Hard Drive recommendation

[smit4.hage4]

I'm half way through building a new FreeNAS box. I've bought a Supermicro SC846BE16 - which I intend to partially fill with an IBM M1015. The main point here is that I'm tired of buying 4 bay units and not having any room to grow (also wanted 4U regardless). I will purchase more disks down the track when I can afford to.

I currently have 8.8Tib of data and would like some recommendations on drives. Workload will mostly be reading TV shows, movies and writing weekly backups. I can split my data into two pools if that provides a better outcome.

Data on failure rates often seems to be anecdotal. So useful advice would be from anyone with 8+ drive configurations. Some forums strongly suggest that vibrations will be the end of any drive unless you buy enterprise class drives. Is this accurate? Can I space the drives out?

I was considering 8x 4TB drives and installing 6 now in a Raidz2. But open to suggestions.

Can anyone comment on WD Reds vs WD Red Pro?

I've read that data from Backblaze is not representative as the sample size is too small in some cases. It also suggests that Seagate's failure rates have improved drastically. If anyone has recent experience running a large Seagate box with drives purchased in the last 2 years I would be interested to hear. (Yes I understand that 2 years is not a big enough sample but this is more useful that hearing about drives no longer available for sale.)

Cheers

 

[DrKK]

I'll just give you some anecdotal things, and some sense of the community:

1) We never recommend the WD Pro's. We don't think you are getting anything usable/relevant for the substantially higher price tags
2) Many of us, *MANY* of us, run 10, 20, regular WD red drives in the same chassis, without a problem. Cyberjock for example runs 10x6TB WD reds, no hitches, no problems.
3) We tend to trust the Backblaze data.
4) There is not uniform position on Seagates, but certainly, the MAJORITY position for most of the people you see posting in the forum is that we would not use Seagate drives, even if they were free. However, there are some vehement disagreers to this. I myself would never consider a Seagate, even if it were free, in my NAS, based on what I see with our customers/users.
5) We do not recommend enterprise class drives for the typical FreeNAS user.
6) Most of us would, for a 6-8 drive vdev, use RAID-Z2, as you suggest.

 

[rungekutta]

If, as you say, "you" tend to trust the backblaze data, then why recommend the WD Red over the HGST? I have no particular stake in this discussion, just curious. Last time I looked HGST were the same price, (very) slightly faster, and according to the backblaze data more reliable?

 

[Bidule0hm]

+1 but I disagree on two things:

3) I don't trust Backblaze data that much as it is not representative because of how they mount their drives.

4) I don't have any problem with my Seagate drives. The only model that has problems is the ST3000DM001 AFAIK. But I still recommend WD RED drives over Seagate NAS drives for other reasons (quieter, a bit cooler, ...) ;) HGST drives look very good too but as I didn't tested them I can't recommend/not recommend them.

 

[DrKK]

As for the question on the HGST.

We *do* strongly recommend the HGST NAS drives. As for them being the same price? If that's true, that's new. The HGST NAS drives of a given capacity have historically been substantially more expensive than the WD reds. So that's why I only mentioned the reds, and why the majority of us have them. Had they been the same price, we probably would have gone with the HGST NAS drives. Surely, if they are the same price, you can get the HGST NAS drives. As for them being "slightly faster", that's horseshit. I realize the platter speed is higher, etc., but you won't see that difference, typically, in a NAS. At least not in any way you will ever sense as an end user.

BiduleOhm always chimes in with his Seagate defense. And it certainly is true that some of the models seem fine. But, of the top 20 posters in the forum, I am quite sure more than half would never use a Seagate drive in their NAS. ixSystems itself has not, and does not, use Seagate drives, even though it would have considerably lowered unit costs on the Mini. It is, of course, your option as to whether or not you read any significance into these statements. :)

 

[danb35]

But, of the top 20 posters in the forum, I am quite sure more than half would never use a Seagate drive in their NAS.

I think you probably overstate this. I'm not sure if I'm in the top 20, but if I am, I have two Seagate drives in my NAS. I'd consider them again, if they were at an attractive price/capacity point. My last drive deployment was white label drives, though, so I might be a little more risk-tolerant than many.

 

[Sakuru]

So far I'm very happy with my refurbished 2 TB Hitachi and 6 TB White Label (strange off-brand WD RED) drives. See my signature for more details.

 

[rungekutta]

As for the question on the HGST.

