Since I've gotten into 4k videography and especially with video editing and storing everything I found out that I need hard drive space, a lot of it, lol. So I'm tired of dicking around with 4 to 5 drives in my desktop so I ordered a Seagate IronWolf Pro 16TB NAS Hard Drive to replace all my normal hard disks. I have no experience with NAS drives and I called Seagates tech support for this specific line of hard drives and they said it will plug and play just like any other hard drive but you know phone tech support sometimes, I trust the word of fellow tech geeks over phone tech support any day. Will this drive plug and play like a normal drive in a desktop? Any forewarnings?
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So I called Seagate in advance to make sure but... (using a NAS drive in a desktop)
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BinarySynapse
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As long as it’s SATA, it’ll work just fine.
Just make sure you have a good backup strategy.
Just make sure you have a good backup strategy.
drescherjm
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There is a saying if you don't have 3 copies of your data it's not that important to you.
IdiotInCharge
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Buy two and put them in a mirror before loading data. The IronWolf Pro is a 'NAS drive', but it's also just a high-performance drive. I have four of the 6TB IronWolf drives in my NAS, which is just a desktop running Linux.
My luck is I would have 20 backups and my house would burn down and I would lose everything anyway! I don't have the time to wait for another drive to come through the mail, I'm zeroed out on hard drive space and every time I fly my drone it's another 30GB of video and pics but I would be willing to get an external drive of the same size at a later time to manually backup stuff I really care about. At least that way if there was a power surge the external drive wouldn't be plugged in all the time.
BinarySynapse
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That's what offiste backups are for.
There are other software options that would allow you to add a drive later and then add mirroring. They have advantages and disadvantages. But, the bggest advantage is the ability to add and remove from your array as your needs change without losing data.
drescherjm
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I recommend at least a full format. Drives come DOA. This tests if there is a serious head problem.
On a drive this large that would probably take several weeks.
What's weird is after formatting it said 14.5TB free but 6.57GB in use. It really needed to set aside 6.57GB on a fresh formatted drive?drescherjm
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I expect around a day, and I am the person who does a badblocks 4 pattern test which is somewhat equivalent to 8 full formats..
Nobu
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Sounds about right. Only 0.045% — peanuts compared to the size of the filesystem. If a FAT filesystem could be that big, you'd probably have even less free space.On a drive this large that would probably take several weeks.
I already don't like this drive. Say if I open up a video file it constantly crunches loud while playing the file from start to finish. If I play the same file on my normal (non NAS) Seagate 3TB drive it does an almost inaudible and short crunch upon initial file opening and then it's about as silent as a SSD while playing through the clip. I don't think this drive is going to cut it for me, it's way too loud which some reviews on Newegg some said it was silent and some said it was too loud so maybe I got a bad one?
drescherjm
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It could be you are more perceptive to the sound. Could be your environment, your case.. All drives make some audible sound. This one probably makes more versus your smaller drives because it has 9 platters and 18 heads instead of the 4 platters / 8 heads of the smaller drive.
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MrGuvernment
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Why not get a 2 or 4Bay QNAP/Synology device, set it up in raid 1 or raid 6, then get 1 more external USB drive to sync data to that is important. You now at least protect against hardware failure at some level. Later if you got the money, set up offsite using OneDrive or some other service that can house the size you need. I mean a 1GB link may be the slow part, but sounds like you should have a working drive = 1TB SSD or something, and then your data drive you save things to / archive to.
On the phone with Seagate now, the lady said there might be a setting to quiet it down that has to do with power management. It's definitely as loud or louder as the first gen 69GB 10k RPM Raptor and that's not going to cut it for me, lol. My other Seagate mechanical drive is almost dead silent (especially after initial file loading) and my Hitachi from 2007 is also very quite. This drive definitely is louder than normal like a first gen Raptor.
So this is what they told me to do and I couldn't figure it out. The Seagate utility kept saying unrecognized command:
"
Thank you for contacting Seagate.
Here is the Case # 10515975 for the Seagate Ironwolf Pro drive.
Here are the instructions on how to disable EPC (Extended Power Conditions).
1. Connect the affected drive to a SATA port in a PC and boot to Windows.
2. Download the latest SeaChest and install it in Windows (please see a TL or Sup for download instructions.
3. Open SeaChest. Its own command prompt will open. (If a command prompt doesn’t open refer to step 3A at the end of this document)
4. First. get the drive's Handle which could be PD0, PD1, or PD2, etc.
•Copy and Paste or type in this command then Enter.
?SeaChest_PowerControl --scan
5. Next, confirm if EPC is supported and Enabled for the drive in
Question.
•Copy and Paste or type in this command then Enter.
