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Seagate IronWolf or WD Red for upcoming entry level NAS?

LogicalDrm
By LogicalDrm
in Storage Devices
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Ok, this will be pretty odd situation. Premise: I'm running low on HDD space, and don't have funds for big tech purchase before I get trainee position for summer.

 

My next tech purchase will be NAS. It has been on my radar for a while, and I'm getting more and more needs for one. I have decided to pick one with changeable HDDs, but not quite pinpointed on which brand/model. I will probably make another thread when reviews fail me.

 

But to start this, I will need that HDD space. I probably will go for 2x 4Tb to make sure space will be enough for my backups and long-term storage. The choice is between IrongWolf and Red, both non-Pro models. The price difference is €8 for Seagate with 4Tb drives in store I will be using (same for WD with 3Tb and again to Seagate with 2Tb). So I can really pick either.

 

My issue is that I have old negative image of Seagate as budget brand. This comes from early/mid 2000s. And bad luck with Maxtor drives doesn't make it any easier, when I know Maxtor was purchased by Seagate. I have had mainly WD drives, with 2 older ones now retired, both in working condition and Black 2Tb in use. The second drive in active use is from Samsung. The rest are OEMs, probably Hitachies. So in 15+ years I haven't had any Seagates and one failed Maxtor.

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Have you looked at shucking external hdds? There normally much cheaper per gb. Look at the 8tb drives for 120

 

The brands are about the same, won't really matter here, get what is cheaper. Have backups and you won't lose your data.

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I have used both, as of recently I only buy Seagate HDD's as I had bad luck with WD Reds, I had a high failure rate that was exacerbated by a crappy server case. But since then I moved to Seagate, and for perspective I also have been using 2x 1TB Seagate Barracuda's in RAID 0 for 3+ years, both have been running fine. And my external RAID enclosure has 4x 8TB Seagate Ironwolfs (7200rpm), non of which have failed in 2+ years of heavy use. 

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11 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Have you looked at shucking external hdds? There normally much cheaper per gb. Look at the 8tb drives for 120

 

The brands are about the same, won't really matter here, get what is cheaper. Have backups and you won't lose your data.

External ones usually have Hitachies. Unless they are WD or Seagate ofc. And the point of this would be to be main backup (in RAID). Also, I don't live in land of almost free electronics. Cheapest 4Tb external drive is €120, just that €8 cheaper than IronWolf 4Tb. 6Tb external is €144, cheapest 8Tb is €187. When considering lost of full warranty, no thanks.

 

If I would be buying 8Tb overall, then it becomes more viable option as internal drives are €100 more.

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Doesn't really matter. Both companies have good and bad models. If anything, search up the model you are looking at.

 

I have seen other places that some recommend getting disks from different stores or at different time to try to get different production batches for it to be less likely both/all fail but don't know how Important that is....

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2 minutes ago, AZ Hobo said:

https://www.toshiba-storage.com/products/toshiba-internal-hard-drives-n300/

Uh, yeah. That doesn't really help me at all. If you can provide statistics or long-term reviews, we can talk about contributing.

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1 hour ago, LogicalDrm said:

External ones usually have Hitachies. Unless they are WD or Seagate ofc. And the point of this would be to be main backup (in RAID). Also, I don't live in land of almost free electronics. Cheapest 4Tb external drive is €120, just that €8 cheaper than IronWolf 4Tb. 6Tb external is €144, cheapest 8Tb is €187. When considering lost of full warranty, no thanks.

 

If I would be buying 8Tb overall, then it becomes more viable option as internal drives are €100 more.

Hitachi doesn't make drives, they got up by wd a few years ago.

 

IDK about your laws, but in the US, you still have full warranty.

 

Id start with one 8tb and add more drives later on.

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6 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id start with one 8tb and add more drives later on.

Seriously though, price difference is way too much for that. 6Tb is viable, being that same €8 more expensive than WD Red. But going for that, I need to look more into those NAS enclosures too.

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It depends with your NAS system.

If you are using Synology, i recommend you to using IronWolf because you can see the hard disk status in the system.

If you are not using Synology, you can using WD Red.

