Right HDD for NAS

[tjrose91]

for the most part im am happy with my 3x10tb Barracuda Pro HDD and have then in a Raid 5 Config and have data warrenty on them till 2022 for two drives and 2023 for the third, but overall for basic home NAS use with good internet connection 25mbps is there any advantage over the Ironwolf Pro series over the barracuda Pro i plan to have the server on a schedule where it turns off at 10pm and turns on at 6pm to save power since the NAS will be at my brothers house, but i wanna try and save as much money as possible and still going to get the 3 year extra data warranty thru Seagate making 5yrs total  

 

so i dont plan to have the Server on 24/7 and its on a Dell T410 with non-hotswap bays

[Razor Blade]

The following is just my opinion...

 

Enough of advantage to buy all new drives? Most definitely not... the Ironwolf drives are really nice to have if you have a NAS that supports their Ironwolf health utilities. Those NAS drives are also optimized for use in small compact enclosures. However if you're running in a server the doesn't support the extra features, the advantages aren't as great. Barracuda pro and Ironwolf pro offer the same 2 year data recovery service but as with any drive and drive array, keep backups anyway (it is just good data maintenance practice).

 

If I were you, I would keep the disks you have. IMO in the future you could look into Ironwolf pro or EXOS drives when running in servers. But if you decide to get a NAS that supports Ironwolf health, definitely go for Ironwolf.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Id get a few of these https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-easystore-10tb-external-usb-3-0-hard-drive-with-32gb-easystore-usb-flash-drive-black/6290669.p?skuId=6290669

 

And remove them from the casing to make them a normal internal drive.

 

There pretty cheap drives per tb, power efficent per tb.

[tjrose91]

well i am planning to do a 6x4tb HDD config in Raid 5 so it matches my main gaming right with 3x10tb in Raid 5 so both systems will have the same capacity 18.1tb

[Firewrath9]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id get a few of these https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-easystore-10tb-external-usb-3-0-hard-drive-with-32gb-easystore-usb-flash-drive-black/6290669.p?skuId=6290669

 

And remove them from the casing to make them a normal internal drive.

 

There pretty cheap drives per tb, power efficent per tb.

and if they break, no warranty, no data recovery.

 

[tjrose91]

2 minutes ago, Razor Blade said:

The following is just my opinion...

 

Enough of advantage to buy all new drives? Most definitely not... the Ironwolf drives are really nice to have if you have a NAS that supports their Ironwolf health utilities. Those NAS drives are also optimized for use in small compact enclosures. However if you're running in a server the doesn't support the extra features, the advantages aren't as great. Barracuda pro and Ironwolf pro offer the same 2 year data recovery service but as with any drive and drive array, keep backups anyway (it is just good data maintenance practice).

 

If I were you, I would keep the disks you have. IMO in the future you could look into Ironwolf pro or EXOS drives when running in servers. But if you decide to get a NAS that supports Ironwolf health, definitely go for Ironwolf.

I plan use a dedicated 6gb SAS controller for my config

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Firewrath9 said:

and if they break, no warranty, no data recovery.

 

You can warranty those drives, just send them in like any other drives to wd warranty. They will waranty the bare drives.

 

And you can send it in to recovery your self, but really you should have backups as recovery is never a guarantee.

[Razor Blade]

2 minutes ago, tjrose91 said:

well i am planning to do a 6x4tb HDD config in Raid 5 so it matches my main gaming right with 3x10tb in Raid 5 so both systems will have the same capacity 18.1tb

My advice is...don't. For NAS use in a home, more capacity with fewer drives is better in almost every way. The only disadvantage being if you ever replace a drive, the rebuild will take much longer. But advantages like lower power consumption, cost per TB, and simplicity far outweighs the potential failure inconvenience.

[tjrose91]

i want to keep the same capatcity for both systems so i dont mind the extra drives, just didnt know the major diffrences between the Barracuda Pro and Ironwolf Pro since i probally never use the extra features and i will have the Data Recovery with Seagate for 5yrs and every 5 years just buy new drives

[79wjd]

5 minutes ago, Firewrath9 said:

and if they break, no warranty, no data recovery.

 

Aside from the fact that you can warranty them, they're significantly cheaper -- half the price -- so you could literally buy an extra for the same amount of money as a bare 10tb drive. On top of that, because they're so much cheaper, you can buy more and have proper backups (and/or better redundancy -- RAID 5 with those size drives is actually a pretty big concern), thereby eliminating (or massively reducing) the need for data recovery, which may or may not be successful. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, tjrose91 said:

i want to keep the same capatcity for both systems so i dont mind the extra drives, just didnt know the major diffrences between the Barracuda Pro and Ironwolf Pro since i probally never use the extra features and i will have the Data Recovery with Seagate for 5yrs and every 5 years just buy new drives

why do you want the same capacity? You probably want more space on the server so you can have incremental backups.

