What Drives are We Putting in our NAS systems These Days?

Zarathustra[H]

Zarathustra[H]

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Hey all,

After 3 years, my 12 4TB WD Reds are starting to fill up. I'm only at 70% as it stands, but I am starting to think and scheme about their replacement.

They are configured in a ZFS pool of two 6 disk RAIDz2 vdevs. My plan is to buy 6 disks at a time, not too far from eachother and replace one drive at a time, and resilver until capacity goes up.

The question is, what to get? The Red's have served me very well. In the 3+ years I've had them (some are older, as I gradually migrated to them) I've had only one start to go bad and replaced under warranty. Looking at pricing out there though, it doesn't appear as if drives have gotten much cheaper over the last 3 years since I was last buying them.

1.) There are two obvious contenders. Seagate's 8TB Ironwolf drives at $259.99 and WD's 8TB Red drives sy $264.99.

They are pretty close in price. People used to think rather poorly of Seagate. Is that still the case? I'm not convinced reliability differences even matter in a fully redundant system, unless you get so bad that you get into multiple failures, before you can replace the first one.

2.) I hear people talking about cracking open WB Mybook Duo's. Is there any reason not to do this? Do they contain real RED drives with TLER? How is warranty once you crack them open?


3.) Are there any other drives I should be considering?


Much obliged
 
I just filled up my 4-bay with 8TB reds from shucking mybook devices.

So far so good, helium filled and 179 each by this method.
 
Thanks guys.


Shucking mybooks for their WD Reds seems to be the way to go.

Are the drives inside covered under regular WD warranty, or do you have to reassemble them into the mybooks again if you ever have a problem?
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Thanks guys.


Shucking mybooks for their WD Reds seems to be the way to go.

Are the drives inside covered under regular WD warranty, or do you have to reassemble them into the mybooks again if you ever have a problem?
Click to expand...

Yup, it appears most of us shuck... the fact that the drives are cheaper in the raid enclosure than as singletons annoys me, but oh well...

I've heard the warranty is fine; the enclosures are touted with the ability to replace the drives as necessary, so I've never doubted or checked it... mostly because my drives had no problems. I can check the warranty status with WD when I get home tonight and report back, if it'll ease your mind.

EDIT: Each drive has it's own warranty, and they look to be 2 years.
 
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Zarathustra[H] said:
People used to think rather poorly of Seagate. Is that still the case? I'm not convinced reliability differences even matter in a fully redundant system, unless you get so bad that you get into multiple failures, before you can replace the first one.
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You say that, but as someone who lived the pain of an array built with old BarracudaES 1tb drives the hassle factor of replacing a drive and rebuilding your array every month or two (seriously) gets real old... real fast. I still won't touch a Seagate drive, they're in the same category as Maxtor in my mind. I used to stick with HGST, but since the buyout I've lost faith and have moved to primarily Toshiba drives.
 
capt_cope said:
You say that, but as someone who lived the pain of an array built with old BarracudaES 1tb drives the hassle factor of replacing a drive and rebuilding your array every month or two (seriously) gets real old... real fast. I still won't touch a Seagate drive, they're in the same category as Maxtor in my mind. I used to stick with HGST, but since the buyout I've lost faith and have moved to primarily Toshiba drives.
Click to expand...

I went through the same thing with the Seagate 3TB debacle but I've had good luck with 4TB and 6TB models. They're holding up fine after many years. I have a good number of them, all run 24/7.

I prefer HGST over Seagate but I buy Seagate if I can't get hold of HGST or the price differential is gigantic.

I don't understand all the WD love. I rate them well below Seagate.
 
Shucked Seagate 4TB 2.5" drives in a Supermicro 826 case. Been running 6 in Raid Z2 for 6 months now with no issues, and speeds are perfect for mass media storage.
 
I only went with the WD Reds this time around because they ended up cheaper shucked from the My Books - I've never had problems with either company.

Maxtor was garbage. in the 20 - 80GB hard drive timeframe, I found Samsung drives to be the most reliable.

TImes change. Then their phones and washing machines started exploding...
 
