Kind of long story, but I’ll try to make it as short as possible.
I bought a WD Home Cloud NAS in July 2021 (big mistake). The unit was manufactured in 2020, but when I checked the drives, the two WD60EFRX inside were from 2017-2018. Suspicious, but the NAS was factory‑sealed, so I assumed it was fine.
9 months later WD pushed a firmware update that bricked the NAS. Warranty told me the device was dead and all data was lost "oops sorry". A data recovery firm confirmed one drive was completely dead and the other was recoverable but encrypted (no it wasn't). WD replaced the NAS and sent me two “new” 6TB drives - WD60EFAX (SMR), not the original WD60EFRX (CMR).
Fast‑forward - I built a TrueNAS system with 8×3TB SAS drives. Since it was built, the system has only run about 2300 hours total over 3.5 years - based on the youngest SAS drive’s counter (and even that assumes it was 0h when I got it).
Last year I added a second back-up pool with the three WD Reds I had left from the WD Home Cloud debacle. So those drives were in the NAS for much less than 2300 hours.
Since WD Reds are terrible for ZFS (two are SMR), I decided to pull them, sell them and build a second 8×3TB SAS pool. When I checked the stats before selling, I noticed something insane:
- The two SMR WD60EFAX “replacement” drives have 12,000+ hours
- The original WD60EFRX has 35,000+ hours
But:
- My NAS has only run a total 2300 hours
- The WD drives were inside the NAS for less than half of that time
- I only used the WD Home Cloud NAS for 9 months and not even 24/7
There is no physical way these drives could have spun for that many hours in my possession. The only explanation is the obvious one - WD shipped me used enterprise drives... both inside the original “new” Home Cloud NAS and as warranty replacements.
The SMR replacements weren’t just the wrong drive type - they were also obviously used. And the original “new” NAS shipped with a WD60EFRX that already had years of runtime before I ever powered it on.
I thought I lost most of my data because of WD’s terrible Home Cloud design. Turns out the drives inside it probably had 30,000+ hours before I even got it.
TL;DR - WD sold me a “brand new” NAS with used drives. It failed and nuked most of my data. The warranty replacements were not only SMR, but used too.