[Razor Blade]

34 minutes ago, tjrose91 said:

well i am planning to do a 6x4tb HDD config in Raid 5 so it matches my main gaming right with 3x10tb in Raid 5 so both systems will have the same capacity 18.1tb

The rule I go by is always try to increase capacity when you're buying drives to put in an array... The reason I said go for fewer higher capacity drives is for power consumption and future upgrade potential.

 

For example, if you only have 6 bays available in your computer and buy six 4TB drives for a total of 24TB, in the future if you want to increase capacity, you're stuck replacing a bunch of drives instead of adding them. If I wanted 24 TB I would rather buy four 6TB drives or two 12TB drives. Depending on how much "usable" space you require as well as your budget would determine what drives make the most sense to buy.

[Windows7ge]

Personally it would not be worthwhile particularly if it's just a simple NAS. To further reason why I think it wouldn't be worth paying extra would be because of your (I assume) 1Gbit network bottleneck. If the barracuda drives are already 7200RPM you won't get any extra speed out of buying Ironwolf especially over the internet. The only real improvement you may see is how much data can be written to it before failure but that's also not worthwhile for a hobbyshop home gamer. Chances are you'll upgrade before you reach the drives maximum write lifespan.

 

If power efficiency is more important than upfront cost you can look into disks substantially over 8TB like 12TB or 14TB so you can use less of them but anything over 8TB comes with a premium.

[Thirdgen89GTA]

Having been around the block and built a few NAS for both home and small office work I can tell you that right now, 4TB drives are the most cost effective drive capacity right now.

 

If I take your IronWolfs as an example, the 4TB drive gives 36GB per $1.  The 6TB is the worst at 30GB/$1.  From there it edges up slowly till it plateaus around 33GB per $1.

 

 

I don't know what you want this NAS for, so I'm making some assumptions.  Right now you have a 20TB array.  This is technically a stupidly huge amount of space for anything that isn't dealing with Media such as Uncompressed Bluray Rips.  So based on the capacity if your current system I'm assuming you are using it for some sort of Media Server.

 

Drive Warranties are great, but that doesn't replace the data you lost when something failed.  A 3 Drive Raid-5 array is a ticking time bomb.  You'd be better off moving to a Raid-10 setup with 2 Stripe's mirrored.  Or building a 6 drive Raid-6 setup out of smaller capacity drives.   6x4TB in Raid-6 offers the same storage capacity but with WAY more redundancy.  A single family isn't going to come anywhere near stressing an array like this.  You will never have enough people hitting the array at once to even hit its limits on a LAN, let alone sending stuff over the WAN.

 

 

As for electricity costs?  My NAS specs are below in sig, only uses about 70w at idle.  Full load is somewhere near 180-200w if ever single disk is spinning and the CPU is doing some heavy transcoding.

 

Either way, the costs are minimal.  A $5 box fan running over-night in a bed-room will cost you more electricity than even a server like mine would.  I have a 4790k CPU, not the most power efficient now.

 

I would also never shut it down.  One thing that does kill drives is constant spin-up and spin-down, it wears them out faster.  Heat also kills them.  Keep them wet ventilated, and keep them running 24/7.  Powering up and Powering down twice a day will wear them out more quickly. 

 

Example SMART output from one of my original 8TB EasyStore drives.  They've only been started or stopped 28 times in almost 13000 hours of use.  I expect these drives to last about 5-7 years.

 

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Western Digital Red
Device Model:     WDC WD80EZZX-11CSGA0
Serial Number:    
LU WWN Device Id: 5 000cca 3b7cc500f
Firmware Version: 83.H0A03
User Capacity:    8,001,563,222,016 bytes [8.00 TB]
Sector Sizes:     512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate:    5400 rpm
Form Factor:      3.5 inches
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   ACS-2, ATA8-ACS T13/1699-D revision 4
SATA Version is:  SATA 3.1, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is:    Sat Mar  9 23:11:41 2019 CST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x82)	Offline data collection activity
					was completed without error.
					Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status:      (   0)	The previous self-test routine completed
					without error or no self-test has ever 
					been run.
Total time to complete Offline 
data collection: 		(  101) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: 			 (0x5b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
					Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
					Suspend Offline collection upon new
					command.
					Offline surface scan supported.
					Self-test supported.
					No Conveyance Self-test supported.
					Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003)	Saves SMART data before entering
					power-saving mode.
					Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01)	Error logging supported.
					General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine 
recommended polling time: 	 (   2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: 	 (1125) minutes.
SCT capabilities: 	       (0x003d)	SCT Status supported.
					SCT Error Recovery Control supported.
					SCT Feature Control supported.
					SCT Data Table supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000b   100   100   016    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  2 Throughput_Performance  0x0005   131   131   054    Pre-fail  Offline      -       116
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0007   253   253   024    Pre-fail  Always       -       177 (Average 183)
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       28
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   005    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000b   100   100   067    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  8 Seek_Time_Performance   0x0005   128   128   020    Pre-fail  Offline      -       18
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0012   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       12813
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0013   100   100   060    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       28
 22 Helium_Level            0x0023   100   100   025    Pre-fail  Always       -       100
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   093   093   000    Old_age   Always       -       9305
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0012   093   093   000    Old_age   Always       -       9305
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0002   153   153   000    Old_age   Always       -       39 (Min/Max 24/45)
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0022   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0008   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x000a   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