BecauseScience said:
I don't understand all the WD love. I rate them well below Seagate.
Click to expand...

Well, for me it was because I was looking at more affordable models than the full on enterprise drives, but still wanted TLER, which meant the "NAS Drive" market of 5400rpm drives with TLER.

This pretty much left me with a choice of Seagate and WD, and when I was buying my 12 4TB Red's it was very shortly after the Seagate 1TB - 3TB high failure rate fiasco, so I didn't know if I could trust them.

I have had very good experiences with my WD Reds though, and would not hesitate to buy them again, at the right price. I bought them all between mid 2013 and mid 2014, and they have been running 24/7 in a rather active ZFS pool ever since. Of my 12 drives, I have had no outright drive deaths, but I did have one that started to accumulate small amount of read errors, so I RMA'd it out of caution, right before the warranty expired.
 
WD Reds and Blues
Blues (Datacenter) are pretty nice, but are really expensive! My NAS came with a pair of blues and I added a pair of reds. As I eventually came across a few blues, I replaced the reds and rebuilt. Now I've got all blues, plus one extra in case of failure....
 
Mighty Man said:
WD Reds and Blues
Blues (Datacenter) are pretty nice, but are really expensive! My NAS came with a pair of blues and I added a pair of reds. As I eventually came across a few blues, I replaced the reds and rebuilt. Now I've got all blues, plus one extra in case of failure....
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Are you sure about the blue thing?

Last I checked blues were mid range desktop drives, somewhere between a green and a black (but closer to a green)

I don't think they even have TLER...
 
The serial number on the 8TB Reds that come out of the Easystore enclosure show up as EasyStore 8TB drives on the Warranty page, so I am guessing you will have to put the drive back in the enclosure if you need to send it back for warranty.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Are you sure about the blue thing?

Last I checked blues were mid range desktop drives, somewhere between a green and a black (but closer to a green)

I don't think they even have TLER...
Click to expand...

Had to go pull my spare and double check -- it's a blue label (Enterprise): WD4000F9MZ. Though when I googled it, I saw a model WD4000F9MZ for sale on Amazon with a gold label (Data Center)
 
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I've had pretty good luck with the Seagate Ironwolf 10TB drives...as in no issues so far kind of good luck.
 
I have an array of ten 8 TB HGST NAS. Western Digital now owns Hitachi. I'm guessing it impacts the WD-branded drives more since a lot of Hitachi white-label Helium drives are getting WD labels. I'd imagine someone else posting in this thread can enlighten us as to where the drives that are WD or HGST are actually coming from.
 
Charlie_D said:
I only went with the WD Reds this time around because they ended up cheaper shucked from the My Books - I've never had problems with either company.

Maxtor was garbage. in the 20 - 80GB hard drive timeframe, I found Samsung drives to be the most reliable.

TImes change. Then their phones and washing machines started exploding...
Click to expand...

In the 90's, the then hot rod drives of the time were the Maxtor MXT series. 540's and 1240's iirc.

They were 6300 rpm (fastest at the time) and the sea read/write and transaction rates were off the planet fast.

I used hundreds of these in high end Mac pre-press setups, usually in Raid-0 configurations. I don't ever recall a failure.

That was then though. I didn't even know Maxtor still existed.

Update: MXT-540 Specs. The Ferrari of Hard Drives in its time:

Apricot Part Number PT15109831
Access Times Single Track Seek <1.5 mS (read), <2.0 mS (write)
Average Seek 8.5 mS
Latency 4.76 mS
Power Up Time 13 - 15 seconds
Data Transfer Rate Asynchronous 5 MBytes/sec
Synchronous 10 MBytes/sec
Drive Characteristics Cylinders 2,466
R/W Heads 7
Sector/Track 46 - 78
Disks 4
Encoding RLL
Rotational Speed 6,300 rpm
Track Density 2,364 tpi
Reliability MTBF 300,000 POH
MTTR 20 mins
 
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I just built a new Synology 1517+ with 5 Ironwolf 4TB drives. I sure as hell hope they are reliable.
 
