Western Digital Hard Drives Speed Drops DRASTICALLY as you go down the drive

[Notloc]

Here is the results from 2 identical Western Digital WDC WD10EZEX-00BN5A0 drives that were installed 3 years ago...

Driv Size  Drive Identity     Location:    0      25%     50%     75%     100
---- ----- ---------------------------- ------- ------- ------- ------- -------
82  1.0TB WDC WD10EZEX-00BN5A0          180.0   164.2   149.7   123.5    85.6
83  1.0TB WDC WD10EZEX-00BN5A0          172.5   162.2   144.9   118.5    81.3

Benchmarked: Thursday, 2020-12-31 at 14:53

Got worried that something on the drives was failing. So ran it through SpinRite at level 4 hoping that would help... No problems found on the drives during the SpinRiting... Here's the ReadSpeed Results after the Level 4...

Driv Size  Drive Identity     Location:    0      25%     50%     75%     100
---- ----- ---------------------------- ------- ------- ------- ------- -------
82  1.0TB WDC WD10EZEX-00BN5A0          180.0   164.2   149.7   123.5    85.6
83  1.0TB WDC WD10EZEX-00BN5A0          172.5   162.2   144.9   118.5    81.3

Benchmarked: Saturday, 2021-01-02 at 14:38

So this seems to be just the nature of the drives since both tests were identical and the drop off curve is consistent over both of the drives. Just found this interesting. Probably will shop around next time I purchase drives if this is a systemic Western Digital problem. Anyone else see this trend?

Thanks for reading!

 

[DanR]

This is normal for Spinners. It is normal for HDD speed to decrease roughly 2:1 from 0% to 100%.

The track circumference decreases as the heads go from the outer edge (0%) to the center (100%). Smaller track circumference means less data per track, hence more tracks to read 1 GB data, hence more time, hence slower speed readings.

Your drives look healthy!

 

[PHolder]

Also, some drives have weirdness if they are SMR drives, but yours are not.
WD discussed it here:

On WD Red NAS Drives - Western Digital Corporate Blog

On WD Red NAS Drives - Data - Western Digital Corporate Blog

blog.westerndigital.com

and listed them here:

https://blog.westerndigital.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/WD_SMR_SKUs_vDS.pdf

 

[Notloc]

Thanks for the education guys and responding! Nice to know that the drives are good. It's so interesting how the physical aspects for the drive affect the performance so much. Crazy.
Props to Steve for such a cool tool! Can't wait till SpinRite 6 comes out and instead of 17 Hours a drive at level 4 it'll be blazing fast and practical again!

 

[Barry Wallis]

Thanks for the education guys and responding! Nice to know that the drives are good. It's so interesting how the physical aspects for the drive affect the performance so much. Crazy.
Props to Steve for such a cool tool! Can't wait till SpinRite 6 comes out and instead of 17 Hours a drive at level 4 it'll be blazing fast and practical again!

I'm sure you mean SpinRite 6.1 (a free upgrade for anyone with a purchased copy of 6.0). Yes, I'm pedantic.

 

[rfrazier]

@Barry Wallis Version 6.1 is still a version of 6, so, you're both right. Sorry, couldn't resist.

May your bits be stable and your interfaces be fast. Ron