Replacement NAS HDs

Associate
Joined
12 Oct 2009
Posts
169
I'm having a run of bad luck. I have a 4-bay QNAP NAS with four 3TBs in two RAID 1 arrays. A couple of weeks ago one of them in my primary array started throwing out errors so I replaced it. Replacement DOA and wouldn't even spin up in my PC. Bought a second replacement. That played nice for three weeks then started throwing out errors.

At this point, the only sanely priced option was to replace the whole array with larger drives, so I spoffed £450 on a pair of WD Red Pro 8TB drives. Swapped first one, rebuilt array. Swapped second one, rebuilt array. Went to bed last night while the array was busy expanding to the new capacity.

Woke up this morning expecting all to be happy in NAS land and a drive in my second array is throwing out errors. I have a spare functional 3TB drive from the primary array that I've thrown in there for now, but it's old, so I want to replace both drives in the second array to be on the safe side.

My question then: what sanely priced in-stock (anywhere) options would people recommend to replace my second 3TB array please? Happy to go up in capacity to future proof, but I'm not desperate for space. I've had extremely good experiences with WD Reds until recently and not such great experiences with Seagate.
 
Last edited:
Considering the failure rate you're having at the moment I'd be checking the NAS is ok etc. Did you try the drives in another device to see if they were actually dodgy....

I'm using 10 Seagate Exos (18tb) and 2 shucked WD Red Pro (18tb) hard drives in my unraid server and I have only had one arrive DOA, that was a Seagate Exos.

I'm sure other people will come on here and say no issues with Toshiba and WD etc, it really is luck of the draw imo.
 
Last edited:
I can't comment on Toshiba but you shouldn't have any problems with NAS- or Enterprise-rated drives from Seagate and WD. In stock and sanely priced is not common at the moment and something you will have to track down for yourself.
 
Considering the failure rate you're having at the moment I'd be checking the NAS is ok etc. Did you try the drives in another device to see if they were actually dodgy....

I'm using 10 Seagate Exos (18tb) and 2 shucked WD Red Pro (18tb) hard drives in my unraid server and I have only had one arrive DOA, that was a Seagate Exos.

I'm sure other people will come on here and say no issues with Toshiba and WD etc, it really is luck of the draw imo.
I did consider testing in a PC but I can't see any way a NAS could cause bad sectors.
 
I can't comment on Toshiba but you shouldn't have any problems with NAS- or Enterprise-rated drives from Seagate and WD. In stock and sanely priced is not common at the moment and something you will have to track down for yourself.
Yeah, by "sanely priced" I was speaking relatively given the current situation.
 
Last edited:
I did consider testing in a PC but I can't see any way a NAS could cause bad sectors.
Bad connections, faulty controller and/or bad psu can cause the os to see a bad sector but it might be repairable. Look up 'soft bad sectors'.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom