SOLVED Would you recommend the Toshiba DT01ACA300 HDD?

[VladTepes]

As noted elsewhere one of my WD Red 3TB drives is in need of replacement.

My understanding is that there will be no issues in having different brands of HDD in an array.

On another forum several people have said they are very impressed with Toshiba drives and state that if looking for a 3TB drive I should get a Toshiba DT01ACA300.

I am told this is a rebadged HGST model, and is a 7200 RPM

I'm wondering if anyone here has experience with these drives and any knowledge as to why or why not it would be a good option with FreeNAS?

Pros/Cons vs a WD Red ?

My local prices (Aussie dollars) the Toshiba is $115 compared with $150 for the WD drive - so that's one for the Toshiba

Thanks

 

[Chris Moore]

It is misinformation to say that the Toshiba is a rebadged HGST. While technically accurate, from a certain perspective, the truth is more complicated. Even this is an oversimplification but, when Hitachi sold their drive fabrication facilities, Toshiba bought one facility that made a certain model of drive and Western Digital bought another facility that made a different model drive. WD bought the server / high end desktop line while Toshiba bought the desktop (low end) line. I imagine that WD paid significantly more money because they retained the right to market the drives as HGST (which used to stand for Hitachi Global Storage Technology, if I recall correctly) but Toshiba just calls the drives Toshiba drives with no reference to Hitachi.

I have two of the 3TB Toshiba drives that I have been running for over a year and I have had no problem with them. I also bought 7 of the 2TB version of the same model to replace some aging drives in one of my systems because I caught a deal on them. If I were making your choice right now; because the price of them is about the same as the Seagate Desktop 3TB and I like the diagnostic data from the Seagate drives better than the data the Toshiba drives give; I would go with the Seagate drive. I have 17 of the Seagate drives running now that have served me well and I just retired 7 Seagate drives for being over 5 years old. They didn't die, they just got beyond the cutoff time.

Take a look at the price difference and make your own decision, but keep in mind that the drives are on the same par with regard to manufacturing quality. The Toshiba is not really the same as the HGST and if you lay them on a table and look at them, you can see the difference. I have done that but it is just luck because any drive can fail at any time. I have had to replace WD Red Pro drives that were inside a year old.

 

[VladTepes]

Thanks for that. I had heard (somewhere) that Seagate drives weren't all that good?

Or perhaps I'm thinking of some other brand.

The link doesn't work (or blocked from my computer at work anyway) I presume you mean the Seagate Ironwolf series ?

https://www.umart.com.au/Seagate-IRONWOLF-ST3000VN007-NAS-HD-3TB-3-5-SATAII-64MB_36681G.html

If so then the price difference between those and the WD Red is just a few dollars ($145 cf $150 for the WD)

I note the Seagate is 5900 rpm versus the 7200 of the WD.
Does this make ANY difference in a FreeNAS usage?

So given the Toshiba drive is significantly cheaper than the WD or Seagate (which are on par $ wise) which of the three would YOU opt for.

(Yes I am responsible for my ultimate choice etc etc :) )

 

[Chris Moore]

Thanks for that. I had heard (somewhere) that Seagate drives weren't all that good?

Or perhaps I'm thinking of some other brand.

The link doesn't work (or blocked from my computer at work anyway) I presume you mean the Seagate Ironwolf series ?

Seagate had a batch of bad drives a few years back that damaged their reputation, but the drives I have been using for the most recent 5 to 6 years have all been very good and I use them myself.

I don't know what happened to the link, I put it in there and now my antivirus software is blocking it. That is strange.

I went to the site your linked to and they don't carry the model drive I was suggesting. Here in the US, I usually shop at a site www.newegg.com that carries many hardware items at very competitive prices and they have a model drive from Seagate that is called the "Seagate Desktop" and the price of it is exactly one cent more than the price of the Toshiba drive you originally listed. NewEgg sells both here but I don't find the "Desktop" model Seagate listed in other countries and the price of the Seagate Barracuda drive is higher than the price of the Seagate Desktop. The Barracuda is a new model that is supposed to take the place of the Seagate Desktop but it is the Seagate Desktop drive that I have been running in my NAS for the last 5 years. I can't say that the new Barracuda model is the same, I have not used them at all, but they look the same on the outside. It is the comparable drive to the Toshiba you were looking at.

 

[VladTepes]

Ta.
The new Barracuda is $129 here https://www.umart.com.au/Seagate-ST3000DM008-3TB-Barracuda-SATA-64mb-Cache_36382G.html
so pricewise in about the middle of those we've been discussing.

Are the particular specs I should be looking at when assessing these drives (or any drives) as to whether they are suitable or unsuitable for NAS systems?