TechLarry said:
In the 90's, the then hot rod drives of the time were the Maxtor MXT series. 620's and 1240's iirc.

They were 6300 rpm (fastest at the time) and the sea read/write and transaction rates were off the planet fast.

I used hundreds of these in high end Mac pre-press setups, usually in Raid-0 configurations. I don't ever recall a failure.

That was then though. I didn't even know Maxtor still existed.
Click to expand...

I don't think they do... :)

Most of my experience with Maxtor was circa the late 90's and early 2000s. I was a tech, but I also delt with all the RMAs at the company I worked for at the time. So many Maxtors hard drives, Soyo motherboards (which were just... so much crap), Abit boards (I loved them when they worked, but fuck were they temperamental), I still have nightmares about PC Chips...

That said, everyone had different experiences. I'm sure someone, somewhere would even leap to defend PC Chips...

Anyway, this is getting way off-topic :D

I have 3x 4TB Seagate NAS drives that have been running steady in a backup box for at least 4 years now. Like I said, I've never had any trouble with Seagate drives, personally... so from that point of view, I'd say you're safe.

I'm sure my personal Quality Guarantee puts any worry you had to rest... (y)
 
TechLarry said:
In the 90's, the then hot rod drives of the time were the Maxtor MXT series. 620's and 1240's iirc.

They were 6300 rpm (fastest at the time) and the sea read/write and transaction rates were off the planet fast.

I used hundreds of these in high end Mac pre-press setups, usually in Raid-0 configurations. I don't ever recall a failure.

That was then though. I didn't even know Maxtor still existed.
Click to expand...

How challenging would it be to spin a single 1.5GB platter pushing 10MBps? ;)
 
It's been a few years now, I have 24*3Tb HGST Ultrastar and another 16*2Tb HGST Deskstar in two Supermicro chassis. 8*1TB Micron SSD, Intel DC P3700 as slog and cache.

In the last 3-4 years, I have 2*2TB Deskstar failure 1*3TB Ultrastar failures.

Was thinking to replace the 2TB with 6TB Ultrastar SAS but with P3700 as slog, the disks in the back doesn't really matters anymore.
 
Does it make any sense at all for a 12 drive home NAS server to spend a few extra bucks and go for enterprise level drives like HGST's HE10 drives or WD's Gold drives over consumer / small business NAS drives like WD's RED drives and Seagates Ironwolf drives?

Does SAS really have any benefit over SATA? Looking at the specs alone, it looks negligible.
 
I would imagine it depends on how much those 'few extra bucks' adds up to. If you can justify the cost, go for it!

I've never moved beyond the regular Seagate NAS or WD Red drives in my home system(s), and my current X11SSM-F sata ports cover my needs (I only run 8 drives total) - I had enough trouble justifying that build to myself, honestly.
 
I've got 15~ HGST 4TB drives that are going on 3.5 years that have had zero failures so far.

The other 30 or so 4 & 8TB drives are all Seagate, all about the same age except for the 8TB drives which are right at two years.

I've had three of the Seagate 4TB drives fail and zero failures on the other drives. (The Seagates all threw SMRT errors so I did have warning)

Out of the six 8TB Seagate drives I've had online for two years none have failed or started to throw errors yet.

It's almost time on this end to pick up a couple additional 8TB or 12TB drives also.

ATM I've got warm fuzzies for HGST but am going to consider WD and Seagate.

~RF
 
QUOTE="Charlie_D, post: 1043223514, member: 156419"]I would imagine it depends on how much those 'few extra bucks' adds up to. If you can justify the cost, go for it![/QUOTE]

Hmm.

Well right now, 8TB drives seem to cost th efollowing on Amazon:

Seagate Ironwolf 8TB: $258.99
Seagate Ironwolf Pro 8TB: $349.99
WD Red 8TB: $274.99
WD Red Pro 8TB: $343.87
WD Gold 8TB: $389.99
HGST HE10 8TB: $319.99
Seagate Enterprise 8TB: Prices are all over the place, and you need to have a decoder ring to understand age and what you are getting.

