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Best Buy is selling an 8 TB WD external HDD for 169.99 + a free 128gb flash drive.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-easystore-8tb-external-usb-3-0-hard-drive-black/5792401.p?skuId=5792401

I don't really care about the flash drive, but I was wondering if it would be worth grabbing this deal? I've been in the market for a large HDD for backing up my huge and growing collection of music. A reviewer on the BB page says these are WD Reds inside. Is this a good deal? I'm not afraid to shuck the case and use a better enclosure if need be. Anything I should worry about?

That's a great deal for an 8 TB drive, well under the usual market cost. They're standard PMR drives, I also heard they were WD Reds.

I snagged a couple of those a few days ago when they didn't offer the free 128GB flash drive with it though unfortunately. I bought one to keep as an external and the other to shuck and put in my server.

edit: I was planning on taking apart one tonight, but there was a delay in shipping. They are supposed to arrive Monday now. I probably won't have the chance to take one apart until 9/18 now but once I do I'll let you know how it goes.

I may grab one as well. Very good price if it's a Red.

My drives arrived this morning and was able to power up one of them on my lunch hour. Unfortunately, it looks like that particular drive may not be a WD Red. The model number reported by S.M.A.R.T. is WDC WD80EFAX-68LHPN0. From what I have read, the Reds should have a WD80EFZX prefix. I'll power on the other tonight and see what it says but I am guessing they are both the same. I'll know for sure though once I take it apart.

I bought 6 in May, 3 have been shucked and were all basic Reds. I have one internal now, and one of the remaining USB ones plugged in and both show WD80EFZX-68UW8N0. The ones I haven't popped open were quite literally still in the factory 4-pack box, so I probably have 6 Reds. Maybe they were clearing stock earlier in the year before a BOM change?

The one that's now internal consolidated 7TB on 4 older Greens onto a single disk with about a TB to spare.

edit:
Although, it seems like the EFAX is still a Red... maybe not one that's released as a box Red? It's possible the AX got a cache upgrade.

general_tux wrote:

My drives arrived this morning and was able to power up one of them on my lunch hour. Unfortunately, it looks like that particular drive may not be a WD Red. The model number reported by S.M.A.R.T. is WDC WD80EFAX-68LHPN0. From what I have read, the Reds should have a WD80EFZX prefix. I'll power on the other tonight and see what it says but I am guessing they are both the same. I'll know for sure though once I take it apart.

EFAX appears to be WD Red as well: http://www.ebay.com/itm/8TB-WD-RED-WD80 ... 1963963057

Looks like a China versus Thailand mfg thing.

According to a Serve the Home forum post, that's all it is (well, except for China having a lower SATA interface version number, and half the cache.)

Thailand = WD80EFAX-68LHPN0
China = WD80EFZX-68UW8N0

Waco wrote:

That's a great deal for an 8 TB drive, well under the usual market cost. They're standard PMR drives, I also heard they were WD Reds.

Got mine last Thu and cracked it open, it is indeed a WD Red 8 TB drive. I've seen some speculation that these drives are rebadged HGST 8 TBs, but comparing to my HGST 8 TB, the WD has a slightly different casing and completely different PCB. Could be a vintage/revision difference, though.

Drive works like a charm, much quieter and much faster at reads/writes than the old WD Red 4 TB it replaced in my system.

Well, curiosity got the best of me this morning and I decided to wake up a hour early and disassemble/install one of the drives. It was indeed a Red. The only downside is that my case requires me to use the bottom holes on the drive and the new drive's hole spacing is significantly larger than my old drive (2TB WD Green). So I ended up just using two screws to secure it in place and, the good news is, everything works great on the server with the new drive.

Looks like they raised the price to $199.

These are back down to $179. I can confirm that they contain WD80EFAX Reds, and they're easily shuckable without breaking anything. Pricing had bounced all over for a while ($199, 249, 299), so get 'em at $22.50/TB while you can.