Desktop HDD vs NAS

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tribunal3117
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Desktop HDD vs NAS

Post by tribunal3117 »

I bought a TS-851 back in 2014 and put 5x3TB drives in it (RAID 5 w/ hot spare). All are HGST hdn724030ale640 and I've had no failures. Next year I plan to purchase a new NAS to replace this one since it and the drives are getting pretty old. HGST has since been acquired by WD, and I don't believe they make NAS drives anymore under that banner. BackBlaze still gives them top marks for having the lowest failure rate, but I thought I'd ask here about avoiding regular desktop drives for the NAS, even with the low failure rate. I've also heard mixed things about WD Red over the years. I know WD makes a higher grade professional drive, would that be worth considering depending on the cost? I'm going to stick with an 8-bay model again, but I'll probably go 7x4TB (one being a hot spare again). I plan to space out my purchases of drives throughout the year to avoid bad batch issues.

Any advice as far as reliability is appreciated.
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Moogle Stiltzkin
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Re: Desktop HDD vs NAS

Post by Moogle Stiltzkin »

don't use desktop drives for raid purposes.

that said... i do have a history of one time using desktop drive for raid. but this was after some research. For example. the Samsung spinpoint F3's although are desktop drives, they were rated for 24/7 usage. I've used them for many years and rebuild raid, without issue. So this one rare exception where it worked out fine.

But from what i understand, most desktop drives are rated for roughly 8 hours continous use. Not to mention they may not be up to task for raid rebuilds. Also the lower MBTF and reliability.

If you want to use drives for NAS in raid, i recommend seagate ironwolves non pro if you want a cheap reliable option.
viewtopic.php?f=45&t=164787


there is another option for people trying to save as much as possible, and that is shucking external hard drives e.g. wd elements etc
https://youtu.be/Xekv2Y2mmfQ

But it's a gamble what drives you get. Personally i don't want to play russian roulette so i bought my drives normally from an online retailer at the cheapest price available from a legit source.


if you want to get WD Reds, make sure its wd red PLUS which is guaranteed not to be SMR drives (smr are bad for raid and in general).


honestly just get the seagate ironwolves for your raid, and just have backups. even if the drive fails too soon, you can replace it under warranty. i got a bunch of seagate ironwolves and there is no unusually high failure rate so soon (that said i've had these running for less than a year so...), but i haven't seen any news on this either. Also i have backups for whatever situation.

If your plan is to not have backups, hence why you are so particular about the reliability, i recommend u make sure use regular maintain a backup on schedule... don't rely on raid to save you... that is a bad strategy if you care about your data
https://www.reddit.com/r/qnap/comments/ ... _a_backup/



if your deadset on the best reliability, yes there are options for those if you really want that, but they cost a premium. like for example the wd red PROS, seagate ironwolf PROS, and those kinds of things. But for budget minded users like myself, the non pros are fine (as long as they are not SMR, and don't have any high failure rates which would usually pop in the tech news if those drives had such a dark cloud hanging over them).


tldr; your probably overthinking this. just get wd red plus or seagate ironwolf (pro or non pro depending on your budget and expectations), and maintain a scheduled backup, and you should be fine. I've been maintaining my data on the NAS for more than 10 years, and i replace bad drives when they go bad (either under warranty or not), and maintain a backup throughout the entire time. Haven't lost any data by doing this.
NAS
[Main Server] QNAP TS-877 (QTS) w. 4tb [ 3x HGST Deskstar NAS & 1x WD RED NAS ] EXT4 Raid5 & 2 x m.2 SATA Samsung 850 Evo raid1 +16gb ddr4 Crucial+ QWA-AC2600 wireless+QXP PCIE
[Backup] QNAP TS-653A (Truenas Core) w. 4x 2TB Samsung F3 (HD203WI) RaidZ1 ZFS + 8gb ddr3 Crucial
[^] QNAP TL-D400S 2x 4TB WD Red Nas (WD40EFRX) 2x 4TB Seagate Ironwolf, Raid5
[^] QNAP TS-509 Pro w. 4x 1TB WD RE3 (WD1002FBYS) EXT4 Raid5
[^] QNAP TS-253D (Truenas Scale)
[Mobile NAS] TBS-453DX w. 2x Crucial MX500 500gb EXT4 raid1

Network
Qotom Pfsense|100mbps FTTH | Win11, Ryzen 5600X Desktop (1x2tb Crucial P50 Plus M.2 SSD, 1x 8tb seagate Ironwolf,1x 4tb HGST Ultrastar 7K4000)


Resources
[Review] Moogle's QNAP experience
[Review] Moogle's TS-877 review
https://www.patreon.com/mooglestiltzkin
tribunal3117
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Joined: Thu Jul 31, 2014 8:40 am

