LTT Storage Rankings

[AnonymousGuy]

OK HGST Deskstar is rebuilding and then I'll be back to Optimal.  The case looks the exact same as the Ultrastar so I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same guts and maybe just firmware tweaks and you pay $50 more for 2 years more warranty (5 years vs 3 years).

 

If the drive survives after rebuild for 24 hours then I know Seagate recert 3TB drives are also shit....or at least the most recent batch they sent me when I had a wave of failures a couple weeks ago.

[AnonymousGuy]

HGST Deskstar is so far doing ok after rebuilding.  Been about 16 hours since rebuild finished.

 

I also got the Megaraid Storage Manager to be able to send me emails when any errors (like a failed drive) happen.  MSM doesn't support SSL SMTP, and Gmail free doesn't support SMTP without SSL (requires port 465).  It seems like it does if you have Google Apps for Enterprise, which I do have, but I couldn't get it to work following Google's help documents.  I ended up finding that Cox (my ISP) gives me an email account that I've never used until now, but it supports port 25 (non-SSL) SMTP via smtp.cox.net.  So that's what I'm rolling with.

 

Email notification of a failed drive will be helpful if I'm away from home and need to know that 2 drives have died and I need to do something about it *right now*.

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

And to reiterate..holy fucking balls Seagate 3TB are bad.  20 drives and with 5 cold spares on my desk I can't even keep up RMA-ing them (and that's *with* the $12 advanced cross ship RMA) and now have 0 spares. 

Yeah, they're hilariously bad.  The worst part is that so many people here are still defending them because they have one drive that hasn't failed (yet), and saying that BackBlaze's numbers are nonsense when any serious user knows that the real-life failure numbers are even worse.

 

Every single ST3000 I've installed in customers' PCs in the period after the Thailand flooding has failed already, and by "failed" I don't mean a S.M.A.R.T alert or warning from a RAID card that the disk doesn't respond fast enough.  "Failed" in this case means "send it to a data recovery firm if you ever want to access that data again".

[PhantomWarz]

Hardware

CASE: Acer R380F2 (2x 8 Bay 2.5" Drive Cages) 

CASE2 (SubChassis): Chembro 24 Bay Rack Mount with an additional 1x 750W Power Supply 

PSU: 1x 750W Platinum (Stock with Acer R380F2)

MB: Intel 2600GZ

CPU:1x Intel Xeon E5-2609 @ 2.4GHz

HS: Stock Intel Passive Heatsink

RAM: 48GB DDR3 1333 (ECC)

RAID CARD 1: LSI Logic 9201-16i SAS HBA

RAID CARD 2: LSI MegaRAID SAS 8208 HBA (I think? I havent looked inside the NAS for a long time)

L2ARC & LOG SSD: Intel 180GB 250 Series SSD

HDD 1: 2x Hitachi UltraStar A2K2000 3.5" 2TB

HDD 2: 1x Seagate Barracuda Green 3.5" 2TB

HDD 3: 3x WD Caviar Green 3.5" 2TB

HDD 4: 7x WD Blue 2.5" 1TB

HDD 5: 6x Seagate Constellation ES 2.5" 1TB

HDD 6: 3x WD Caviar Blue 3.5" 1TB

 

Software and Configuration:

Operating System: NAS4Free 9.2.0.1 Stable Release.

Total RAW storage is 28TB of HDDs (Unformatted and before RAID)

The ZFS Pool consists of 4 VDevs comprised of 6 drives per VDev in a Dual Parity (RaidZ2) Overal Capacity at the time of post 17.87TB after redudancy is factored in.

All shares are datasets of the above array.

The SSD is configured as the L2ARC (Read Write Cache) and also the SIL (Log information)

48GB Ram provides ample L1ARC cache.

Usage:

This array stores all my Movies and TV Shows for myself and family.

Backup:

I wish there was an easy way to backup +17TB of data reliably. Plenty of the data however is shared between my friends with similar setups at home.

Additional info:

The whole setup is powered by an APC 1000VA UPS with 1 extended battery module.

The hardware is retired hardware from my workplace.

The server itself however was a "gift" from acer so to speak, perks of buying so many netbooks in education.

