I found PROOF!

I have found proof about what happened between Synology and Western Digital Red Drives! This is about the ongoing issues between Western Digital Device Analytics (WDDA) flagging drives as requiring replacement when they are only 3 years of power on hours.

* Disclaimer *
No one has paid me to make this video or has any control over it. However I have received free hard drives in the past from both Synology (3x 8TB HDDs) and Segate (4x 8TB HDDs), though the Segate drives were through a third party. These drives were for review units, but I did get to keep them. This did not influence the making of this video, but I have included this for full transparency.

Drives that I use (affiliate)*

#NAS #wdda

*These are Amazon affiliate links, which means that if you purchase a product through one of them, I will receive a small commission (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting my channel!

[inao-cz]

Good summary of the problem, but as a software engineer (not for WD) I can tell you that you've found two translation files. These translation files are mapped to specific constant values that are returned by WDDA, but source code of the WDDA will be secret, possibly developped internally by WD. Meaning, you can delete the translation, but it will most likely just display something as "ACTION.DESCRIPTION.0x0..." something something. Well, depending on the software quality. It might also just crash because of missing translation.

[DSsVideoChannel]

WD has so little confidence in their products that they think... if you've actually gotten it to work for three years, you had better replace it soon!

[Yajtsa]

I appreciate the effort to get to the bottom of this. I gave up on WD long ago after having several external drives crash hard enough to lose all of my data.

[repatch]

WD has been pulling sneaky sh** for quite a while now. They will continue to push things until it affects their sales. Let's hope this will do that.

[fmax]

Great efforts. I’m an avid fan for a long time.
Keep up the good work man and keep exposing them.

I only use WD on all my servers, but this horrible practice will make me think twice next time I’m in the market for more storage.
Shame on you WD.

[benexe]

It's interesting that some WD Red Pro drives have this enabled even though those have 5 year warranties.

[alfatech]

Nice deep dive, thanks. You truly are a Rex of NAS. This is really the critical type of reporting that we need.

[Maverickr]

I've always stuck with WD drives for YEARS but because of this issue, (and the SMR issue) I went with Seagate IronWolf drives for my new Synology NAS so I'm glad to see what you've found here. Great video and thanks for the info!!

[jfkastner]

BIG Scandal lurking in the 'fine print' of WDDA: (from the WD Support page)
" ... What data do we collect?
Usage data may include items such as device configuration, CPU and other usage statistics by application, API calls, service crash information, network status, storage utilization, search terms and size and type of files ... "
- API calls = Every App you run gets reported back
- search Terms = REALLY? WHY?
- size & type of file = FINGERPRINTING is possible

[hrq]

- this is informative and unfortunate.

I hate that WD keeps shooting themselves in the foot. Their drives used to be great, and in my experience (both at the datacenter and at home), much more reliable than the competition.

[donaldhoudek]

I have 4 WD drives, one just crapped out 2 months ago and has been running for at least 3 years. Time for a change going forward

[yayinternets]

I recently had 4 drives on my NAS “fail” within a few weeks of each other recently, which were all WD Reds. I had the sneaking suspicion that WD was doing something shady like this as it didn’t make sense that they would fail like that. I replaced with Seagate drives where I could just because I knew it was BS and likely related to their bios.

Was trying to find information about it previously which is why I think I got this recommendation.

Thanks for going deep and getting to the bottom of this!

[LNOHMS]

Impressive work Will... antidotal story here; I spoke with an exec from WD regarding a removable drive failure. I was upset that it was going to cost me 2k for recovery of my data. He explained that they have <2% failure on 10s of millions of drives and they are very proud of that rate. I advised him that their failure rate is creating a Billon dollar expense ( 2%x20mX $2k) for their consumers. I would not be so proud

[WHJBill]

Interesting, after seeing this, I went in to my system and there is no longer a WDDA tab under the drive "Health Info" section. It now just says Overview, SMART, and History. None of my 4 18TB WDC WD181KFGX drives in my DS920+ running DSM 7.2-64570.

[wfp]

I use Toshiba. I believe these are what Synology rebrands as there own. Have been moving from Seagate and WD to these and am very happy

[Evertb]

Great work. It's a pity that most users of NAS devices will never see this. This should be widely known. Not only to shake up the people at WD but also as a warning to other brands that consumers are not stupid.

[michaelnoble]

Thanks for the info. On my DS1821+, DS1621+, and DS1520+ (all DSM 7.2-64561) WDDA was enabled in the synoinfo.conf file (support_wdda="yes"). However, none of my WD drives had the WDDA option showing in Storage Manager - HDD/SSD - Health Info (multiple 8TB WD80EFZZ-68BTXN0 and 14TB WD140EFGX-68B0GN0). As a precaution I have set support_wdda="no" (via SSH instruction) on all three of my NAS units.

Edit: After update to DSM7.2 64570 WDDA resets to "yes" / Update to DSM 7.2 64570 update 1 either retains the "no" setting or defaults to "no" (already had WDDA set to "no" when I updated to 64570 update 1)

[VforValenti]

What about the WD Ultrastar drives??? I really appreciate the all time hero HGST line.

[eduvandeursen]

WD should take the lead to prove this is wrong, not Synology. WD has a business interest to be one of the HDD suppliers for Synology not the way around. Very poor management of the WD company. Good work Spacerex! You are not to blaim what so ever. Keep on the good work. Bery much appriciated also in The Netherlands 💪

[jpfourie]

So glad I'm follow you. Thanks for doing all the research.