Need some advice on large storage drives for raid 1

[Kobrakai]

I have 4 WD Green mechanical hard drives of mixed sizes that are completely full totalling around 5TB. They are all over 10 years old so I would like to replace them with a single larger drive of at least 8TB, though ideally 10-12TB.

The drives are mostly used for movies, TV shows, amd music. All of the content can be replaced so I'm not too worried about backups, but it would be a huge pain to find, download, and organise it all again so I would like to buy two drives and put them in raid 1. This will at least protect me against drive failure which is probably the biggest threat to this data.

The problem I'm having is that desktop/consumer drives like the Seagate Barracuda and WD Blue seem to top out at 8TB and are SMR which I've read are not suitable for raid setups. Then there's the "gaming" drives like Seagate Firecuda and WD Black which are CMR but they are very expensive and I don't really need the extra speed. Finally there's the NAS and enterprise drives like the Seagate IronWolf and WD Red. I'm leaning towards getting a WD Red Plus but I keep reading they are extremely noisy and something you would want in a server room and not a desktop PC, especially once you go over 8TB. Is it something I should be concerned about?

I guess I'm asking what would be the best drives for a raid 1 setup around 8-12TB that aren't stupidly loud or expensive. I'm not too bothered about speed or anything like that.

 

[wonko]

Instead of raid, another option to consider might be to use Drivepool and do manual/scheduled sync between volumes.
I can't help with recommendations for quiet drives, but I've found that most noise is transmitted via the case and mounting them on elastic makes a big difference.

 

[Rannoch]

Stablebit Drivepool is excellent and will clone the data on the fly.

I bought loads of large drives 10-16TB from Western Digital and have no issues, yet lol

 

[hornetstinger]

I just went for a recertified WD Elements, 16TB <£200 so good value. Re-using my smaller drives for the backup, like you having multiple small drives is a pain. I'll just do a backup every six months or so, using a SATA caddy.

 

[Snapshot]

I have 4 WD Green mechanical hard drives of mixed sizes that are completely full totalling around 5TB. They are all over 10 years old so I would like to replace them with a single larger drive of at least 8TB, though ideally 10-12TB.

The drives are mostly used for movies, TV shows, amd music. All of the content can be replaced so I'm not too worried about backups, but it would be a huge pain to find, download, and organise it all again so I would like to buy two drives and put them in raid 1. This will at least protect me against drive failure which is probably the biggest threat to this data.

The problem I'm having is that desktop/consumer drives like the Seagate Barracuda and WD Blue seem to top out at 8TB and are SMR which I've read are not suitable for raid setups. Then there's the "gaming" drives like Seagate Firecuda and WD Black which are CMR but they are very expensive and I don't really need the extra speed. Finally there's the NAS and enterprise drives like the Seagate IronWolf and WD Red. I'm leaning towards getting a WD Red Plus but I keep reading they are extremely noisy and something you would want in a server room and not a desktop PC, especially once you go over 8TB. Is it something I should be concerned about?

I guess I'm asking what would be the best drives for a raid 1 setup around 8-12TB that aren't stupidly loud or expensive. I'm not too bothered about speed or anything like that.

You missed an option which is to shuck WD Elements drives out of their cases. The drives are white-label with their own IDs but the underlying hardware must be shared with either Red or better drives of the same capacity. I have a number of 8TB drives I use for monthly backups and two 18TB in RAID 1 in my backup NAS.

 

[hornetstinger]

You missed an option which is to shuck WD Elements drives out of their cases. The drives are white-label with their own IDs but the underlying hardware must be shared with either Red or better drives of the same capacity. I have a number of 8TB drives I use for monthly backups and two 18TB in RAID 1 in my backup NAS.

yup I've shucked a 8 and 16TB. Far cheaper than bare drives (which is nuts) I think 16TB WD red is something like £360, stupid pricing

 

[wonko]

yup I've shucked a 8 and 16TB. Far cheaper than bare drives (which is nuts) I think 16TB WD red is something like £360, stupid pricing

I've done the same many times.
For the OP, the warranty is probably invalidated so if you're going this route give them a thorough test in their enclosures first. You may also need to cover pin 3 on the sata data connector.

 

[Snapshot]

Interestingly, I had to deal with pin 3 on the older 8TB drives but not on the latest pair which are the same 5640rpm as the 8TB WD Plus nor on the 18TB. This is too small a sample to be certain but wouldn't it be good if the pin 3 faff was a thing of the past?

 

[hornetstinger]

Interestingly, I had to deal with pin 3 on the older 8TB drives but not on the latest pair which are the same 5640rpm as the 8TB WD Plus nor on the 18TB. This is too small a sample to be certain but wouldn't it be good if the pin 3 faff was a thing of the past?

No problems with my NAS and tape on 3 pin. Slot in, and they work. 8TB and 16TB WD Elements shucked.