So, obviously, the Ironwolf is the cheapest. Seagate does have that reliability reputation problem though. It is unclear to me what the Ironwolf Pro adds on top of this. Data rescue services seem to be one of the added perks, but I don't feel I need this. They re also ever so slightly faster, and officially supported in 16 drive enclosures. (the regular Ironwolf is 8 only, but not that this has ever stopped anyone)

I have a little bit more comfort when it comes to WD Red's reliability. You could always get them cheaper by shucking DUO's, but then you get less warranty... Not sure if I'd be willing to pay for the Pro variety though, when the HGST 8TB drive is cheaper and has a better reputation for reliability. The WD Gold just seems outrageously priced.

So, for me I am really just debating the following:

  • Seagate Ironwolf (non Pro) as the low cost option.
  • WD Red 8TB (Non-Pro) as the medium priced "I a have 12 WD Red 4TB's and have been reasonably happy with them, with only one needing warranty replacement over 3-4 years" option.
  • HGST HE10 8TB as the premium, well regarded reliability option at a surprisingly decent (but still the most expensive) option.

I think I have decided against shucking DUO's due to the shorter warranty


So, since I have a pool consisting of two RAIDz2 vdev's, I feel reasonably confident that I can get a replacement drive quickly enough to not be TOO concerned about reliability (within reason). This makes me lean towards the Ironwolf and its lower cost. This gives me 3 years of warranty before having to pay for any replacement drives if they fail.

On the other hand, my WD Red experience has been good, so there is a draw when it comes to sticking with what has worked to date.

And then there's the bulletproof helium HGST's, which are also tempting. Less worry and swapping drives short term, and longer life after the warranty expires does make them attractive. 5 year warranty too...

Choices choices choices...
 
lol, choices indeed... I've personally never had an issue (or a failure) with Seagate drives, and I've used quite a few of them over the years. I've rarely ever had a Western Digital issue either personally, but I did RMA a large number of them in the early 2000s for work.

In my own setup, I shucked the drives - if one or two die after the 2 year warranty, I'll likely be in the mood to start trading up anyway...

I'm also buying in Canada, and we rarely have the same sales that you have down south on the 8tb drives. I know I've been jealous of a few postings in the Hot Deals forum over the last several months.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Hmm.

Well right now, 8TB drives seem to cost th efollowing on Amazon:

Seagate Ironwolf 8TB: $258.99
Seagate Ironwolf Pro 8TB: $349.99
WD Red 8TB: $274.99
WD Red Pro 8TB: $343.87
WD Gold 8TB: $389.99
HGST HE10 8TB: $319.99
Seagate Enterprise 8TB: Prices are all over the place, and you need to have a decoder ring to understand age and what you are getting.

So, obviously, the Ironwolf is the cheapest. Seagate does have that reliability reputation problem though. It is unclear to me what the Ironwolf Pro adds on top of this. Data rescue services seem to be one of the added perks, but I don't feel I need this. They re also ever so slightly faster, and officially supported in 16 drive enclosures. (the regular Ironwolf is 8 only, but not that this has ever stopped anyone)

I have a little bit more comfort when it comes to WD Red's reliability. You could always get them cheaper by shucking DUO's, but then you get less warranty... Not sure if I'd be willing to pay for the Pro variety though, when the HGST 8TB drive is cheaper and has a better reputation for reliability. The WD Gold just seems outrageously priced.

So, for me I am really just debating the following:

  • Seagate Ironwolf (non Pro) as the low cost option.
  • WD Red 8TB (Non-Pro) as the medium priced "I a have 12 WD Red 4TB's and have been reasonably happy with them, with only one needing warranty replacement over 3-4 years" option.
  • HGST HE10 8TB as the premium, well regarded reliability option at a surprisingly decent (but still the most expensive) option.

I think I have decided against shucking DUO's due to the shorter warranty


So, since I have a pool consisting of two RAIDz2 vdev's, I feel reasonably confident that I can get a replacement drive quickly enough to not be TOO concerned about reliability (within reason). This makes me lean towards the Ironwolf and its lower cost. This gives me 3 years of warranty before having to pay for any replacement drives if they fail.