 

 

[Thirdgen89GTA]

9 hours ago, Razor Blade said:

The rule I go by is always try to increase capacity when you're buying drives to put in an array... The reason I said go for fewer higher capacity drives is for power consumption and future upgrade potential.

 

For example, if you only have 6 bays available in your computer and buy six 4TB drives for a total of 24TB, in the future if you want to increase capacity, you're stuck replacing a bunch of drives instead of adding them. If I wanted 24 TB I would rather buy four 6TB drives or two 12TB drives. Depending on how much "usable" space you require as well as your budget would determine what drives make the most sense to buy.

My opinion there is if you are getting into that sort of system its time to build in a chassis that allows hot-swap bays.  I did a NAS in a Mid-Tower case and ANY time I had to do any kind of drive maintenance it was a major pita.  I made the jump to a Norco 4224 case and couldn't not be happier.  I have 24 bays now and that is more expansion than I will probably ever need.  Want more storage, plenty of bays to add drives to.

 

Or if I need to migrate to a new array, I rack all the new drives, migrate the data to the new array.  And once confirmed yank the old drives to dispose/sell.

 

I hated having to go into the mid-tower case for anything drive related.

 

[Razor Blade]

5 minutes ago, Thirdgen89GTA said:

My opinion there is if you are getting into that sort of system its time to build in a chassis that allows hot-swap bays.  I did a NAS in a Mid-Tower case and ANY time I had to do any kind of drive maintenance it was a major pita.  I made the jump to a Norco 4224 case and couldn't not be happier.  I have 24 bays now and that is more expansion than I will probably ever need.  Want more storage, plenty of bays to add drives to.

 

Or if I need to migrate to a new array, I rack all the new drives, migrate the data to the new array.  And once confirmed yank the old drives to dispose/sell.

 

I hated having to go into the mid-tower case for anything drive related.

 

If budget is a factor, that can be a problem. That Norco case alone is going to set you back about $400. You're also going to have to make sure you have a sufficient power supply to support the number of drives you will run.

[Thirdgen89GTA]

10 hours ago, Razor Blade said:

If budget is a factor, that can be a problem. That Norco case alone is going to set you back about $400. You're also going to have to make sure you have a sufficient power supply to support the number of drives you will run.

All true. Even though the NAS really doesn't operate over 200 watts according to the UPS, I still have a 750w psu in there for if I ever have all 24 bays filled and power on the system.  The spin-up draw is the biggest drive power hog.

 

Though the HBA cards do have the ability to stagger spin-up to reduce instant-on power draw.

 

It was a big jump.  Especially since I replaced all of the fans, and I did buy rails to rack mount the case.  But now that I'm in, I will likely never have to upgrade the case.  Just the internals as long as I stay with ATX style components.  I did buy a spare backplane though just in case a backplane dies I can swap it, and then buy another one after the fact to keep in stock again.

 

But I did run across a Rosewill 4 bay 3.5" Hot-Swap cage that fits in a 3 bay 5.25" slot.   Part of me thinks it wouldn't be a bad thing to try with  a case that has forward facing 5.25" bays like the Antec 900.  Run the OS on the internal bays, and use the 4 bay hot-swap for data drives.  Which might make a tower style chassis more palatable.  Never owned one though, just saw it on Newegg once and though that it could be useful in some situations.  Would still need a HBA card with SAS to SATA break-out cables for these.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132037

 

They also make one that supports 8x 2.5" bays and only takes up 1 5.25" bay.  The fan looks super tiny though so its probably not very quiet.  

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816119044

[tjrose91]

On 3/9/2019 at 3:29 PM, Windows7ge said:

Personally it would not be worthwhile particularly if it's just a simple NAS. To further reason why I think it wouldn't be worth paying extra would be because of your (I assume) 1Gbit network bottleneck. If the barracuda drives are already 7200RPM you won't get any extra speed out of buying Ironwolf especially over the internet. The only real improvement you may see is how much data can be written to it before failure but that's also not worthwhile for a hobbyshop home gamer. Chances are you'll upgrade before you reach the drives maximum write lifespan.

 

If power efficiency is more important than upfront cost you can look into disks substantially over 8TB like 12TB or 14TB so you can use less of them but anything over 8TB comes with a premium.

i already used over 5.5tb of space and i hold a lot of porn lol jk more less videos that take up 4.3gb or more per video