WD Easystore 14TB External USB 3.0 Hard Drive - $200

Subbing - need to get 7 or 8 of these next time they drop.
The $200 deal is live again: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-eas...-3-0-hard-drive-black/6425303.p?skuId=6425303

Reminder: You can go to customer service, recycle an old storage device and get a 15% off coupon that can be used on this drive.
I was able to "recycle" old flash drives I had sitting around for the 15% off coupon.
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/recycling/storage-recycling-offer/pcmcat1628281022996.c
Here's your chance. (y)
 
Awesome. One of my 12TB drives died. Gonna pick up another 14TB today to swap it out with!
 
Sort of on topic, I have three of these and was thinking to just use an old motherboard with integrated raid controller and run windows data center striped&parity raid5. If this is a bad idea, does anyone know of a solid PCI or PCIe raid controller that supports 3 data drives for cheap?
 
Sort of on topic, I have three of these and was thinking to just use an old motherboard with integrated raid controller and run windows data center striped&parity raid5. If this is a bad idea, does anyone know of a solid PCI or PCIe raid controller that supports 3 data drives for cheap?
Storage Spaces has historically had performance issues with parity. Write speeds for a 3 drive setup MIGHT hit 25MB/s. Maybe. If you're just using the computer as a storage server I recommend picking up one of the more user friendly Linux + ZFS distributions out there. They're basically free versions of the software used in those NAS boxes you can pick up off NewEgg.

Here's one with a healthy discussion thread in our own forum.
 
Storage Spaces has historically had performance issues with parity. Write speeds for a 3 drive setup MIGHT hit 25MB/s. Maybe. If you're just using the computer as a storage server I recommend picking up one of the more user friendly Linux + ZFS distributions out there. They're basically free versions of the software used in those NAS boxes you can pick up off NewEgg.

Here's one with a healthy discussion thread in our own forum.
I will check it out, but I'm mainly concerned with the hardware side. I actually have an old super micro 4u running some ancient sata controllers and I'm getting about 90-100MB/s write on two storage spaces I already have set up (8x2TB drives in raid5 and 4x12TB drives in fake raid 10). This time I'm trying to utilize old disused parts and at most buying a single raid controller if onboard isn't up to the task. I remember back in the late naughties running onboard Intel raid and it was so flakey I'm lucky to have gotten out with my data. If I can manage around 100MB/s write I will be happy
 
I remember back in the late naughties running onboard Intel raid and it was so flakey I'm lucky to have gotten out with my data. If I can manage around 100MB/s write I will be happy
I think you answered your own question right there. If that onboard soft-raid was worth anything, everyone would still jumping on it like they did back in the naut...nineties. :D

Hardware raid controllers are cheap these days and honestly, I would get a used sas one as they're designed with enterprise reliability in mind and can use ultra reliable (and cheap) sas drives as well as sata. (y)
 
Even using nothing more than SATA 1 onboard, you shouldn't have an issue hitting 100MB/s write on a 3-drive raidz. If MS fixed the Storage Spaces parity write issues, I would imagine you could get similar results out of that. Personally, I haven't ran a hardware-based RAID card in my home lab in well over a decade. There's almost no reason to these days. They're not any faster, they lock your data to a specific make, model, and sometimes even firmware version of card (so good luck finding a replacement if it dies), they add cost, draw more power, produce more heat, add points of failure, and prevent your OS from detecting hardware issues with the drives.

On the flip side, they allow you to increase your array's capacity by adding a single drive (can't do that in ZFS... yet), allow you to add a number of drives beyond what your board has sockets for, let you use faster drives if you're bumping into the SATA-I limit, and depending on the card, can allow you to connect an entire JBOD chassis to your old motherboard. So it's not like they're completely worthless.

Personally, I'd just chuck the three drives into a software raid via ZFS or Storage Spaces and test it out. If I'm happy, leave it be. If not, buy the controller. There shouldn't be any reason your existing onboard ports wouldn't spin up the disks just fine.
 
Just picked up one of these for $186 after tax thanks to the BB drive recycling deal. Had a spinner taking up space in a bin downstairs, so didn't go the flash drive route, but still a great deal. Running badblocks now ;)
 
Just picked up one of these for $186 after tax thanks to the BB drive recycling deal. Had a spinner taking up space in a bin downstairs, so didn't go the flash drive route, but still a great deal. Running badblocks now ;)
I ordered a pair for pickup and did a return and rebuy so I could use the 15% off coupons. $180 each for me after tax here.
 
Sort of on topic, I have three of these and was thinking to just use an old motherboard with integrated raid controller and run windows data center striped&parity raid5. If this is a bad idea, does anyone know of a solid PCI or PCIe raid controller that supports 3 data drives for cheap?

IIRC by the time you get to 10TB per drive in a raid 5 you run a ~8% chance of a second drive failing during the rebuild after a single drive failure.

If redundancy isn't a major concern you could run something like drive bender. You can still do a sort of raid 1 on a per file or folder level. It is useful if you have a large amount of data that doesn't really need redundancy with some data that you would like redundancy on. Like a large porn collection and your family photo's, one needs redundancy and one is just amateur photography of average looking people. ;)

Drive bender being file based instead of block based like traditional raid means it is much easier to add and remove drives of any size to a pool. All that being said it does lack in other areas such as deduplication. While you can enable it on a per drive basis if your OS supports it, you won't get deduplication across drives like you could with raid5/raidz1.
 
I have a few of these if you shuck them you might need to use a molex-> sata power adapter or tape off the 3.3v pin on the hard drive side if using the native sata power connector, otherwise they are not detected.
 
IIRC by the time you get to 10TB per drive in a raid 5 you run a ~8% chance of a second drive failing during the rebuild after a single drive failure.