One thing that is notable is that it seems as if the Seagate has a 2 year warranty while the WD has a 3 year warranty. Perhaps it's worth the extra $20 just for that...

As for newegg I have bought stuff from there and other O/s suppliers before (generally when not available locally as was the case with several components for my FreeNAS build) but I prefer to buy the HDD'slocally just for ease of RMA / warranty if needed. Plus quicker to pop to a local place than wait for the post.

 

[Chris Moore]

Ta.
The new Barracuda is $129 here https://www.umart.com.au/Seagate-ST3000DM008-3TB-Barracuda-SATA-64mb-Cache_36382G.html
so pricewise in about the middle of those we've been discussing.

Are the particular specs I should be looking at when assessing these drives (or any drives) as to whether they are suitable or unsuitable for NAS systems?

One thing that is notable is that it seems as if the Seagate has a 2 year warranty while the WD has a 3 year warranty. Perhaps it's worth the extra $20 just for that...

As for newegg I have bought stuff from there and other O/s suppliers before (generally when not available locally as was the case with several components for my FreeNAS build) but I prefer to buy the HDD'slocally just for ease of RMA / warranty if needed. Plus quicker to pop to a local place than wait for the post.

We don't have local places that will handle hard drive warranty. They must be shipped back to the manufacturer, so it doesn't matter where you get it. I have had hard drives fail within warranty, but only on rare occasion. If you want to spend extra for warranty, that would be a choice for you to consider. In my experience, warranty is very often not utilized and therefore not worth spending extra money to obtain.

 

[Stux]

Generally, drives are going to fail early, or late.

But your call.

 

[danb35]

Generally, drives are going to fail early, or late.

...which is why we always recommend burning in the drives. Better yet to follow @jgreco's advice and run the burn-in longer than most of us do, but at least a full run of badblocks and a couple of SMART tests shows the drive isn't DOA and has the proper capacity.

 

[Inxsible]

Also rather than only comparing the prices of all 3TB drives for example, look at other drive sizes too.

For example, I got 6TB drives recently which per TB turned out to be cheaper than the 3TB and 4TB drives.

today's prices from Newegg:
Ironwolf 3TB -- $107.99 -- $35.99/TB
Ironwolf 4TB -- $129.99 -- $32.49/TB
Ironwolf 6TB -- $195.99 -- $32.66/TB

So per TB, the 3TB turns out to be more expensive than the 4TB and the 6TB. Also the 6TB is only marginally more than 4TB. If you have shipping costs, you might have to add those in too. But you get the idea.

When I got the 6TB drives, I got them at $29.99/TB. So I thought it was a great deal and I got 2 of them.


This is great when you are buying drives to build your array. Of course, if you are replacing 1 drive out of 8 in a RAIDZ pool, then you might have to take into account the value of changing the disk size, because you won't be able to take advantage of the extra size. Plus if your drives fail in a staggered manner, then you might never realize the extra size because by the time you upgrade all 8 drives to, say 4TB, the first one might start failing leading to another loop of unrealized increased disk size. If you drives don't fail in a staggered manner, then it will become expensive to replace all 8 drives in a short time, no matter how you look at it. This is one area where mirrored vdevs have an advantage because you only have 2 drives to replace. I am talking about 2-way mirrors not 3/n-way, which most people wouldn't do in a home network anyway.

 

[Chris Moore]

Plus if your drives fail in a staggered manner, then you might never realize the extra size because by the time you upgrade all 8 drives to, say 4TB, the first one might start failing leading to another loop of unrealized increased disk size.

That is why you replace them on a schedule instead of waiting for them to fail. I recently replaced the six 2TB drives in one of the vdevs of my pool with 4TB dreves which expanded the capacity of the pool. The other six drives are still 2TB.

 

[Inxsible]

So you trash away some drives which could have lasted you another year or more?

 

[Chris Moore]

So you trash away some drives which could have lasted you another year or more?

No. That would be crazy. I still have 18 2TB drives in service. The six that I replaced are spares now and I will probably not need to buy another 2TB drive. I am anticipating replacing another 6 drives each year until they have all been replaced. If I still have working 2TB drives at the end, I can always sell them on eBay. I sold some just last month after only having the listing up for 2 days.

 

[jgreco]

Also rather than only comparing the prices of all 3TB drives for example, look at other drive sizes too.