Re: Desktop HDD vs NAS

Post by tribunal3117 »

Thanks for the tip. I do have backups, but with this being a vmware backend for ESXi, the recovery would be a bit odious. I could do it, and I have the backups (ghettoVCB), but I don't want to if I spend 15% more on a drive that I'll use for 8-10 years, to avoid a headache, seems like a good idea to me. I'm seriously considering just going RAID6 this time around. I hear the performance isn't noticeably worse than RAID5, but correct me if I'm wrong.
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Moogle Stiltzkin
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Re: Desktop HDD vs NAS

Post by Moogle Stiltzkin »

but results like on backblaze takes years to produce and they may not even be covering some of the drives you're interested in.

as long as there is no deathstar event or unusually high reported number of cases of dead drives (usually social media), i'm ok with just buying right now.
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/3 ... star-story

if u expect better reliability there is the pro series. for cheaper cost there is the non pro.

then when you get the drives test them first before use. if they come out ok on test, use if not, claim under warranty. if it breaks during warranty, claim under warranty. if warranty expire just buy new one.

if multiple drives fail all at once (usually rare), you'd have backups to cover you.

As such i think nitpitcking too much than necessary is a waste of time tbh :/

not saying you shouldn't do any research whatsoever (i do this myself, this is why i bought seagate ironwolf non pros after researching about them for price, performance, reliability, features), but at some points its just totally excessive and pointless endeavor to be overly worried (because u can claim under warranty and u have backups). Here are some threads you may find interesting

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comme ... st_having/
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/co ... l_of_hdds/
https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/commen ... or_a_raid/

The truth: nobody can know. ALL HDD fail and you can't know when. All you know is it WILL fail. I've had HDD that were DOA, ones that failed in 2 hours, 2 days 2 weeks 2 months or 7 years but they all will fail. And anybody claiming to know which drives in the future are going to be the most reliable or anyone guaranteeing that whatever specific make/model of drive you are going to get is going to have years of reliability should hang out more in r/psychic. There will ALWAYS be some wanker who says "well I had 20 Seagates and they all failed in a few months, I bought 20 WD 20 years ago and they are all working today" and vice versa. Nobody will know what was a reliable make&model was until years from now when someone that buys tens of thousands of hard drives a year for a cloud service releases a study about their own personal findings. Some of the historical reliable manufacturers could have released an notoriously unreliable model and vice versa.
:)


so back to the title. the main rule is, don't buy a desktop HDD for nas purposes. usually they are not rated for 24/7 operations or for raid rebuilds. if u want to avoid issues
NAS
[Main Server] QNAP TS-877 (QTS) w. 4tb [ 3x HGST Deskstar NAS & 1x WD RED NAS ] EXT4 Raid5 & 2 x m.2 SATA Samsung 850 Evo raid1 +16gb ddr4 Crucial+ QWA-AC2600 wireless+QXP PCIE
[Backup] QNAP TS-653A (Truenas Core) w. 4x 2TB Samsung F3 (HD203WI) RaidZ1 ZFS + 8gb ddr3 Crucial
[^] QNAP TL-D400S 2x 4TB WD Red Nas (WD40EFRX) 2x 4TB Seagate Ironwolf, Raid5
[^] QNAP TS-509 Pro w. 4x 1TB WD RE3 (WD1002FBYS) EXT4 Raid5
[^] QNAP TS-253D (Truenas Scale)
[Mobile NAS] TBS-453DX w. 2x Crucial MX500 500gb EXT4 raid1

Network
Qotom Pfsense|100mbps FTTH | Win11, Ryzen 5600X Desktop (1x2tb Crucial P50 Plus M.2 SSD, 1x 8tb seagate Ironwolf,1x 4tb HGST Ultrastar 7K4000)


Resources
[Review] Moogle's QNAP experience
[Review] Moogle's TS-877 review
https://www.patreon.com/mooglestiltzkin
tribunal3117
Getting the hang of things
Posts: 89
Joined: Thu Jul 31, 2014 8:40 am

Re: Desktop HDD vs NAS

Post by tribunal3117 »

I've decided to go with 8x4TB Iron Wolf Pros and put them in RAID-6. I'll buy them over the rest of 2022 from different outlets. It's probably overkill, but I don't want to risk a bad batch and I don't think the performance hit running RAID6 instead of RAID5 will be much for my use case.

Thanks for the feedback.
dosborne
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Re: Desktop HDD vs NAS

Post by dosborne »

tribunal3117 wrote: Sat Mar 05, 2022 1:22 am I've decided to go with 8x4TB Iron Wolf Pros and put them in RAID-6. I'll buy them over the rest of 2022 from different outlets.
I switched my brand of choice from WD Red to Seagate Iron Wolf a number of years ago and have been very happy, although I never had a real issue with the WD's.

