Looking for 4 x 4TB drives. Seems to be WD Red vs Seagate Ironwolf (green ones) to go for. Any recommendations? Presumably they're very similar. My NAS is in Raidz2. I've seen a few websites that sell refurbished drives with warranty but not sure if that's such a good idea.
I need new NAS Drives
- Thread starter panthro
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Any reason why? 2 bigger drives in RAID1 might also be a valid/cheaper option.
There's also WD Gold, and Seagate Exos which are a step above NAS drive as are rated for enterprise use (but potentially are louder/hotter running). Toshiba also produce a line of NAS hard drives the N300.
Generally though they are much of a muchness - failure rates are generally all very similar (apart from a couple of outlying bad models that all manufactures produce from time to time), and as with much of the internet people are only vocal when they have a bad experience with a certain brand.
Regardless of new or used, worth being aware of CMR vs SMR disks - SMR should be avoided for NAS use, which can be problematic as even some NAS rated drives (WD Red "EFAX" models) have used SMR Tech.
Depends entirely on whether it's a site that will still be around to claim from in a few months and what your risk appetite is. Refurbished or used drives can be an absolute bargain, and can often avoid early failures (as most hardware follows the bathtub curb of young or very old failures with nothing between).
Ideally if buying used then ask for drive stats like power on hours, and number of starts (i.e. excessively high power on hours might not be ideal, but equally neither are drives that have low power on hours but a high number of starts - e.g. used for occasional backup, but spinning them up is quite stressful)
Thanks, this is good info! I am a relative novice to home networking. Raidz2 because I had 4 x 1TB drives available and am using an HP Gen 7 microserver, and am storing a lot of family pictures and videos so wanted the extra redundancy. Although I am also thinking about burning the videos and pics to BD too, so maybe I don't need Raid2...
The only thing I use it for now is backup of family photos, videos and movies/tv shows. I am planning on getting a bit more into things with home automation but I don't need anything professional.
What OS are you running on the Microserver? I wouldn't have thought the Gen 7 had enough horsepower for ZFS RaidZ2 ?
Truenas scale. It works well enough but I have some other issues with the build so am planning to build a new NAS and planned to keep the 4 x HDD combo, but am now thinking about Raidz1.
In a similar boat. My HTPC has a mix of HDDs, the last I bought being a ST16000NM001G Exos X16 16TB 7200. When in use, it's quite loud (loud clicking when it's reading). I'll be replacing it and bunging it into an external caddy.
I've just bought a new 4 bay NAS and need to populate it. Had my heart set on 8TB IronWolf (non pros) but seeing Reddit threads saying it's quite loud. Are 7200 drives generally loud? The 3 other drives in my HTPC are all 5900 and you can't really hear them. As the NAS will be under the stairs by our bedroom, I really need fairly quiet drives.
Edit - the 6TB IronWolfs are below 7200RPM, will look into those.
I've just bought a new 4 bay NAS and need to populate it. Had my heart set on 8TB IronWolf (non pros) but seeing Reddit threads saying it's quite loud. Are 7200 drives generally loud? The 3 other drives in my HTPC are all 5900 and you can't really hear them. As the NAS will be under the stairs by our bedroom, I really need fairly quiet drives.
Edit - the 6TB IronWolfs are below 7200RPM, will look into those.
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Soldato
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Honestly given drive prices at the moment I get whatever seems cheap per tb from major brands. Also look at refurbishment drives from official sites like WD. They will also have better QC as a result.
Read general feedback on noise if that is a concern. Ie exos are noisy, some WD drives have that health check thing that makes them tick every so often etc etc
Read general feedback on noise if that is a concern. Ie exos are noisy, some WD drives have that health check thing that makes them tick every so often etc etc
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If you're out for the maximum bang for the buck, you might want to check out used SAS drives which are generally a lot cheaper than SATA equivalents on the second hand market. You'll need to factor in the cost of an HBA card, but you can get these for around £10 or so from the auction site. Not sure how well they'd play with a microserver as I don't own one - I guess space for the card and airflow might be a consideration here.
I bought 4x 6TB 7200rpm Dell-branded Seagate SAS drives for less than £100 a few months ago - they all had fewer than 100 hours power on time and a clean SMART bill of health (not a foolproof guarantee, admittedly). They haven't missed a beat so far, and don't seem to run any noisier or hotter than my other SATA drives.
There once was a time when I'd have been as enthusiastic about a used condom as a used hard drive, but the price of new HDDs seems to have remained obstinately high for several years now and, warranty considerations aside, new drives can and do still fail so I thought what the heck. A "new" drive becomes "used" the minute you power it on in any case
I bought 4x 6TB 7200rpm Dell-branded Seagate SAS drives for less than £100 a few months ago - they all had fewer than 100 hours power on time and a clean SMART bill of health (not a foolproof guarantee, admittedly). They haven't missed a beat so far, and don't seem to run any noisier or hotter than my other SATA drives.
There once was a time when I'd have been as enthusiastic about a used condom as a used hard drive, but the price of new HDDs seems to have remained obstinately high for several years now and, warranty considerations aside, new drives can and do still fail so I thought what the heck. A "new" drive becomes "used" the minute you power it on in any case
more than that, new drives have a higher failure rate than ones a few months, or years, old.If you're out for the maximum bang for the buck, you might want to check out used SAS drives which are generally a lot cheaper than SATA equivalents on the second hand market. You'll need to factor in the cost of an HBA card, but you can get these for around £10 or so from the auction site. Not sure how well they'd play with a microserver as I don't own one - I guess space for the card and airflow might be a consideration here.
I bought 4x 6TB 7200rpm Dell-branded Seagate SAS drives for less than £100 a few months ago - they all had fewer than 100 hours power on time and a clean SMART bill of health (not a foolproof guarantee, admittedly). They haven't missed a beat so far, and don't seem to run any noisier or hotter than my other SATA drives.
There once was a time when I'd have been as enthusiastic about a used condom as a used hard drive, but the price of new HDDs seems to have remained obstinately high for several years now and, warranty considerations aside, new drives can and do still fail so I thought what the heck. A "new" drive becomes "used" the minute you power it on in any case
Thanks. Just bagged 4 x 8TB for £420 recertified My Books, slight lottery on what's inside but not a bad price and should hopefully get 10% cash back through TCB.
Soldato
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My 16TB WD Elements "white" drive, shucked into a NAS is pretty loud as well. Vibration isn't too bad, but it has quite a loud audible motor noise and clicking is pretty loud.
If I do a "performance" test it's stupidly loud, but it's not too bad on the usual "playing music" sort of I/O
The 8TB version is quieter in the audible noise and clicking.