If redundancy isn't a major concern you could run something like drive bender. You can still do a sort of raid 1 on a per file or folder level. It is useful if you have a large amount of data that doesn't really need redundancy with some data that you would like redundancy on. Like a large porn collection and your family photo's, one needs redundancy and one is just amateur photography of average looking people. ;)

Drive bender being file based instead of block based like traditional raid means it is much easier to add and remove drives of any size to a pool. All that being said it does lack in other areas such as deduplication. While you can enable it on a per drive basis if your OS supports it, you won't get deduplication across drives like you could with raid5/raidz1.
I remember this being an issue for 2TB disks back in 2008. My solution is to migrate the data to a new array using the remaining drives and then rebuild with another disk and copy the data back. Once set up I'll have a RAID5 and Raid10 on one server and a raid 5 on another machine so I can sync everything in the background without having any performances issues on at least one array. Also every few years I'm archiving to individuals disks and bringing them a few hundred miles away where I'll hopefully never need to use them.
 
Also every few years I'm archiving to individuals disks and bringing them a few hundred miles away where I'll hopefully never need to use them.
I wouldn't depend on these disks as I've had more problems from drives with usage like this than ones that ran 24x7 for years.
 
I wouldn't depend on these disks as I've had more problems from drives with usage like this than ones that ran 24x7 for years.
Aside from the 10TB or so of data being transferred, there's not a whole lot of r/w activity on them. They'll be online continuously, but maybe 10GB/day r/w average. My 2TB raid5 array has been running fine for 8 years without issue.
 
I picked up some of these drives as well, all going in the Plex server.
Are you using tease for movies or TV shows? I am trying to understand what people are using 12 of these for :) Wouldn't it be just as good to use physical media like DVD or Blu-Ray?
 
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Are you using tease for movies or TV shows? I am trying to understand what people are using 12 of these for :) Wouldn't it be just as good to use physical media like DVD or Blu-Ray?

Takes too much time, plus the players are slow lol.

I used to have a 6-disc DVD player and a 200-disc CD changer, then added a Blu-ray player when I got my Panasonic Plasma...great for it's time back in the 2000s, but not today.

Now all my music and movies are ripped and stored on my media server/PC in lossless format. I use either to my SqueezeBox Touch for music or my Shield TV for Movies/TV-Shows/etc. Sooooooo much more convenient IMO!
 
I picked up one of these. It had been a while since I added a new drive to my file server, mainly because there had been that price bump for a while due to chia coin :rolleyes:.

Seems like a decent drive. No issues with my computer recognizing it after shucking, plugged into an Intel 6Gbps SATA port.

14tb_empty.png


14tb_cdi.png
 
Aside from the 10TB or so of data being transferred, there's not a whole lot of r/w activity on them. They'll be online continuously, but maybe 10GB/day r/w average. My 2TB raid5 array has been running fine for 8 years without issue.
Gotcha. Yeah, if they'll be running they should be fine. All the drives I've had problems with have been after I put them in cold storage. :(
 
Gotcha. Yeah, if they'll be running they should be fine. All the drives I've had problems with have been after I put them in cold storage. :(
I had to put my Cheetah into the freezer to get it to spin up after sitting idle in my drawer for around 14 years.
 
Are you using tease for movies or TV shows? I am trying to understand what people are using 12 of these for :) Wouldn't it be just as good to use physical media like DVD or Blu-Ray?
Both in my case. Physical Blu-ray still has a place for people that want the absolute best quality, but Plex makes it convenient to have the library nice and organized all in one place.
Some folks also prefer ripping their BR movies and leave them as is, uncompressed so those files will of course take up more space.
 
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Oh God don't say that.
Unfortunately that has been my experience. I try to keep drives spinning at least every few months now because of this if not on 24x7 if it's something I want to keep. I still have a lot of drives that are not in this condition unfortunately. I expect to have to do some 'work' to get the data off of these. :(
 
I had to put my Cheetah into the freezer to get it to spin up after sitting idle in my drawer for around 14 years.
Was it usable after this or were you only able to get the data off?
 
That is what I saw when I took it apart, lol.
It literally looks like a really nice monoblock 4 piston caliper. :) Amazing that the 'brake pads' in that are magnets and they literally just help with a field so the voice coil can move the armature assembly. :)
I took apart a dozen or so dead drives one night and pulled all the magnets out
View attachment 415581
Really cool sculpture. :)
 
I took the plunge with Amazon on Friday, just for ease of returns if I get a bad one. They didn't have a shipping date and I don't really need it right away. However, I got a notice today that it's arriving Monday.
 
FWIW you can order up to 25x of the 14tb drives at best buy for $200 ea if you sign up for a business account.

I have a few already and without any airflow over them some of them run at 50C while others run at 34C.
 
Amazon limits you to 1.
That's all I need or want to pay for. It's going to stay in the enclosure and back up my server, which backs up my PCs. I'm going to try to put it in my safe which has a USB pass-through. I have a golden rod in there which keeps the temperature 1 degree above the ambient temperature in my basement, which hovers in the mid to upper 60s. I'll bet the safe will now be 2 degrees above ambient.
 
FWIW you can order up to 25x of the 14tb drives at best buy for $200 ea if you sign up for a business account.

I have a few already and without any airflow over them some of them run at 50C while others run at 34C.
Sounds like some of them are helium based while others are not.
 
Sounds like some of them are helium based while others are not.
If they are shucked, then you can visually see it right away. With Crystal Disk Info, the Helium ones will have a Helium counter showing how much is left in the drive.
Might be the 5400 and 7200 versions as well. 7200 running hotter possibly.
 
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