We *do* strongly recommend the HGST NAS drives. As for them being the same price? If that's true, that's new. The HGST NAS drives of a given capacity have historically been substantially more expensive than the WD reds. So that's why I only mentioned the reds, and why the majority of us have them. Had they been the same price, we probably would have gone with the HGST NAS drives. Surely, if they are the same price, you can get the HGST NAS drives. As for them being "slightly faster", that's horseshit. I realize the platter speed is higher, etc., but you won't see that difference, typically, in a NAS. At least not in any way you will ever sense as an end user.

BiduleOhm always chimes in with his Seagate defense. And it certainly is true that some of the models seem fine. But, of the top 20 posters in the forum, I am quite sure more than half would never use a Seagate drive in their NAS. ixSystems itself has not, and does not, use Seagate drives, even though it would have considerably lowered unit costs on the Mini. It is, of course, your option as to whether or not you read any significance into these statements. :)

Wow that was a surprisingly aggressive response @DrKK. Let's address these points then. Re relative cost, this will clearly vary by geography. I don't know where you are based but in Sweden HGST 4TB NAS retails for SEK 1,499 (https://www.netonnet.se) as compared to WD Red 4TB SEK 1,589 (http://cdon.se) according to popular price comparison sites. News to you, I couldn't say, but perhaps it compares differently where you are.

Re relative performance, what is "horsehit" exactly? That the HGST looks "(very) slightly faster", as I suggested? I don't see how that would be particularly controversial. Backed up by various measurements posted online, e.g. http://www.storagereview.com/hgst_4tb_deskstar_nas_hdd_review

As for real implications of this for end user etc you will notice I did not comment, and clearly this will be function of several factors including how they are deployed, usage, etc.

Absolutely no intention of picking fights here but must admit to being a bit taken back by the tone of your response... And yes, having just bought a bunch of WD Reds, I'm wondering if I should have gone HGST instead. ;)

 

[Linkman]

If you can easily saturate a 1 Gbps link with 5400 RPM drives, then having "faster" drives will barely if ever be noticeable in real life, is I believe the point of DrKK's speed comparison comment. But they do run hotter, and use more power.

 

[rungekutta]

Indeed this is a point too and why I also chose WD Red for my particular use case.

 

[Bidule0hm]

Wow that was a surprisingly aggressive response @DrKK.

Not that aggressive in fact :) read more posts for a while and you'll see it's more or less normal. Just relax (and tell @DrKK that Seagate is fine...) :D

 

[DrKK]

Not that aggressive in fact :) read more posts for a while and you'll see it's more or less normal. Just relax (and tell @DrKK that Seagate is fine...) :D

Wow. You guys thought that was an "aggressive" post? I think you all are mistaking me for someone that thinks issues like this are important enough to be "aggressive" about. I was just being firm and opinionated. You should see me when I'm being "aggressive"---which does not happen in the FreeNAS community, so you probably won't see it. lol.

 

[DrKK]

Absolutely no intention of picking fights here but must admit to being a bit taken back by the tone of your response

I am pretty sure you misunderstood the tone. If my tone was confusing, I apologize.

 

[Bidule0hm]

I didn't take it as aggressive but I can see how you can read it and think it's aggressive, but there's nothing to worry here ;)

 

[DrKK]

I didn't take it as aggressive but I can see how you can read it and think it's aggressive, but there's nothing to worry here ;)

si on veut que je sois agresif... je peux faire ca.

;)

 

[Bidule0hm]

Y'a deux 's' à agressif... :P

 

[DrKK]

Y'a deux 's' à agressif... :p

vraiment je me demandais ca. agressif. merci.

 

[Dice]

Apparemment nous ne devons rester sur le sujet dans ce discussion
c'est sufficiant de divaguer un peut en français :P

 

[danb35]

Wie bitte?

 

[Dice]

I'll take a stab at getting back to topic.

The linked HGST drives are H3IKNAS40003272SE.
These are not discussed in the backblaze report (did I miss them?).
The mentioned HGST drives in the report are for example this: HMS5C4040BLE640 (For Swedish interests: cheaper than reds here)
I'm wondering what good these would be for FreeNAS/ZFS granted their description on "low workload" even if 180TB per year seems pretty hefty turnover rate for a home user.
https://www.hgst.com/products/hard-drives/megascale-dc-4000b

I guess the point I'm trying to remind about is that HGST makes a lot of drives which certainly all are not superior to WD REDS.

Cheers /