For example, I got 6TB drives recently which per TB turned out to be cheaper than the 3TB and 4TB drives.

today's prices from Newegg:
Ironwolf 3TB -- $107.99 -- $35.99/TB
Ironwolf 4TB -- $129.99 -- $32.49/TB
Ironwolf 6TB -- $195.99 -- $32.66/TB

So per TB, the 3TB turns out to be more expensive than the 4TB and the 6TB. Also the 6TB is only marginally more than 4TB. If you have shipping costs, you might have to add those in too. But you get the idea.

You may be forgetting that there's a substantial cost to the NAS system itself.

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/so-you-want-some-hardware-suggestions.12276/

So if you've got a four bay system that it cost you $500 to build, and you run four drives in RAIDZ2, there's a different math that may more accurately represent the actual cost per usable TB:

Ironwolf 3TB - 108 * 4 + 500 = $932 for 4.8TB usable or $194/TB
Ironwolf 4TB - 130 * 4 + 500 = $1020 for 6.4TB usable or $159/TB
Ironwolf 6TB - 196 * 4 + 500 = $1284 for 9.6TB usable or $134/TB
Ironwolf 8TB - 270 * 4 + 500 = $1580 for 12.8TB usable or $123/TB

Of course, it may not make sense to go for the 8TB drives if you're *positive* that you will never need more than 4TB of storage, and the numbers work differently as you go from a 4 drive vdev to a 6 drive vdev, or if you're doing an upgrade of an existing system rather than a new build. You can also get some cool yet perverse results if you play with the vdev width vs drive capacity.

 

[Stux]

You may be forgetting that there's a substantial cost to the NAS system itself.

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/so-you-want-some-hardware-suggestions.12276/

So if you've got a four bay system that it cost you $500 to build, and you run four drives in RAIDZ2, there's a different math that may more accurately represent the actual cost per usable TB:

Ironwolf 3TB - 108 * 4 + 500 = $932 for 4.8TB usable or $194/TB
Ironwolf 4TB - 130 * 4 + 500 = $1020 for 6.4TB usable or $159/TB
Ironwolf 6TB - 196 * 4 + 500 = $1284 for 9.6TB usable or $134/TB
Ironwolf 8TB - 270 * 4 + 500 = $1580 for 12.8TB usable or $123/TB

Of course, it may not make sense to go for the 8TB drives if you're *positive* that you will never need more than 4TB of storage, and the numbers work differently as you go from a 4 drive vdev to a 6 drive vdev, or if you're doing an upgrade of an existing system rather than a new build. You can also get some cool yet perverse results if you play with the vdev width vs drive capacity.

This is why I have 6x 8TB in my small NAS, but only 16x 4TB in my Big NAS (still has 8 bays open)

 

[VladTepes]

In my situation I have a 6 drive vdev (I havea total of 6 * 3TB WD Red drives) in RAID Z2

Off the shelf prices locally are:

WD Red NAS 1TB/2TB/3TB/4TB/6TB/8TB/ $ 79/118/150/209/309/399

so cost / TB = $79, $59, $50, $52.25, $51.50, $49.88

So the best value / TB are the 3TB drives (i.e. the same as the one that failed) and it's not until we get all the way to 8TB that it comes back to that same value. (although from 3 through to 8 TB it's almost the same anyway)

Sure, I could replace the failed drive with an 8TB drive but that would be very expensive and not give me any advantage until I replaced ALL drives with 8TB drives. Given the cost (and present lack of need) that won;t likely be happening for years.

For me then it really makes sense just to go with another 3TB drive as a replacement.
Which gets back to my earlier post (reply #3), around WHICH drive to go for...

 

[Chris Moore]

Which gets back to my original question, around WHICH drive to go for...

The low cost alternative is the Toshiba and it will probably be as reliable as the WD Red you are replacing. If your Red drive is still in warranty, send it in for replacement and keep the replacement drive (when it gets back to you) as a spare for next time one of the array drives goes bad. Statistically speaking, you may not have another failure in the array but there is always that chance.

 

[VladTepes]

Well out of warranty I'm afraid. :)

 

[Chris Moore]

Well out of warranty I'm afraid. :)

Sorry. Like I said before, I have two of that model Toshiba drive that I have been using for over a year now and they are working nicely. Temperatures are fair and I have not had any errors out of them. I also bought seven of the same model line drive in the 2TB variety and have them in one of my systems for a little more than a month. No problems with them either.
In your position, I would go for it.

 

[Inxsible]

I am up for Toshiba drives too. I have used them before and never had any problems with them that couldn't be attributed to a one off which is true with any brand.

 

[VladTepes]

Ok well I bought a Toshiba drive - $115 not bad.

Now all I have to do is find those burn in instructions..... :D

Ahhh and so it begins, again.
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/how-to-hard-drive-burn-in-testing.21451/

(I've completely forgotten everything from last time round...)