?SeaChest_PowerControl -d PD(N)
?Replace (N) with the handle of the target disk
?Scroll to Features Supported and look for EPC [Enabled]
6. To disable EPC on the drive
•Copy and paste r or type this command then Enter
?SeaChest_PowerControl -d PD(N) --EPCfeature disable
?Replace (N) with the handle of the target disk
?Wait for a message stating EPC was disabled successfully
. Now we need to confirm that EPC is disabled. Repeat step 5
•Copy and paste or type in this command then Enter
?SeaChest_PowerControl -d PD(N)
?Replace (N) with the handle of the target disk
?Scroll to Features Supported and look for EPC
?[Enabled] should no longer be seen
8. Shut down the computer then install the drive into the NAS.
3A) If you launch SeaChest and see a black screen appear disappear please do the following steps:
•Click Start, then type CMD, in the results Window you should see CMD as the only result.
•Right click CMD and in the menu that appears click Run as administrator
•If prompted, enter the administrator credentials for the PC
•Now type “chdir C:\Programs Files\Seagate\SeaChest”
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Suparna
Seagate Suport."
What do you guys think? Waste of time to do this? Like when playing back a video file the drive sounds like its constantly defragging - none of my other mechanical drives including a Seagate do this. What a waste of an afternoon - playing with 1995 command promps in 2020....yikes.
"
Thank you for contacting Seagate.
Here is the Case # 10515975 for the Seagate Ironwolf Pro drive.
Here are the instructions on how to disable EPC (Extended Power Conditions).
1. Connect the affected drive to a SATA port in a PC and boot to Windows.
2. Download the latest SeaChest and install it in Windows (please see a TL or Sup for download instructions.
3. Open SeaChest. Its own command prompt will open. (If a command prompt doesn’t open refer to step 3A at the end of this document)
4. First. get the drive's Handle which could be PD0, PD1, or PD2, etc.
•Copy and Paste or type in this command then Enter.
?SeaChest_PowerControl --scan
5. Next, confirm if EPC is supported and Enabled for the drive in
Question.
•Copy and Paste or type in this command then Enter.
?SeaChest_PowerControl -d PD(N)
?Replace (N) with the handle of the target disk
?Scroll to Features Supported and look for EPC [Enabled]
6. To disable EPC on the drive
•Copy and paste r or type this command then Enter
?SeaChest_PowerControl -d PD(N) --EPCfeature disable
?Replace (N) with the handle of the target disk
?Wait for a message stating EPC was disabled successfully
. Now we need to confirm that EPC is disabled. Repeat step 5
•Copy and paste or type in this command then Enter
?SeaChest_PowerControl -d PD(N)
?Replace (N) with the handle of the target disk
?Scroll to Features Supported and look for EPC
?[Enabled] should no longer be seen
8. Shut down the computer then install the drive into the NAS.
3A) If you launch SeaChest and see a black screen appear disappear please do the following steps:
•Click Start, then type CMD, in the results Window you should see CMD as the only result.
•Right click CMD and in the menu that appears click Run as administrator
•If prompted, enter the administrator credentials for the PC
•Now type “chdir C:\Programs Files\Seagate\SeaChest”
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Suparna
Seagate Suport."
What do you guys think? Waste of time to do this? Like when playing back a video file the drive sounds like its constantly defragging - none of my other mechanical drives including a Seagate do this. What a waste of an afternoon - playing with 1995 command promps in 2020....yikes.
IdiotInCharge
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You're going to have to get real specific down to model numbers and perhaps even batches to find drives that are 'quiet'.Reading youtube comments it's normal for these drives to be loud so it's going back. I also found out that Seagate took down their support forums, wonder why.
Noise control was a thing for a while with spinners, but as those have become less prevalent for desktop (and laptop!) use, I doubt we'll see a resurgence. If a particular drive is quiet, it's likely happenstance.
And I do recommend looking into a NAS. Even a two-bay unit solves enough problems to be worth it.
Hmmm... Everyone of my other mechanical drives of multiple brands are quiet. The only other drive I had a problem with noise was the original Raptors. I'll just keep returning them until I find one on par with my other drives. A drive shouldn't sound like it's defragging while playing back a video file.
IdiotInCharge
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I've had loud and quiet over the years. The only drives that have been reliably quiet have been WD's Green drives really, and there's a general trend of increasing capacities bringing more noise. Need more platters and more read/write heads for those, after all.
BinarySynapse
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That and the biggest drives tend to be marketed for IT environments where performance matters more then noise, so the heads movements aren’t tuned for acoustics (i.e. they swing more abruptly to find tracks faster instead of quieter dampened motions).
