Ive been wanting to get proper storage for my lil server running nextcloud and a couple other things, but nc is the main concern. Its currently running on an old ssd ive had laying around so i would want a more reliable longer term solution.
So thinking of a raid1 (mirror) hdd setup, with two 5400rpm 8tb drives, bringing the choices down to ironwolf or wd red plus, which both are in the same price range.
Im currently biased towards the ironwolfs because they are slightly cheaper and have a cool print on them, but from reddit threads ive seen that wd drives are generally quieter, which currently is a concern since the server is in my bedroom.
Does anyone have experience with these two drives and or know better solutions?
Oh and for the os, being a simple linux server, is it generally fine to have that on a separate drive, an ssd in this case?
Thanks! :3
Backblaze reports HDD reliability data on their blog. Never rely on anecdata!
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q1-2024/
And as backblaze says themselves every time, this data is not.the complete truth either, they have large sample size but this sample size is still too small to large claims about reliability. Especially about brand reliability.
I mean… It’s better than “I bought two drives for my homelab and they’re fine” reports on social media.
Google claims in their data the failure rate is pretty equal across all brands.
Kind of frustrating that Seagate is the only company to have multiple drives with ZERO failures, but then that 12TB model with over 12% failure… ouch.
That said, I’ve been on Team Seagate IronWolf for years without issues.
I also switched from Reds to Seagate years ago at home, no issues so far. And I have had a sad tale of Seagate/Maxtor failures before this.
Going seagate is a great way to save cash and lose data
So then save cash, set up a raid array, and get multiple proper backups running. You need to do steps 2 & 3 regardless.
And then have them all fail within week of each other, under a couple months. They’re garbage, get something decent like a Toshiba or something
WD is a shit company doing shit things, so Seagate. They are less shit, for now.
Can you elaborate?
Western Digital, among other things, has been selling SMR drives using CMR SKUs. So if you’re building something and wanted specific performance, and selected some WD drives based on what the SKU says, you might end up with SMR drives, which are not nearly as performnt. It was a bate and switch tactic and they never really acknowledged it except for making the “red pro” line of drives, which are CMR. Regular “red” drives are SMR now.
Ehh, this practice has stopped - they now label their drives properly on their website/tech specs. I was one of the affected users when I went to raid1 for my 10tb disk (bought ~6mo apart, second drive affected) and I was fucking pissed, as I’ve read mixing CMR and SMR in raid is a recipe for disaster. I straight up told the CS rep that ‘you send me a CMR drive and take the SMR, or I will join the class action lawsuit and never be a WD customer again’. I received a CMR model next day, and they received their SMR drive back.
They pissed me off, but they did the correct response and resolution. I have continued to buy WD since the incident.
So one time is your maximum for a company blatantly misdirecting you? Or maybe you’ll still be a customer if they do something like that again?
One-time, where I risk losing 8TB of data that, at the time, I did not have a complete backup of: abso-fucking-lutely. That they handled my situation with speed and without any further bullshit is why I remain a customer.
I have a list of companies that I will not do business with, because of their fuckups, because of shady business tactics, etc. For example, I haven’t bought anything from Nvidia in… 18 years? iRobot, in 7. Haven’t given Hilton any funds willingly in almost 3. Intel, 19 years…
I don’t purchase any SanDisk products so 🤷♂️
Sandisk belongs to WD, so you kind of do.
I know it’s a sub-brand, but as I don’t own any products by them…
It’s like “do you use windows at work? lol you are an Xbox lover” like ???
I have been burned by WD Red on SMR drives, so I will just say Fuck You WD. That is all.
I got myself some N300 Toshiba NAS drives.
Look, there’s 2 things here:
- NAS - meaning storage
and
- NAS - meaning a virtualisation / container server that’s doing lots of fairly random disk access
Which are you wanting?
For the first, just consider capacity (you’ll fill it) and noise (spinning away all night)
For the 2nd, really really consider SSDs as they’re silent and fast.
RAID1 is just a convenience factor, so whatever you do, don’t get too caught up in the drive mechanics as you’ll have a full backup (right?) and can restore your data at a moment’s notice.
Honestly, honestly, just go for something large & quiet and you’ll be fine.
And yes, SSD for the OS
Who says NAS to mean anything other than Network-Attached Storage?!?
“When I say left, I kinda mean right half the time almost.”
I agree, the acronym NAS does indeed mean that.
But would you call a Hypervisor a NAS?
When I say NAS, I mean NAS. Bulk storage remotely accessible on the network.
When someone starts talking about all their VMs/Containers, I understand that to mean something else… I’d prefer to use a generic term like “server” instead.
My methodology is to look at BackBlaze, throw out any data with less than 100k hours, and pick the drive with the lowest AFR (annualized failure rate).
It’s maybe $50-$100 between the cheapest and best enterprise drive and I’m not buying 1,000 drives so I do not care about price.
How often do you get new drives? I’ve been through 2 drives that store all my data since the last 15 or so years. I’m wanting to get a nas together now though but I’ve no server experience.
Around every 6 years.
I’ll be honest, I havent used Seagate in 15 years, so maybe theyve improved, but the only hard drives I’ve ever had fail on me have all been Seagate.
Never had any other drive hard fail. The ones that did were always Seagate.
I picked Toshiba drives personally. However, I know of a bunch of WD reds running for years with no issues.
I think since the nas cases aren’t insolated for sound, your going to hear them moving that head around…
Have you considered an ssd populated nas? It does cost more however :(
So I’ve wanted to try Toshiba drives (for both typical use and nas) but it seems impossible to source them. Their official website is a nightmare and I think (?) I’ve seen them on Amazon but nowhere else. And I couldn’t find warranty details either. They seem to be very business/corp and totally oblivious to the consumer/prosumer side.
Where did you get your drives? I’m stateside, if that matters.