8TB WD Red NAS vs Seagate NAS?

[eddie200112]

I have run out of room on my freenas zpool which consists of 2 vdevs each with 6 4TB drives in a a Z2 config. I originally bought 8TB WD NAS reds but also bought the Seagate NAS yesterday as they were only 250 on newegg.

Has anyone had better experiences with the either of the 2? Failures etc? I'm more concerned with reliability than I am with performance.

Thanks everyone.

 

[joeschmuck]

I think you will be doing some internet searches for this type of information. I don't think the drives have been out long enough to get any real statistics. I have looked at some stuff on the internet over the past 6 months or so and Seagate is finally coming back with reliable drives for the consumer.

While I'm still partial to the WD Reds (I've been very lucky), I could be seen to switch over to Seagate. Not sure if I'd ever buy 8TB drives unless I made a 3 way mirror... Oh Snap! (Yea I said it), I could buy 8TB or 10TB drives and make a 3 way mirror. That would do me perfectly. Now I just need to wait until my drives start failing me in a few years :D.

 

[eddie200112]

Ya I was seeing the same thing about the seagates. Ya definitely a bit nervous to go the 8TB route but I'm hoping the expansion will go smoothly, and I should be ok since my server has a very low workload. I only use it for a media server and watch or add a couple movies per week on it.

 

[Ericloewe]

The 8TB Reds are helium drives, so they tend to be a bit less power-hungry and the reliability of the helium line seems at least on par with what's normal.

 

[eddie200112]

Ok ya I think I'm going to keep the Seagates as they only cost me 250 each compared to 300 for the Reds. So I'll cross my fingers.

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[joeschmuck]

The 8TB Reds are helium drives, so they tend to be a bit less power-hungry and the reliability of the helium line seems at least on par with what's normal.

I didn't know that. Honestly, I wouldn't buy them then. A hermetically sealed drive kind of bugs me. I know it's from issues in the past where the helium would leak out but if they solved that issue then I could live with it. Time will tell.

 

[Bidule0hm]

I didn't know that. Honestly, I wouldn't buy them then. A hermetically sealed drive kind of bugs me. I know it's from issues in the past where the helium would leak out but if they solved that issue then I could live with it. Time will tell.

Funnily enough the helium atom is so small that it'll leak pretty much trough everything. But if the pressure inside the drive is the same as the outside then it shouln't loose enough helium to be relevant.

 

[Arwen]

Thinking about helium, it's such a small atom, that even if it could leak out, there would need to be
cause for the leak. Specifically external presure drop, or larger hole.

Without a presure drop, the "hole" the helium leaked out of would need to be big enough for something
larger, (oxygen or nitrogen), to replace the helium. Otherwise, we would get a vacuum inside the drive.
That would prevent the helium from leaking out.

Took me a while of thought to come up with that theory. Anybody else have something better?

 

[eddie200112]

While I have you guys here. I also ordered another 32GB of ram. Should a total of 64GB suffice for my setup with the new drives.

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[joeschmuck]

Why buy more RAM? You shouldn't need it just because you are getting new and larger drives but it won't hurt. If the system worked fine with 32GB, it should work just as well with the larger drives. It's that damn RAM rule of Thumb which keeps showing up.

 

[joeschmuck]

Anybody else have something better?

Well I'm thinking centrifugal force myself which is creating a low pressure in the center of the rotating mass and a high pressure on the outer edge of the rotating mass. This would give the outer edges of the case a higher pressure. I would guess if the case were pressurized a little bit, the volume of helium escaping could be manageable and so long as there wasn't an appreciable negative pressure when the drive spins down, no leaks would happen contaminating the internal space.

But I know that there was an issue many years ago with hard drives leaking helium and they would die a premature death. I still don't think I'd buy one of these without a 5 year warranty. I actually plan that my hard drives will last 5 years before I need to replace them. Four of my drives have recently exceed the 4 year power on time and two are close behind (bought them a few months later when figuring out what I wanted to build).

 

[eddie200112]

Why buy more RAM? You shouldn't need it just because you are getting new and larger drives but it won't hurt. If the system worked fine with 32GB, it should work just as well with the larger drives. It's that damn RAM rule of Thumb which keeps showing up.

