Planning a NAS build - Starting to buy HDDs

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AND_YOU_ARE

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I am planning a NAS build for the future. I wouldn't get around to it until Q1 or Q2 of 2018. But in the meantime, I am planning on starting to acquire HDDs. I am planning on a build running 6x 8TB WD Reds in RAID-Z2 for a usable storage pool of 28TB (or 8x 8TB in RAID-Z3). My current storage needs are about 8-9TB not counting system backups and I expect it will grow over the 5+ years I would like to get out of this future NAS build.

Ive been watching Slickdeals.net, and I see that Best Buy sells the WD Easystore 8TB external hard drives. I see people buying these, opening them up taking the WD Red drive out for use in their NAS. Has anyone here had success with this here on these forums, and used them in their builds? You can get a 8TB Easystore for 160-180$ before taxes. Seems like a great deal for the 8TB WD Reds with 256MB cache. Any reason not to periodically pick these drives up for my NAS build in 2018?
 

SweetAndLow

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Only reason to avoid them is when you open then you might void the warranty. Other than that people have been doing it.
 

Chris Moore

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Seems like a great deal for the 8TB WD Reds with 256MB cache. Any reason not to periodically pick these drives up for my NAS build in 2018?
I have shucked external USB drives to use in my array. I have had no problems with it myself, however, as @SweetAndLow said, you loose the warranty. So, you have to be content to just buy a new drive when one fails, and I would suggest keeping a couple spares on hand.
RAID-z2 is the way to go. I built a RAID-z3 array a few years ago and I didn't feel the performance was fast enough to suit me. The more drives you put in, the better the performance in general.
 

ethereal

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there are no problems with western digital warranty if you remove the hdd from the cases.

i have two in my system and the wd website says the are in warranty. this is one of the reasons that i only buy wd
 

Stux

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I personally wouldn't buy HDs 9 months ahead of a build.
 

SweetAndLow

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there are no problems with western digital warranty if you remove the hdd from the cases.

i have two in my system and the wd website says the are in warranty. this is one of the reasons that i only buy wd
Does the website know they are not in their external enclosure? Because wd might think that's important.
 

danb35

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Does the website know they are not in their external enclosure?
I guess it would, unless the serial number on the outside of the enclosure matches the serial number on the drive itself. I wouldn't expect that to be the case, though I'll admit I haven't tested that.
 

Chris Moore

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I personally wouldn't buy HDs 9 months ahead of a build.
Why? If you buy one a month, it spreads the investment over multiple paychecks and makes it easier to handle for some of us that have to cut corners.
 

Stux

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Because technology does tend to get cheaper over time, and HDs age on the shelf and warranties expire

If you buy one a month, it spreads the investment over multiple paychecks and makes it easier to handle for some of us that have to cut corners.

Isn't that what savings accounts are for?
 

Chris Moore

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Because technology does tend to get cheaper over time, and HDs age on the shelf and warranties expire
Isn't that what savings accounts are for?
Well, it is only a few months, so the change in tech pricing may not be much and it won't make a huge difference in the warranty, but the thing it will do (hopefully) is ensure that all the drives are not from the same production run (same batch) and there is a school of thought where that is a benefit.
The last bunch of drives I bought were all from the same batch with almost sequential serial numbers. I got seven Seagate 4TB drives and a few months before that I got six Toshiba 2TB drives and about a year before that I bought four 5TB drives to make a backup pool. So, I usually buy my drives in batches, but I can see the other point of view.
 

Inxsible

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NAS drives don't often change price. I had been watching 4TB Red and 4TB Ironwolfs for a long time to see if the price comes down. It didn't. Eventually I got the 6TB Ironwolfs that went on sale on Newegg.
 

AND_YOU_ARE

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An update:
I might be moving up the date of my build a little bit. I might start building shortly after the holidays.
Over the last month, I picked up 8 of the 8TB WD Easystore drives. Picking up the last four today on Black Friday sales. I have shucked them keeping the tabs of the enclosure in place so I could return them under warranty. Of the eight drives, five are the made in Thailand 256MB cache versions. The other three are the made in China 128MB cache versions. Will it be an issue to build a 6 drive NAS using RAID-Z2 when five of the drives have 256MB and one has 128MB cache? I plan to use the other two drive for backing up essential data, so I figure the cache size isn't important.
At 160$ a pop, I could go get another drive and keep it around for when a drive fails in the RAID.
 
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danb35

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Will it be an issue to build a 6 drive NAS using RAID-Z2 when five of the drives have 256MB and one has 128MB cache?
Shouldn't be an issue at all.
 

Chris Moore

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Having a spare or two is good planning. I just had two failures this week, which brings it to three in the month.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk
 

Chris Moore

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I am just curious, but how old were those drives that failed?
I typed up a long answer here and then went back and deleted a bunch to make it more to the point.

I bought seven Toshiba drives about a year ago to replace some drives I had been using for a long time that were starting to have a high failure rate due to age. I did a full round of burn-in testing on the new Toshiba drives when I got them and they all passed, so I set them aside for later. During the course of the past year, I had a couple of drive failure in the pool that the Toshiba drives were meant to go in. Those drives were old, over five years, and I replaced them with the new Toshiba drives as the failures happened. Then, about 3 months ago, I proactively replaced the rest of the, still working, drives in that server that were over five years of age with the new Toshiba drives. Out of the 5 Toshiba drives that have only been installed for 3 months, 2 have failed. One with bad sectors and the other started giving data errors. I attribute that to manufacturing flaws, and I feel that it is a high rate of failure to loose 2 drives out of 7. The drives were manufactured in July of 2016, and the model is: DT01ACA200.
These are 'desktop type' drives, not NAS drives, but I have been using Seagate Desktop drives for years and not seen failure rates like this. The drives that I was replacing after over 5 years of use were all Seagate Desktop (formerly Barracuda) drives, not the new Barracuda drives.

I tried to keep it short.

I have a server at work that I just brought online in December of last year that has 60 drives, and in the year it has been running, I have had to replace 3 drives, and one of those in the first week. However, just 3 failures in 60 is not bad, 2 failures in 7 is really bad, even for desktop drives. I blame Toshiba. Like I said, I have not seen that rate of failure from Seagate. The only reason I bought the Toshiba drives was because I got them really cheap, but I won't do that again.
 
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