I didn't bother paying more for the "Pro" drives as I didn't expect any performance difference for my use. YMMV. NAS rated drives are definitely the appropriate thing to use in a NAS for obvious reasons, although I do have an old NAS with standard desktop drives that has been running 24/7 for 10+ years. It isn't something I would recommend, but at the time it was essentially the only option.

The only thing I would suggest you consider is a larger capacity. The difference in price, at least here, between a 4TB and something larger is fairly minimal and could extend the usefulness of your drives by a considerable amount. Obviously up to you to decide. Personally, I went for a pair of 18TB to replace 2TB as it just didn't seem worthwhile for anything less, and that capacity should last me for MANY years.
QNAP TS-563-16G 5x10TB Seagate Ironwolf HDD Raid-5 NIC: 2x1GB 1x10GbE
QNAP TS-231P-US 2x18TB Seagate Exos HDD Raid-1
[Deadbolt and General Ransomware Detection, Prevention, Recovery & MORE]
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Moogle Stiltzkin
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Re: Desktop HDD vs NAS

Post by Moogle Stiltzkin »

not sure if i mentioned this,

but there is another separate topic whether enterprise drives are that much greater than the cheaper consumer raid drives for nas usage

tldr
So, Are Enterprise Drives Worth the Cost?
From a pure reliability perspective, the data we have says the answer is clear: no.

Enterprise drives do have one advantage: longer warranties. That’s a benefit only if the higher price you pay for the longer warranty is less than what you expect to spend on replacing the drive.

This leads to an obvious conclusion: If you’re okay with buying the replacements yourself after the warranty is up, then buy the cheaper consumer drives.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/enterpri ... liability/

https://www.quora.com/Are-enterprise-cl ... extra-cost

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing ... -reliable/

https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/co ... r_desktop/

https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/co ... drives_vs/

this is why i don't feel bad for getting the non pros and save myself some $ :]

bonus
Less endurance than cheap SSDs??? WD Red Pro 20TB HDD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svR68w0fkAU
the other thing to look at is how to make sure the data on the drives remains error/bit rot proof. check out zfs cow explained and how that helps

Why The ZFS Copy On Write File System Is Better Than A Journaling One
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlBXXdz0JKA

when i'm talking about consumer drives, i mean the nas drives like non pros (but definitely not smr :roll: ). Also i'm not talking about shucked drives, though some people think gambling and these drives (if u get lucky) are worth cost savings, i personally rather just get the drives normally, but you can decide if these bottom of the barrel lottery buys are worth ur time and risk tolerance or not :'


anyway on subject of capacity sizes, my bare minimum recommendation is the 4tb due to price per gig bang for buck, though could argue 6tb is that new bang for buck king (not sure but it was either the 6-8tb drives that have much bigger cache sizes compared to the 4tb range drives), but for myself 4x 4tb is just about right for my current requirements and budget.

i've seen some people buy 2x 2tb and use raid1 and that was enuff for them. who am i to tell them to get 4tb or greater, if thats good enuff for their specific use case. so just buy what you required and based on your own budget. make sure to also consider to tally in the costs for buying storage to be the backup for the space u will be using as well,
NAS
[Main Server] QNAP TS-877 (QTS) w. 4tb [ 3x HGST Deskstar NAS & 1x WD RED NAS ] EXT4 Raid5 & 2 x m.2 SATA Samsung 850 Evo raid1 +16gb ddr4 Crucial+ QWA-AC2600 wireless+QXP PCIE
[Backup] QNAP TS-653A (Truenas Core) w. 4x 2TB Samsung F3 (HD203WI) RaidZ1 ZFS + 8gb ddr3 Crucial
[^] QNAP TL-D400S 2x 4TB WD Red Nas (WD40EFRX) 2x 4TB Seagate Ironwolf, Raid5
[^] QNAP TS-509 Pro w. 4x 1TB WD RE3 (WD1002FBYS) EXT4 Raid5
[^] QNAP TS-253D (Truenas Scale)
[Mobile NAS] TBS-453DX w. 2x Crucial MX500 500gb EXT4 raid1

Network
Qotom Pfsense|100mbps FTTH | Win11, Ryzen 5600X Desktop (1x2tb Crucial P50 Plus M.2 SSD, 1x 8tb seagate Ironwolf,1x 4tb HGST Ultrastar 7K4000)


Resources
[Review] Moogle's QNAP experience
[Review] Moogle's TS-877 review
https://www.patreon.com/mooglestiltzkin
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