<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><br class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">> Is this level of variability normal?<br class="">
> Should I return all the WD drives?<br class=""></blockquote><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><div class="">You can register your purchased WD drives at Western Digital (<a href="https://support-en.wd.com/app/account/dashboard" target="_blank" class="">https://support-en.wd.com/app/account/dashboard</a>).</div><div class="">When done, you can open a support case whether or not this is to be expected. And ask for the reasons. <br class=""></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div class=""><br class=""></div>Good idea - done! (Hopefully not a new spam vector)</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div class="gmail_quote"><div class=""><div class="">And then share with us please ;-)</div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div class=""><br class=""></div>Will do!</div></div></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div><div><br class=""></div></div>My first response from WD was:<div class=""><br class=""></div><blockquote style="margin: 0 0 0 40px; border: none; padding: 0px;" class=""><div class="">I really apologize for the delayed response. Upon discussing this case with the senior team, they wanted you to run diagnostics using data lifeguard software. If you still unhappy with the drives then we can get it replaced.</div></blockquote><div class=""><br class=""></div>However, after pointing out that I don’t have a Windows or Mac computer to test against and also that the question isn’t whether the drives are functioning properly, but *why* the SMART test times vary so wildly for drives having the same model-number, and if these test-time numbers are normal, the response I received was:<br class=""><div class=""><br class=""></div><blockquote style="margin: 0 0 0 40px; border: none; padding: 0px;" class=""><div class="">Thank you for your continued response. We can only comment on the behalf of our tools and our tools (Windows data life guard diagnostics) only run on windows and we do not have any information about Solaris. </div></blockquote><br class=""><div class="">That said, using `fio` to test the performance of the various drives, I found that both the WD20SPZX drives outperformed the <font color="#000000" class="">ST2000LM015. The results below only show the “write” test results because the ZFS L2ARC cache validates the “read” values. Note that, in all cases, the ZFS pool contains just the single drive.</font></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>• For a Seagate Barracuda (ST2000LM015) drive, which had a 330 minute long-test wait time:</div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>• 4k<br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>• Random write: IOPS=24, BW=97.6KiB/s (99.9kB/s)</div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>• Sequential write: IOPS=21, BW=85.2KiB/s (87.2kB/s)</div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>• 64k:<br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>• Random write: IOPS=12, BW=785KiB/s (804kB/s)</div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>• Sequential write: IOPS=12, BW=788KiB/s (807kB/s)</div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>• 1m:<br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>• Random write: IOPS=9, BW=9439KiB/s (9665kB/s)</div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>• Sequential write: IOPS=9, BW=9930KiB/s (10.2MB/s)</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>• For a WD Blue (WDC WD20SPZX-75U Revision: 6712) drive, which had a 737 minute long-test wait time:<br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>• 4k<br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>• Random write: IOPS=33, BW=136KiB/s (139kB/s)</div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>• Sequential write: IOPS=34, BW=137KiB/s (140kB/s)</div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>• 64k:<br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>• Random write: IOPS=34, BW=2207KiB/s (2260kB/s)</div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>• Sequential write: IOPS=34, BW=2215KiB/s (2268kB/s)</div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>• 1m:<br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>• Random write: IOPS=34, BW=34.5MiB/s (36.1MB/s)</div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>• Sequential write: IOPS=35, BW=35.6MiB/s (37.3MB/s)</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>• For a WD Blue (WD20SPZX-22U Revision: 1A01) drive, which had a 119 minute long-test wait time:</div><br class=""><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>• 4k<br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>• Random write: IOPS=34, BW=138KiB/s (141kB/s)</div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>• Sequential write: IOPS=35, BW=141KiB/s (145kB/s)</div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>• 64k:<br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>• Random write: IOPS=35, BW=2248KiB/s (2302kB/s)</div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>• Sequential write: IOPS=34, BW=2191KiB/s (2243kB/s)</div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>• 1m:<br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>• Random write: IOPS=34, BW=34.4MiB/s (36.1MB/s)</div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>• Sequential write: IOPS=35, BW=35.4MiB/s (37.1MB/s)</div></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">These results muddy any coarse of action. Perhaps the <font color="#000000" class="">WD20SPZX-22U drives (from NewEgg) are best, having both better performance and smaller “long-test” wait times. If I could do it over again, I might buy all 10 drives from NewEgg in 5 separate orders (containing two drives each) spaced a few days apart. But, as it stands, I’ll just hold onto what I got and live with the crazy-long test times on the </font><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class="">WD20SPZX-75U drives.</span></div><div class=""><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class=""><br class=""></span></div><div class=""><font color="#000000" class=""><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class="">Thanks all for your comments.</span></font></div><div class=""><font color="#000000" class=""><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class=""><br class=""></span></font></div><div class=""><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class="">Kent</span></div><div class=""><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class=""><br class=""></span></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div></body></html>