 

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Just now, Programmer Frank said:

It depends with your NAS system.

If you are using Synology, i recommend you to using IronWolf because you can see the hard disk status in the system.

If you are not using Synology, you can using WD Red.

 

At the moment I've not decided. But Synology has dropped out of sight as they seem to be bit expensive for features provided over the competition.

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1 minute ago, LogicalDrm said:

At the moment I've not decided. But Synology has dropped out of sight as they seem to be bit expensive for features provided over the competition.

Yea, and i think synology is so expensive.

Some drives are ANTI-vibration.

If you are using for server, and making a noise, using WD Red, if not, IronWolf.

 

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1 hour ago, Programmer Frank said:

Yea, and i think synology is so expensive.

Some drives are ANTI-vibration.

If you are using for server, and making a noise, using WD Red, if not, IronWolf.

 

You are making very little sense there...

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Are you planning on using 2x4TB in RAID for redundancy or to get 8TB storage total? Also do you need it for super reliable backup or just for a backup "just in case" or as secondary cold storage where it's annoyance if you lose data, but not end of the world?

 

I've recently bought 8TB HDD to supplement my 2TB SSD and I use it as cold storage. Not gonna cry if it dies and eats all the data. It'll be annoying, but not much. I just run Crystal Disk Info as resident app so it monitors my drives at all times and I have write caching disabled for HDD to minimize chance of things going bad. I've never had HDD die on me over night/out of the blue. Ever in 25 years. So I'm sticking with that logic. If CDI will start alerting on something, I'm just gonna buy new HDD sometime in the future and move the data. Doesn't matter what it'll be, when it starts warning, I'll replace it. Currently on Seagate Barracuda 8TB and it's pretty good. 5400 RPM for extra silence and the thing is totally inaudible. Wanted super reliability by going with WD Ultrastar HelioSeal 8TB or 10TB, but it cost so much I'll rather just buy new HDD for that difference. If I'd just go for reliability regardless of costs, I'd certainly go with some enterprise drive rated for 24/7. Though I run my drives like this and they just work. It probably hurts them less to just spin at all times instead of constantly starting and stopping.

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2 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Are you planning on using 2x4TB in RAID for redundancy or to get 8TB storage total? Also do you need it for super reliable backup or just for a backup "just in case" or as secondary cold storage where it's annoyance if you lose data, but not end of the world?

 

Raid for redundancy. And as backup, it will be more of annoyance and "oh, well" style. I have external HDD for more important stuff so those will be in several locations anyway. Main usage will be as media library, long-term storage for video files (which are mostly on YT too) and possibly as photo gallery/homepage. As it will be my first step to NAS/servers for mass storage purposes, I'm just hoping it its cheaper than paying for storage which isn't Google, Amazon or Microsoft.

 

But this will be at summer. Now I'm just running out of space (total of 300Gb on 3 internal drives). How I will manage with setup even if I don't max out drives when time comes, lets just say I have extra space which I don't want to use.

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I'd use both. One of each. So you are sure you don't get 2 HDD from a bad batch.

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39 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

 

Raid for redundancy. And as backup, it will be more of annoyance and "oh, well" style. I have external HDD for more important stuff so those will be in several locations anyway. Main usage will be as media library, long-term storage for video files (which are mostly on YT too) and possibly as photo gallery/homepage. As it will be my first step to NAS/servers for mass storage purposes, I'm just hoping it its cheaper than paying for storage which isn't Google, Amazon or Microsoft.

 

But this will be at summer. Now I'm just running out of space (total of 300Gb on 3 internal drives). How I will manage with setup even if I don't max out drives when time comes, lets just say I have extra space which I don't want to use.

For that purpose, I'd just do like well, like I've done :) 2TB SSD has cloud backup attached that syncs constantly with rewind feature to rewind any changes for 1 month period. The bulk storage 8TB runs with write caching disabled and Crystal Disk Info monitors its health constantly. I have yet to see a HDD die on my out of the blue. They always started showing something through SMART way before they even started showing any symptoms like slow access or other issues. I don't think it's worth spending so much for such backup/storage. Especially since you could get much bigger drive for the same price.

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