Real risks of using desktop drives

[SwisherSweet]

I'm building up a FreeNAS server and want to leverage an investment I made in some high capacity desktop drives (Toshiba P300 3TB). I know using something like WD Red is preferable but I'm on a budget.

If I use the Toshiba drives, will I be increasing my data loss risk due to missing features/attributes or will they simply fail faster?

I plan on. 6 x 3TB with 2 parity drives for a total usable of 12TB.

 

[danb35]

I would not be worried about using those drives in RAIDZ2. Make sure you have SMART notifications enabled, schedule regular SMART testing, and regular scrubs (all of which we recommend anyway), and you shouldn't be at any significant risk of data loss.

 

[Vito Reiter]

You may want to refer to THIS forum post as far as features go. Using a lower quality disk will always increase risk given a faster fail rate and 24/7 usage, but you have redundancy, so it's not much of a discrepancy. Just remember redundancy is NOT a backup and go from there. I've been running 10 really low-grade desktop drives in 2xRaidZ2 vDevs for a while and haven't had problems a NAS drive wouldn't have.

EDIT: Even though they're terrible drives, I have good data integrity because I've followed good practices like 8GB+ ECC RAM and supported hardware that shouldn't experience problems.

 

[Jailer]

I plan on. 6 x 3TB with 2 parity drives for a total usable of 12TB.

If you're looking to get 12TB of usable space you might want to reconsider your plan. After formatting, TB to Tib and ZFS overhead you're looking at 10.5 Tib of space. You'll also not want to fill that past 80% or you will suffer a performance penalty. If you fill past 90% performance tanks. Whatever you do do NOT EVER fill it to 100% capacity.

 

[scrappy]

Backblaze does a quarterly report of hard drive failure rates in their data centers. Most of their drives are desktop hard drives. Toshiba's drives are generally considered to be exceptionally reliable so I wouldn't worry too much them failing more than enterprise drives. Of course, any drive, no matter the make or model can prematurely fail which is why redundancy (RAIDZ, Mirrored vdevs etc.) and offsite backups are important.

 

[zoomzoom]

Does the rated usage time of desktop drives vs NAS drives not matter (i.e. Desktop drives are rated for 8hrs of usage/24hrs vs NAS drives which are rated for 24hr usage)?

• I know via power management you can spin down the drives, however I've never been able to successfully get away with this on 9.3 or 9.10 without loads of CAM status errors.

 

[Ericloewe]

Does the rated usage time of desktop drives vs NAS drives not matter (i.e. Desktop drives are rated for 8hrs of usage/24hrs vs NAS drives which are rated for 24hr usage)?

• I know via power management you can spin down the drives, however I've never been able to successfully get away with this on 9.3 or 9.10 without loads of CAM status errors.

It would if they were physically different.

 

[Stux]

Theoretically, it could affect your warranty, I find it hard to understand how they could make one drive that would fail if used in 24/7 situation that would be reliable if constantly powered on and off.

 

[Ericloewe]

Theoretically, it could affect your warranty, I find it hard to understand how they could make one drive that would fail if used in 24/7 situation that would be reliable if constantly powered on and off.

Yeah. I can think of a few corners that could be cut, but I'm fairly certain that they would disproportionately affect cycles rather than hours.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

will I be increasing my data loss risk due to missing features/attributes or will they simply fail faster?

The main issue is that desktop drives usually don't support TLER or the equivalent. This can make a system with a failing drive unresponsive for minutes at a time, making recovery much more difficult.

 

[rs225]

If you don't plan to backup 100%, at least organize important data so that you can backup that important data.

 

[SwisherSweet]

Thanks everyone for their input. From what I am reading is while using desktop drives are not ideal over using NAS drives, it doesn't materially increase my risk of loosing data if:

• Use RAIDZ2 or better
• Perform regular backups

Thanks again!

 

[Dwibs]

If you're looking to get 12TB of usable space you might want to reconsider your plan. After formatting, TB to Tib and ZFS overhead you're looking at 10.5 Tib of space. You'll also not want to fill that past 80% or you will suffer a performance penalty. If you fill past 90% performance tanks. Whatever you do do NOT EVER fill it to 100% capacity.

I've got my drives to 101% is that an issue. :)

 

[Dwibs]

I have 3 x Western Digital Greens. Modded. Running great but wish I could afford Reds. Prices never go down. Expensive business having data!!

 

[wblock]

It's not so much having data as making sure you don't lose it...

 

[Dwibs]

Yep. Expensive battle but at least we try to keep the data intact. I'm tech support (Windows) and the amount of people moaning when their data is lost. I ask do you have a backup? Backup? It's like a foreign language. Uni students with important docs to send, finds their documents have vanished, do you have a backup? No. Then go crazy, I need to get my paper in by 10am!! CAN YOU REMOTE IN AND GET THEM BACK!!