Oh I was under the impression I needed 1GB for every 1TB of hard drive I had after the base 8GB required? Is that not the case now?

 

[joeschmuck]

Oh I was under the impression I needed 1GB for every 1TB of hard drive I had after the base 8GB required? Is that not the case now?

If you were building a high powered super duper NAS that had all the greatest bells and whistles, sure. But! for a home system 8GB is a good starter and 16GB is a nice sweet spot. 32GB would be for someone who plans to run a lot of jails/VMs. 64GB is for the POWER USER.

I have 64GB RAM in my system but I also run ESXi and then FreeNAS on top of that in a VM. I give that FreeNAS VM a solid 16GB RAM, that is all. I could increase it if I ever needed to but I don't see that need coming.

Next time you will likely ask before spending almost $200 on RAM, unless you got it at a great price.

 

[eddie200112]

Well I'm glad I asked now as I was about to buy another 64Gb to max out the system.

 

[joeschmuck]

There are situations where the RAM could be of benefit but more in an office environment. The extra RAM is the ARC and that is where data which is accessed frequently will be cached and make pulling the files in speedy. Typically in a home system we do not access the same data/files over and over. If you accessed a particular database often then that would be cached for instance. I rarely access the same data in a month at home. Some people host gaming servers at home and that would be one of the few examples were lots of RAM would be a benefit at home.

 

[eddie200112]

Also again while i have you all here, and i apologize if it would have been nest to start a new thread but a couple things i want to be sure of before i start the expansion.
1. Currently my pool is at 80% more likely 80.xx%. any reason to get it under 80% before i start?
2. Is there any easy way to identify which disks are in each Vdev? Im pretty sure which are based i where i installed them but would like to be 100% sure?.
3. I will be using a spare SAS port to plug in the replacement drives while I run the replacement. When i remove the old drive do i have to attach the replacement drive to that same port or can i change them if i want to for some reason (reorganizing layout perhaps..)? I believe i was once told that freenas doesn't care where they are plugged in (I could swap all my drives to different ports and freenas would figure it out) correct?
4. Should i enable HDD standby, advanced power management, or acoustic level (to minimum) to help extend the life of my drives or would it be minimally usefull. Again i only use my server for movies and long term storage.

Thanks again

 

[MrToddsFriends]

2. Is there any easy way to identify which disks are in each Vdev? Im pretty sure which are based i where i installed them but would like to be 100% sure?.

The script provided here might be useful:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...information-v1-0-5-zpool-drive-info-py.42458/
Scroll down that page and fetch v1.0.7 of that script for FreeNAS 9.10.

 

[Ericloewe]

3. I will be using a spare SAS port to plug in the replacement drives while I run the replacement. When i remove the old drive do i have to attach the replacement drive to that same port or can i change them if i want to for some reason (reorganizing layout perhaps..)? I believe i was once told that freenas doesn't care where they are plugged in (I could swap all my drives to different ports and freenas would figure it out) correct?

Literally no RAID solution that's any good (even Intel fakeRAID!) cares about which drive goes in which port. If they did, things would break left and right.

Let me make it clear in case someone stumbles upon this, to see if we can kill this myth:

ZFS does not care which drives go where, as long as all the HBAs work properly.
RAID solutions do not care which drives go where. (Some crap RAID on a chip stuff might, but that's the least of their problems)

 

[danb35]

Currently my pool is at 80% more likely 80.xx%. any reason to get it under 80% before i start?

No.

I was under the impression I needed 1GB for every 1TB of hard drive I had after the base 8GB required?

This is a loose, and deliberately vague, rule of thumb, and probably has more to do with space actually used than anything else. The minimum is 8 GB, and 16 GB is a good "sweet spot" for most home uses. Beyond that, it's really going to be a performance thing. More RAM will almost always help performance, but if your performance is fine now, adding capacity won't suddenly make it worse.

 

[eddie200112]

Thanks for all the advice everyone! much appreciated!

Any thoughts on my last question however? I just want to make sure im doing everything I can to preserve my data and keep my drives lasting the longest.

4. Should i enable HDD standby, advanced power management, or acoustic level (to minimum) to help extend the life of my drives or would it be minimally usefull. Again i only use my server for movies and long term storage.

Thanks again.