Mini XL+ only sees 2 of 8 drives. What to check?

HoneyBadger

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Hmm, sounds like cutting corners to me which I prefer not to do. Plus, I'm building this as a media server to house raw video files and serve them to two DaVinci Resolve workstations and my understanding is that larger caches and higher spin rates will make a difference to us.

It's a compromise that people make in order to decrease the dollars-to-TB ratio, and your data sounds like it's a lot more valuable to you than the "average internet user" who's simply hoarding terabytes of questionably-ethically-acquired media; so it's a compromise that you're less likely to take.

With the streaming workload, the larger caches could help with prefetching at the drive-level; spin rates will have more of an impact on seek times/random I/O latency - it won't hurt but might not necessarily provide a measurable improvement over 5400rpm. Make sure whatever you choose that you keep the drives well cooled.
 

das1996

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Also, this may be a con or pro depending on your perspective. Those shucked wd 8TB drives are labeled as 5400 rpm but in reality are 7200. Con for heat and power savings. Throughput is impressive though, ~200 MB/s or more (WD80edaz or WD80ezaz).
 

joeschmuck

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I'm building this as a media server to house raw video files and serve them to two DaVinci Resolve workstations
Your FreeNAS/TrueNAS design will directly affect how your NAS performs more than the hard drive RPM. This is a different topic but if your performance isn't what you feel it should be, do some research on it, others have created video editing servers and can tell you a lot about their misfortunes and solutions.
 

dev_willis

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That's good stuff to know. I thank you all. In light of this information, I decided to use the 5400 RPM model for it's reduced noise, heat, and power. I discovered that B&H sells these drives and decided to go with them. I've always had good experiences there. The drives are estimated to arrive 3/29. Hopefully this will work out better. I'll be excited to have a fully functional server!
 

Etorix

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That's good stuff to know. I thank you all. In light of this information, I decided to use the 5400 RPM model for it's reduced noise, heat, and power.
If you mean 5400rpm-CLASS WD drives, you've been fooled by WD's marketing department into actually buying 7200 rpm drives.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/09/western-digital-is-trying-to-redefine-the-word-rpm/
The drives will work, but won't give you any of the noise, heat and power benefits you expected over Seagate or Toshiba NAS drives.
 

dev_willis

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If you mean 5400rpm-CLASS WD drives, you've been fooled by WD's marketing department into actually buying 7200 rpm drives.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/09/western-digital-is-trying-to-redefine-the-word-rpm/
The drives will work, but won't give you any of the noise, heat and power benefits you expected over Seagate or Toshiba NAS drives.
Marketing shenanigans piss me off. Should I cancel this and get Ironwolf drives? I just sorta took iX's recommendation for WD drives at face value.

It's always something... smh

Edit:
Looks like you can't actually get 5400 RPM drives in an 8TB size. 10TB is a significant price jump and 6TB isn't big enough so I guess I'll just hold what I got.
 
Last edited:

Hellione

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you are right. seagate has also 7,2krpm at 8tb. if you want to go seagate, also check the prices for exos drives. they are available as sata and sas. and exos are enterprise class with 5yr warranty, and often cheaper than ironwolf with 3yr warranty.
 

Etorix

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There are only three manufacturers of NAS HDDs: WD (including its subsidiary HGST), Seagate and Toshiba. None of them currently makes 5400rpm NAS drives in any size—although one marketing department tries hard to have customers perceive it otherwise.

I suppose you could cancel your order and let WD know about it to make a point, but I doubt they care. You might even find better prices on Toshiba or Seagate drives. But you'll end up with 7200rpm drives anyway.
 

joeschmuck

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I think the main thing to take away from this 7200 RPM thing as well as any spinning rust is to just ensure the drives have some air flow across them, all of the drives. They will generate heat and pooling heat can cause premature failure. Check all the drive temps when the drives are active such as 30 minutes into a scrub. The RPM of the drive is otherwise a minimal concern for a home system.
 

dev_willis

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Yeah, I'm not interested in making any points. Especially to a faceless megacorp that doesn't care. I'll just keep an eye on the temps and set up some reporting. I expect this system will be working hard when both workstations are demanding data but that's not likely to be more than 10-20% of the time.

I appreciate you guys dropping all this knowledge on me! It's been really helpful working through these issues.
 

HoneyBadger

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Yeah, I'm not interested in making any points. Especially to a faceless megacorp that doesn't care.
You'd be surprised what a horde of people voting with their dollars can do. The backlash against the SMR drives was substantial enough to garner a response.
 

dev_willis

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The new drives from B&H arrived two days early. This is off to a much better start!

PXL_20210327_181302847_2.jpg


All the drives mount, pass the short test, and combined generate much less noise and vibration than any one of the screeching abominations I sent back. I've got them running long tests now. :grin:
 

das1996

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^^I'm curious, how does WD package the actual drive? Is it suspended, similar to pic in post #24?
 

dev_willis

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^^I'm curious, how does WD package the actual drive? Is it suspended, similar to pic in post #24?
Yeah, very similar to that. The plastic mount is on the sides of the drive tho.


Interestingly, these drives all report a 7200 rpm rotation rate right there in the SMART data. The box and the literature inside make no mention one way or the other but I double-checked and the item was definitely sold as 5400 rpm. Maybe WD is dropping the disguise and the retailers just haven't caught up?
 

joeschmuck

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Glad to hear you have a good set of drives finally. Well I have never bought hard drives from Amazon, and I'm not going to start anytime soon either.
 

dev_willis

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All 8 drives passed all the burn-in tests. Happy to have all the physical infrastructure in place for our home office! Now I'm ready to start learning how to actually use this thing lol

_V9A8210_1_2_3_4.jpg
 

joeschmuck

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Looks like you have a few systems there to play with. Well enjoy TrueNAS.
 
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