On the other hand, my WD Red experience has been good, so there is a draw when it comes to sticking with what has worked to date.

And then there's the bulletproof helium HGST's, which are also tempting. Less worry and swapping drives short term, and longer life after the warranty expires does make them attractive. 5 year warranty too...

Choices choices choices...
Click to expand...


Also, I just found the last gen HGST HE8 8TB drives on Amazon for $274.99 whch seem slike quite the deal.

Biggest differences between these and the newer HE10's appear to be half the cache (128MB vs 256) and slightly slower sequential speeds (225MB/s vs 245MB/s)

I don't even feel like those things matter in my setup. Might be a good deal...
 
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I still favor WD but had few problems with Seagate. They seem to be doing well after the 1.5tb and 3tb problem drives. I've used more WD so had more of them fail.

Anyone had experience with seagate externals lately? Been reading that some of the newer 2.5 and 3.5 models are unreliable.
 
Ranulfo said:
I still favor WD but had few problems with Seagate. They seem to be doing well after the 1.5tb and 3tb problem drives. I've used more WD so had more of them fail.

Anyone had experience with seagate externals lately? Been reading that some of the newer 2.5 and 3.5 models are unreliable.
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I have a 4TB Seagate external, it's 3 years old and has been on 24/7 since I got it. 26,707 hours, 118 power on count.

Just looked at my Samsung F4 2TB drives. They have been on for 6 years now, over 52,000 hours, and no issues at all.
 
Same as most here, MyBook 8tb.... best value for the money atm, i have open 8 cases, not a single issue, all working great.
 
mnewxcv said:
Wd reds out of my books. No better value.
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WD Red Pro’s? Or the normal variety?

I’ve got 4 2tb WD Reds in my NAS in Raid 5. Just had my first one start to fail... lasted just over 3 years, so just out warranty.

Decided to replace them all with 4tb HGST (HG0S04005) drives at $134 a pop. (Going to use the remaining Reds as stand alone backup drives.)

The HGST drives are rated a bit better as to reliability and are much faster than the Red at the same price.
 
Supercharged_Z06 said:
WD Red Pro’s? Or the normal variety?

I’ve got 4 2tb WD Reds in my NAS in Raid 5. Just had my first one start to fail... lasted just over 3 years, so just out warranty.

Decided to replace them all with 4tb HGST (HG0S04005) drives at $134 a pop. (Going to use the remaining Reds as stand alone backup drives.)

The HGST drives are rated a bit better as to reliability and are much faster than the Red at the same price.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure I'd use the Reds standalone, what with them being TLER drives. It reduces the chance of data recovery in case of a bad sector, tomprovide better raid performance.

I'd still use raid somehow with them.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I'm not sure I'd use the Reds standalone, what with them being TLER drives. It reduces the chance of data recovery in case of a bad sector, tomprovide better raid performance.

I'd still use raid somehow with them.
Click to expand...

I’ve got three of them that are still good. Plan to rotate them as back-up drives - won’t be powered up unless actually writing to them. Not too worried as to data loss with incremental monthly backups coming from the NAS. (Nothing critical as to files - family photos, music collection, word docs, etc., just good to have another set of backup drives.)
 
The Ultrastar He8 and its derivatives (5400rpm - white label and Red label) have all been rock solid for me 24/7/365.
No DOAs (torture tested upon receipt), no SMART errors whatsoever.
 
I'm debating how much the warranty matters to me, regarding shucking.

On the one hand, out of my 12x 4TB Red's I've had to replace one of them under warranty in 3 years, as it started getting read and write errors. All the others have been perfect.

So, on the one hand, the longer warranty on non-shucked drives has already saved me from having to buy another drive.

On the other hand, 4TB drives are nowhere near as expensive as they were when they were new, so the savings is considerably smaller than the purchase price would suggest...
 
As someone mentioned above, and what has been by 30+ years of experience with mechanical drives is if it works for a year or two it will most likely work for a long time, long time.

Heck, usually if it lasts a few months out of the box the same applies, actually....

Just sayin'

~RF
 
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