Photo's:

Intentions for updating server

Increase space

Decrease power usage

Preserve enough horsepower to transcode media on the fly via AirVideo HD

 

Hardware

Apple Macbook Air Mid 2013

CPU:1.3GHz Intel i5

RAM: 4GB DDR3L 1600

2x 8 Bay USB 3 Enclosure

HDD 1:4x WD Red 6TB HDD

HDD 2: 4x Seagate Desktop HDD 4TB

HDD 3: 2x 120GB Intel SSD (Landing disk)

 

Software and Configuration:

Window Server 2012 R2

StableBit DrivePool + Scanner

40.24TB raw storage. (soon to be expanded by 2x6TB drives around end of year)

Usage:

This array stores all my Movies and TV Shows for myself and family.

 

Backup:

Im still yet to find a solution to backup 40TB of data.... if anyone knows of a way that doesnt cost a left kidney.... Im interested.

I have old HDDs no longer in use, now archived with data from my array.

 

Additional info:

The whole setup is proteced by an APC 1000VA UPS with 1 extended battery module. (soon to be retired for an Eaton UPS)

The laptop is my previous machine I used for work, now that its retired, it allows me to store data with very little power usage.

Photo's:

To be attached soon....

[AnonymousGuy]

Well GG Seagate, game over for me:

 

image sharing

 

Drives 12 and 15 failed at the same time last night.  I replaced drive 12 with a recert I had laying around knowing it probably wouldn't survive.  I ordered 2 more HGST drives for delivery today, figuring drive 12 would finish rebuilding and then I would rebuild drive 15 with HGST.  Drive 12 died about 6 hours later 75% into the rebuild process.  My guess is when it died it shook and took drive 13 with it.  3 drives down on one raid 6 array = data loss.  I have no idea what data was actually lost but the drive seems accessible still.  All 3 will be replaced with HGST bringing the score to 9 HGST drives and 15 Seagate drives.

 

On the bright side, Google Drive has the most recent backup of my most critical folders:

 

 

Will take 40 min to download though even at these speeds.

[stevv]

Here i am again. Quick question which i don't really think needs its own topic... let me know if its better if i do make a new topic for it.

 

My 40TB array degraded 2 days ago. I've tested the drive that failed and it seems fine. The log showed it gave a timeout error. Is this drive actually dying? I've never had much of an idea of what the SMART stuff means but it seems fine

 

RAID-6-Degraded-Drive.png

 

I've got everything backed up so im in no way concerned, it's also a RAID-6 so another one can fail and all the data would still be fine. Should i prepare for this drive to fail more often or is something else wrong? Is it just some glitch or something that made the drive fail? When i looked before all the SMART stuff was just "-" and no numbers. I don't want to send in a perfectly fine drive for RMA

 

edit: i've got the drive back in and the array is rebuilding...

 

My last Red 4TB  errored ("read error" instead of "time out")  out 2-3 times but tested ok after "repair" and extended test using the wd diag tool

 

Finally took to RMA... last July and working fine since.

 

I got the same card you have.. but assuming, hardware is good... the drives don't always test out accurately.  Now I always give the drives a good exercise before adding to array.. like a few weeks of random tasks.

 

other note... did you truncate the screenshot of the drive information?  I get a lot more information for my 4TB drives.  Included screenshot .. hope that helps.  Interesting that your 5TB's are 5700RPM...

[AnonymousGuy]

In case anyone is wondering what's going down with 3 drives failing on a Raid 6 span.  In the Megaraid Storage Manager after replacing all 3 failed drives with HGST Deskstars, I had to add the drives manually to the array.  I marked drive 12 as "online" and had to acknowledge "hey you're going to have data corruption doing this" then drives 13 and 15 I had the option to "rebuild".  Who the fuck knows how much parity data was lost from drive 12 but maybe drives 13 and 15 will be salvageable.

 

If I'm VERY lucky my server backup folder didn't get corrupted and I can basically restore the server from itself (using True Image's verify feature to make sure the image didn't get corrupted).  The complete server image is a couple months old, but it's mostly movies and stuff that can be replaced.  The "baby pictures" so to speak are backed up weekly.

[Helly]

My last Red 4TB  errored ("read error" instead of "time out")  out 2-3 times but tested ok after "repair" and extended test using the wd diag tool

 

Finally took to RMA... last July and working fine since.

 

I got the same card you have.. but assuming, hardware is good... the drives don't always test out accurately.  Now I always give the drives a good exercise before adding to array.. like a few weeks of random tasks.

 

other note... did you truncate the screenshot of the drive information?  I get a lot more information for my 4TB drives.  Included screenshot .. hope that helps.  Interesting that your 5TB's are 5700RPM...

