WD Red Vs Seagate Ironwolf (NAS)

RSR · 18 Feb 2017 at 18:37

Hey All,

As my current drives (WD Black 4TB) have around 22500 hours of powered on use, even though they have a 5-year warranty on them I normally look to change my drives every 3 years. Normally, I'd just go and order another WD drive. However, i've been reading about the new Seagate drives and they seem to be getting quite favourable reviews and the next version of DSM will have updates to take advantages of the extra sensors and/or features on these (Ironwolf) drives.

I'm currently using WD Black 4TB (WDC WD4003FZEX) in my Synology DS 916+

What drives are now the preferred choice?

Thanks.

bledd · 19 Feb 2017 at 14:59

Personally, I wouldn't change them just because they're old. Drives tend to die within the first 6 months if they're doing to fail. Providing they've not had any bad sector reports in DSM, I'd just carry on using them.

Maundie · 20 Feb 2017 at 21:45

Yeah I wouldn't change it just for the sake of it, as said they tend to fail early doors and if not could end up running for years.

My 2Tb Red has been running in my NAS for well over 3 years and doesn't have any bad sectors reported in DSM.

RSR · 22 Feb 2017 at 00:52

Cool, cheers guys. I just normally change drives out as a matter of course after 3 years. I'll buy a one and put it on the shelf in that case.

bremen1874 · 22 Feb 2017 at 01:19

Why would you buy a drive to sit on a shelf with its warranty ticking away?

Do you need to have a cold spare available that desperately?

RSR · 22 Feb 2017 at 10:45

No, I don't need it desperately. However, I was planning on upgrading the storage as well so going from 4TB to ether 6TB or 8TB drives and then reusing the old drives else where..

bledd · 22 Feb 2017 at 15:50

If they're kept at a nice temperature and don't have any physical movement when they're on, then hard drives can last an astonishingly long time.

Disco_P · 22 Feb 2017 at 21:30

Even if they do die, they are still in warranty and WD RMA is very fast. As long as you have a backup you're covered for the full 5 years.

AintNoHippie · 25 Feb 2017 at 17:15

Sorry to ask but if you had to make a choice which would it be?

I'm currently looking to up my storage game on my HP N54L running whs2011. At the moment all I have is the 250gb boot Seagate Barracuda, a 1tb Barracuda & a 2tb Barracuda pooled together using Drive Bender but I'm looking to replace the pool with 2x 3 or 4tb drives but I'm chewing over where to place my money.

Five_Star · 27 Feb 2017 at 13:31

I was about to do the same thing with my Synology and the Ironwolf disks. However, as with all the Seagate drives I've ever owned there is an issue with both the disks AND Synology compatibility!!

From the Synology forum in recent weeks it seems that the disks have not been correctly parking and so the load cycle count has been into the hundreds of thousands for drives only powered on for a few weeks!

The DSM 6.1 release last week has helped but it's still not all fixed it seems. The drives are still very noisy and people are reporting all sorts of random disk behaviour when systems are not busy. Seagate are supposedly readying updated firmware for the disks too.

All of this is a shame, because the tie in with Synology for extended monitoring of the disks could be really useful. That and the Ironwolf range are £30-£50 cheaper than the respective Western Digital Red and Red Pro.

I'm waiting, yet again

RSR · 28 Feb 2017 at 11:42

AintNoHippie said:
Sorry to ask but if you had to make a choice which would it be?

At the moment, i'd still pick WD Red over the Ironwolf.

Five_Star · 10 Mar 2017 at 10:46

I would agree, but have you seen prices? WD Red Pro 6TB were £219, cheapest now if places have stock is £260ish!!

Seagate have a more aggressive price policy which is tempting, especially when buying 4-5 disks but too much bad history and issues sadly

seagate_surfer · 19 May 2017 at 23:38

Thank you for considering Seagate Ironwolf drives! We strive to provide the best drives possible, so please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.

IAmATeaf · 22 May 2017 at 10:24

I've personally only ever used to use Seagate drives and then had the saga with their 500Gb drives having ADHD and had noisy 1.5Tb Barracuda drives which their support department said there was nothing wrong but they both failed with a few months.

After the above and as people will know, yes they are in warranty but it's the hassle associated with sending the drives and restoring that I can do without I decided to give Western Digital a go and haven't really looked back or missed Seagate.

I've just upgraded my Buffalo NAS with 4 x 6Tb Western Digital Red drives, apart from the damned NAS not properly supporting the size I've had no issues with the drives per-se but it's early days I suppose.

Five_Star · 22 May 2017 at 14:36

I really should have updated this sooner, as in the end I DID go got the IronWolf drives in my NAS.

The need was urgent and the price was really very, very good. Considering a firmware update had already been issued and forum rumbling on the issues had died down I was a little happier.

After having had the 4TB IronWolf drives running 24/7 for a good few weeks now I'm very happy. They are cool and quiet. Looking at the spec sheets I think that most questions raised are from the 8TB and 10TB models. They are just so different from the regular drives we see today and run a fair bit hotter and nosier by design.

I guess the takeaway is do your research for what your best fit is.

pc-guy · 22 May 2017 at 17:52

I have had my 6TB ironwolf for a week and a bit now and its quite nice. a lot quieter than the older barracuda and it is a lot faster. I am getting sustained 350-300MB/s transfer rates when I am plugged into my hotswap. Now it is plugged into my VR900 as media storage.

Although my aspiration is to have a 3x6TB NAS with ironwolf or WD red but in Raid 5 for that bit of redundancy as I am unlikely to have any form of backup to mirror a drive that size.

IAmATeaf · 26 May 2017 at 10:36

Couldn't you just use 4x6TB in RAID 10, that then effectively is sort of backing up the data although I know you can't strictly rely upon it if it's important data.

pc-guy · 26 May 2017 at 15:19

raid 10 will give half capacity of the total drive; speed = twice the single drive
raid 5 gives 3/4 of the total capacity with the parity bits as redundancy. speed = 3 times the single drive

the speeds i dunno if it is direct translation as I think there will be significant amount of raid bits to be written also

obviously raid 10 gives a lot more redundancy and you can suffer 2 drive failure in a 4 drive nas and still survive. But i am thinking 1 out of 4 will be pretty rare already let along 2 out of 4. so raid 5 is good enough for me.

ToTheMax · 27 May 2017 at 07:53

pc-guy said:
raid 10 will give half capacity of the total drive; speed = twice the single drive
raid 5 gives 3/4 of the total capacity with the parity bits as redundancy. speed = 3 times the single drive

the speeds i dunno if it is direct translation as I think there will be significant amount of raid bits to be written also

obviously raid 10 gives a lot more redundancy and you can suffer 2 drive failure in a 4 drive nas and still survive. But i am thinking 1 out of 4 will be pretty rare already let along 2 out of 4. so raid 5 is good enough for me.

Isn't complete raid failure though related to the size of the array and the drive URE rate though? In a single drive failure mode while the array is degraded all remaining data in a raid 5 has to be read to reconstruct the data, a single URE will result in an array failure. From my reading around with consumer drives with a 10^14 URE rates arrays over 12TB in size raid 5 is worthless, raid 6 or 10 is recommended?

Steampunk · 28 May 2017 at 19:36

I've had enough failures with Seagate drives that I don't touch them any more. Their philosophy seems to be to make them cheap, sell them cheap, get as much volume as possible. When they break within the minimum years of warranty, make the customer pay for postage and send out a refurb. They are basically the Wallmart of drive manufacturers. Stick with WD, even if they cost a little more.