NAS Drives - Media Playback

[McDaniel]

Hello,

I've had 4x8TB WD Red Drives in my NAS:

1. Purchased Dec 2016 - Died Feb 2023
2. Purchased Feb 2017 - Died Mar 2023
3. Purchased Nov 2017 - Currently Alive
4. Purchased Apr 2019 - Died June 2022

As you can see i've had 3 drives die in the last 6-8months - all out of warranty, I run regular checks on them the drive in June that died in fairness did have some bad sectors so knew that'd be on its way out - the drives that died this year had no bad sectors but both crashed instead.

I want to replace this (slowly given the cost of drives!) - but not sure i want to stick with WD Red, appreciate these things can be a bit of a lottery but any brands people prefer? Was looking at the Seagate Ironwolfs? Or are there any that give better warranties?

I mainly rip 1080p/4k content and do run a plex server for a couple of family members to use remotely - but i wouldnt say they take a massive beating...

Cheers,

 

[McDaniel]

What NAS, how many drives does it hold, what's it cooling like etc? The wear and tear on a drive as a media server using 1/2 drive is going to be different to 4 drives... and cooling seems to be a big thing with drive life in my experience.

Were these the WD Red drives that turned out to be smr which isn't great for NAS use, could be part of the issue.

Synology NAS - 4 day - DS916+

Drives were around 35deg normally - in a server rack under the stairs. Been in same place for 2 years (moved 2 years ago - before that similar but in another house) so their conditions for the last 4+ years has been the same.

How would i know if they were SMR or not?

 

[McDaniel]

Random thought but has anyone moved in with heavy feet recently or any young kids running up and down the stairs?

My NAS only has 3 WD Reds but I've had no failures or bad sectors since 2017. I work in a training environment with hundreds of desktop drives and server drives. The desktops are treated like crap quite often being moved from site to site and in and out of storage and yet I see hardly any HDD/SSD failures.

Nah - just me and the Mrs, although its under the stairs its tucked around a corner off the utility room so 0 vibration from the actual stairs and its in a raised server rack / enclosed.

Might just be super bad luck I guess, annoying!!

 

[McDaniel]

With that failure rate there must be something else going on. Faulty batch, excessive use.

Nothing has changed in the years i've used them - I only have 3-4 plex users and generally no more than 2 at a time - and only for a couple hours a day if that! I'd hardly say usage is excessive vs what the drives are rated at. I dont know if plex is doing something to keep the drives spinning maybe? Historically i used emby/kodi and just switched to Plex for external user ease.

 

[McDaniel]

Not in my experience.

I'm using Plex on a Synology DS918+ NAS - there's an option for whether you'd like the HDDs to spin-down after a certain time in the Synology software, Plex doesn't override that unless of course you keep dipping into your media often. Whether it's better to do spin down, or leave the drives running 24/7 is, of course, an entirely different debate.

Is that the HDD Hibernation setting if so i've got that enabled also (20 mins).