 

Well i only cut off everything above the capacity which are the same as in your screenshot. Some of the information im not getting. I guess you have a newer firmware or something. Don't think i really need that as the card is performing fine at the moment. Unless you say its really worth it, and i won't lose data because of an update. You have an 1880i or a newer version?

 

And the thing about the cables, i have no idea if that is true. I think i bought good ones, not really sure what brand they are though, doesn't say it on the cables themselves. I think its 3Ware, but i'm not sure. Which brand of cable is good? If it happens again i might look at some better cables.

[Alexdaman]

Well, small update with video.

replaced 1x WD green 2Tb and an 3Tb SEAGATE ST3000 piece of shit. with 2 4Tb Red´s.

 

Update: (((((((((((((((Update #6 Added an additional 6TB/Replaced MB/Scrapped outside Fan controller/Added 2U for future Expansion))))))))))))))

You know you are blocking those vents with those labels right?

sorry if this has been answered before

[Ramaddil]

You know you are blocking those vents with those labels right?

 

sorry if this has been answered before

 

There are no vents on the front of the Startech Enclosures. They exhaust through the rear of the enclosure with a fan.   

[AnonymousGuy]

Well i only cut off everything above the capacity which are the same as in your screenshot. Some of the information im not getting. I guess you have a newer firmware or something. Don't think i really need that as the card is performing fine at the moment. Unless you say its really worth it, and i won't lose data because of an update. You have an 1880i or a newer version?

 

And the thing about the cables, i have no idea if that is true. I think i bought good ones, not really sure what brand they are though, doesn't say it on the cables themselves. I think its 3Ware, but i'm not sure. Which brand of cable is good? If it happens again i might look at some better cables.

 

The cables I had issues with were from ebay -> china.  I've used Startech round cables since and they've been fine.

[stevv]

Well i only cut off everything above the capacity which are the same as in your screenshot. Some of the information im not getting. I guess you have a newer firmware or something. Don't think i really need that as the card is performing fine at the moment. Unless you say its really worth it, and i won't lose data because of an update. You have an 1880i or a newer version?

 

And the thing about the cables, i have no idea if that is true. I think i bought good ones, not really sure what brand they are though, doesn't say it on the cables themselves. I think its 3Ware, but i'm not sure. Which brand of cable is good? If it happens again i might look at some better cables.

 

I have the 1880i  with Firmware Version V1.52.  I've updated firmware a couple of time without issues to the arrays.  I wanted the TLER controls and 1024KB stripes.. Though I've didn't have an major issues even back in 2011 when I first got it, so not a critical update.

 

If you want to test the cable, you can swap the position of the cables-to-drives (after shutting down first).. that's what I did when my own drive was failing a couple of times... nice thing the card can handle drive reorder without a hitch.. hence this mess in the drive orders lol.

[Helly]

Well i still don't know what the problem was. Drives are all still working fine. I never buy stuff off ebay and i didn't cheap out on the cables either. They were among the most expensive i could find so i figured they would be fine. I also asked around on another forum to see if they were good and a couple of people said so. I have another set of them lying around here so i could swap them if it happens again.

 

about the firmware, there's 4 BIN files when i download it. Do i just use em all or only 1 of them. Had a bad experience with a mobo firmware update recently that caused me to lose both my raid-0 arrays. So i'm a bit terrified that it will happen here also. But i do want to update if possible without data loss.

[TechDookie]

So what do you exactly do with all this storage?

[Sousuke]

So what do you exactly do with all this storage?

 

Backup all the installs I have, All the data I have on all my systems and phone are also backed up. Sure 12TBs is rather Overkill but I'd rather have too much space than not enough.

[Commander_Z]

Backup all the installs I have, All the data I have on all my systems and phone are also backed up. Sure 12TBs is rather Overkill but I'd rather have too much space than not enough.

 

You can never have too much storage

[RandomNOOB]

This ^ guy gets it!

[thebennyboy]

Hardware

Motherboard: MSI Z97 MPower Max AC

CPU: i7 4790k

CPU cooler: H110

GPU: MSI R9 290X Lightning

RAM: 4 x 4GB Teamgroup Black 1600Mhz

PSU: Enermax Revolution87+ 850w

Boot drive (SSD): OCZ Vertex 3 120GB

Storage drives: 4 x 3TB Seagate Barracuda (ST3000DM001)

Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro

Total capacity: 12TB raw, 6TB useable

 

 

Software and Configuration

PC runs Windows 10 and i'm using the onboard Intel RAID controller. I have 4 x 3TB drives set in RAID10, so i have redundancy of RAID1 and the speed benefits of RAID0.

