes, 11721532032 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 1B22205F-6605-4692-BC27-BE1D46D996A8
2

Hi, I have never seen this, lets see if another user can provide some information on this.

3

Hi,
what I think you see is regards the different size is the RAID configuration.
Did you check your drives before you put them in your Syn… with any other tool?

Regards the firmware, it might be very well that when you bought them your supplier tried to get rid of some [old] stock, I would contact them and ask for explanation / exchange so they are all same firmware.

In your situation I would also triple check the idle3, tler and spinup settings, I have many RED and RE4 GP drives and you would be surprised about these settings throughout all colours WD sells.

As usual my advice is before you put new drives in any raid that you make a document with all drive information. Like serial, date, firmware and LCC and other SMART data, also the slot/position they go in for easy maintenance later.