I wound up picking up a Western Digital 8TB External Drive today (nobody carries internal drives around here anymore) and taking it out of the enclosure and putting it into my desktop. Good thing I did a little research before taking it apart because I had to block the 3.3volt pin for it to be compatible with my power supply. Files seem to be copying over at the same speed as the Ironwolf and it seems dead silent reading files. Happy with this drive but might go to Best Buy and pick up a 12TB to compliment this one and to also replace a 1TB drive in my system that's currently full and has been running and in use for the past 13 years, heh.
IdiotInCharge
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I guess you'll learn someday...
[most people only need to lose something important once before they start building for redundancy]
If you want security in an active machine get two sata drives in a raid 1 setup (mirroring) so if a drive fails when in use you don't use your data. Keep your old drives around as a form of offline back only to be plugged into the system when you want to back something up.
BinarySynapse
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That is in no way data security. You still have a single point of failure. RAID is for data uptime.
IdiotInCharge
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...uptime so you can get it synced up with your other redundancy solutions
It's not a single point of failure! What he's using NOW is a single point of failure. If you use a different device to backup to that you keep for offline storage while using a mirroring solution for active data that is three points of failure. Try reading my post next time.
Those solutions are over priced. You can build a machine with a hardware raid controller that can take 8 drives for cheaper while also having a 10GB/s nic.
Nobu
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It kind of is. If your raid controller dies, or your system begins silently corrupting data, then you may lose the data on both drives. A raid does check that the copied data is the same, but doesn't check whether the original copy was correct.
Edit: I should also say, an offline, local backup is good to have, but if there's a fire or the drive/media gets damaged somehow, then you're back to just the raid (which is just the most recent copy of the data, and may not be 100% correct). A remote, and multiple backups are necessary to ensure redundency, incase the local copies become corrupt or are destroyed/inaccessable.
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BinarySynapse
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RAID card dies, array is gone. Ransomware encrypts the array, data is gone. Old drives you keep laying around are better than nothing, but not something I’d trust.
IdiotInCharge
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More capabilities, less headache. If you just need a network drive, overpriced by a tad; if you need any more, then Synology has you covered for far less work.
Depends on what you're looking for, especially the form factor. A mITX board with onboard 10GbE isn't cheap and they're still hard to come by. With your single slot taken up by your hardware raid controller or just an HBA if you're using something like FreeNAS, that's basically your only option for 10GbE unless you get one with thunderbolt and thunderbolt to 10GbE adaptors aren't exactly cheap. Then you have your case options, my favorite is still my Lian Li PC-Q25B, been using it for 8 years now as a self built, but it's a hell of a lot easier and can be cheaper if you're not half-assing things on your self build to just get a 4 to 8 bay QNAP or Synology, pop your disks in and setup backups.
Isnt that called the 3-2-1 rule? Three copies of data, on two different physical mediums, with 1 offsite.
I still care about internal drives, but I'm totally OK with getting a WD external and then shucking the drive.
Just out of curiosity, is Drobo still a player in the NAS market these days?
I also picked up a 12TB WD drive from Best Buy and shucked it... It's large and in charge and is dead silent. Copying large video files over from my M.2 NVME Samsung SSD is exactly the same transfer speed as the loud as hell Seagate NAS drive so I don't believe just because a drive is large that is has to be loud and obnoxious. I like how both external drives when you take them out of the case they have stickers that say "Internal Use Hard Drives" LOL. Actually I didn't even realise how loud my old 1TB Hitachi was until I removed it for the 8TB drive... But the Seagate Ironwolf was probably the loudest I've ever experienced. There was no way in hell I could use that in my desktop. Actually I wish I didn't send it back because I could of just threw it in one of the external drive cases and used it as a backup drive....
drescherjm
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The Seagate was 7200 RPM and The WD is 5400 RPM. This makes a difference as far as noise.
At home I usually purchase 5XXX RPM drives for lower power and since I don't use online raid this is fine. At work where I need to be close to 100% uptime I need RAID so I purchase 7200RPM drives like this for storage. As far as noise I have 100+ drives in a room that is around 8 feet by 8 feet. I usually have head phones on when I am in the room.
At home I usually purchase 5XXX RPM drives for lower power and since I don't use online raid this is fine. At work where I need to be close to 100% uptime I need RAID so I purchase 7200RPM drives like this for storage. As far as noise I have 100+ drives in a room that is around 8 feet by 8 feet. I usually have head phones on when I am in the room.
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The helium drives are considerably quieter than the regular air ones as well. I shucked a WD_Black D10 12TB which is a 7200 rpm HC520 and it's just as quiet as my older 5400 rpm 8TB Reds that i threw it into an array with to test it. I think that's going to be my new go to for shucking, great deal for a datacenter drive.