 

Usage

Mainly just used for storage of games and movies. I have a 10Mbps ADSL connection right now and i REALLY don't want to have to re-downloading all my games which currently totals about 1.5TB but i'm always downloading more so thats why i wanted 6TB.

 

 

Photos

 

 

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

Welcome to the club. 

 

Do consider getting different harddrives or at least keep regular backups of your data, the ST3000DM001 has a really bad reputation (25+% annual failure rate, and some of us have seen them die even faster).

[thebennyboy]

Welcome to the club. 

 

Do consider getting different harddrives or at least keep regular backups of your data, the ST3000DM001 has a really bad reputation (25+% annual failure rate, and some of us have seen them die even faster).

 

Thank you. I know that model has a bad rep but i weighed up that with paying more for drives like the WD RED 3TB.

 

That model now seems to come with a 2 year warranty compared to when they came with a 1 year warranty. I presume they have made some changes that allows for that, i guess i'll replace them with WD Reds as they fail (if they do fail). One of the drives i've had for 1.5 years and it's still running fine. I may actually just replace them with Seagate nas drives as they fail as i've always had a good experience with Seagate

[Alexdaman]

Thank you. I know that model has a bad rep but i weighed up that with paying more for drives like the WD RED 3TB.

 

That model now seems to come with a 2 year warranty compared to when they came with a 1 year warranty. I presume they have made some changes that allows for that, i guess i'll replace them with WD Reds as they fail (if they do fail). One of the drives i've had for 1.5 years and it's still running fine. I may actually just replace them with Seagate nas drives as they fail as i've always had a good experience with Seagate

 

I had 2x  ST3000 die while in warranty ,  they suddenly stopped working and I could kiss my data goodbye , and it was a sudden death.

I will never buy Seagate again.

[Gronnie]

I had 2x  ST3000 die while in warranty ,  they suddenly stopped working and I could kiss my data goodbye , and it was a sudden death.

I will never buy Seagate again.

 

Meh, all brands have certain models that have issues.

 

I work for HGST and have a bunch of Seagate 4TB drives in my server that I bought before becoming employed at HGST, and haven't had any issues with any of them. I don't plan on switching to WD or HGST drives (we are owned by WD) until these Seagate's fail, and hope (expect) that to be not for a good, long while.

[vanished]

...

 

...

lol "small data array" 101 TB

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

I had to shut down the NAS today due to a short in one of my wall plugs right above it (sparks flying and everything, the wires and plugs are from shortly after WW2 and that particular plug had been falling apart for some time now). 

So before I turned on the electricity again I attached a wall plug meter to the NAS' plug to finally measure it. 

 

Apparently it's using 50-55W at idle. 

I started to play a movie (full-size Blu-Ray rip) and it went to 60W. 

Then I copied a 30GB folder to it (from one of the SSDs inside the PC) and the meter was jumping between 72 and 97W while writing at 110MB/s.

 

According to Task Manager I'm maxing out the PC's Gbit ethernet port at that speed, so as long as I upgrade there's no bottlenecks in the NAS despite running half the suggested RAM.

 

Pretty pleased with those results.  Sure, it'd be nice If I could get it to use less at idle, but before this I was running a WD EX4 as well as a Lacie 2big and those 2 combined would use about the same whilst having less capacity, no redundancy and less than half the speed.

[Helly]

Oh well, here's an update from me.

 

No pics or storage space changes. But i finally reinstalled my server to windows server 2012 R2. It seems a bit slow, don't know why. I've also upgraded my server from a AMD 1090t to a FX8350. Motherboard from a 990fx to 890GX so i can use the on-board graphics and get rid of the dedicated GPU in there (was a 7770). I've also upgraded the ram from 8GB to 16GB. Had it lying around here and thought why not use it? The upgrade took some trouble though, the GX board didn't (and officially doesn't... yeah i know) support the fx 8350. It initially didn't work at all and had to swap the CPU to upgrade the bios to make it work.

 

It's all running great, and it's been running for weeks now. The failed drive has also never failed again so everything finally seems fine. Been thinking of getting a better case with more slots for drives to add another raid card and add the old 2TB drives. But i can't find a good case. So that will have to wait for now...