Western Digital's Red 2 - 6TB NAS drives apparently aren't good for NAS use?

[RejZoR]

1 hour ago, TomvanWijnen said:

I have a WD Red WD20EFRX-68EUZN0 2TB from a couple of years old, do you think that that one is fine?

 

Imagine being rich enough for all SSD storage

Samsung 860 QVO 4TB is 428€ on Geizhals right now. It's the largest, cheapest single drive SSD available and isn't some no name shitty Chinese one from Wish.com. Sure, while 427€ sounds like a lot, that's 4TB of pure fast SSD storage. Sure, it's SATA and not NVMe, but 550MB/s sequential is plenty for anyone but for those who only need raw sequential. Random access won't be that much different unless we're talking some absurd specific usage.

 

Want even cheaper for RAID? Samsung 860 QVO 1TB is 99,90. Lets call it 100€. Times 4 is 400€. It's actually even cheaper than single 4TB SSD. And you can get like 2GB/s speeds in RAID0 from it. That's CHEAP. I paid 850€ for a single 2TB SSD few years ago. Sure it was top of the line 2TB SATA drive but still. Now you get 2x larger one for 2x less. Or to go the most realistic, logical path, a 2TB SSD for today, very good capacity, good price. Same storage as mine, 4x cheaper at 195€ for yet again Samsung 860 QVO 2TB. 200€ for fast and big storage that's speedy in sequential, random access, it's absolutely silent and cool. How much did you spend on graphic cards in last 5+ years and how much they are worth now?

 

Not to mention storage depreciates the least with time in terms of usability. Graphic cards get outdated way faster. CPU's get outdated way faster. Where SSD's, sure they lose value as they are older products, but my "old" 2TB SSD is still as capable as today's latest and most expensive NVMe drives (I'm talking general use for OS, apps and games all run from it, not some oddly specific use case). And it'll be just the same after 5 more years and it's already like 4-5 years old. Where 8 years old graphic card is just useless trash, the SSD is still SSD. It's the random access magic that makes them worthy. So, whatever money you invest in them, they give you all the value.

 

And to draw a line here and make a conclusion, I'm on 2TB main drive for like a decade now. 2TB WD Black HDD for at least 5 years and now 2TB Samsung 850 Pro SSD for around 5 years too. And this 2TB still feels like plenty. I only got the extra 8TB HDD because it was cheap and I could. There was no absolute need for it. I estimated that the investment of 850€ for SSD will serve me for good 10 years easily. And I'm somewhere half way there now with no appearance that it wouldn't be able to serve me for that long. And I'll probably just keep it until it'll literally die and it'll be usable till very end. What other component we spend hundreds of € on can claim such longevity? None. Maybe a case or something like monitor. And that's about it. SSD's are only expensive if you only look at its price and say "that's expensive". But if you look at it how much it costs and how much functionality it offers you for how long without losing quality providing that functionality (apart from raw capacity as things like games do get larger and larger with time, but only few of them like CoD that really stand out), it's the best damn value of ANY computer component in existence. And best investment too. My system has been stupid responsive for years now and I'm using SSD's since ACER Aspire One, those tiny little netbooks were a thing, as I stuck 80GB Intel SSD already in it. I've had every laptop with SSD since. My main system had hybrid storage for several years prior going with full on SSD. It's just such a game changing tech not having it is the biggest waste of money, not those 400 something € you spend on 4TB SSD. Or 200 something € on 2TB.

 

HDD's served us well for many many years, but they are now what, 70 years old tech? It's really time SSD fully replaces them and HDD's only remain in the mass storage realm because they are so cheap and disposable coz they are literally ancient technology, just scaled to huge capacities thanks to stuff like SMR. But they need to label them accordingly just like SSD makers should mark DRAM-less SSD's as such in utmost open way and not bury that fact in some obscure spec sheet or not even mention it anywhere.

 

And we hate these inter model changes without any mentions. They've done this with many things where they sent their best effort to reviewers and then silently cheap out on components. People were buying them in good faith because the reviews were stellar, but the actual received products were subpar, but people didn't notice they were a bit slower. Where RAID array just shitting its pants because regular and SMR don't go together in RAID is something that was just waiting to happen and I'm wondering what the hell were they thinking, that no one would notice? Of all, they are storage experts and they thought they'd get away with it. Heh.

[TomvanWijnen]

5 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Want even cheaper for RAID? Samsung 860 QVO 1TB is 99,90. Lets call it 100€. Times 4 is 400€. It's actually even cheaper than single 4TB SSD. And you can get like 2GB/s speeds in RAID0 from it. That's CHEAP

It is cheap!

 

5 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

How much did you spend on graphic cards in last 5+ years and how much they are worth now?

In the last 5 years? About 15 euros, all on an AMD HD something something. I guess that it's now worth about the same.

 

A little over 6 years ago I bought a GTX 680 for about 225 euros. It's now worth about 50-70 euros.

 

10 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Not to mention storage depreciates the least with time in terms of usability. Graphic cards get outdated way faster. CPU's get outdated way faster. Where SSD's, sure they lose value as they are older products, but my "old" 2TB SSD is still as capable as today's latest and most expensive NVMe drives (I'm talking general use for OS, apps and games all run from it, not some oddly specific use case). And it'll be just the same after 5 more years and it's already like 4-5 years old. Where 8 years old graphic card is just useless trash, the SSD is still SSD. It's the random access magic that makes them worthy. So, whatever money you invest in them, they give you all the value.

Funny you say that. Apart from adding in a more RAM and another HDD, the only thing that I paid for to upgrade in my computer since I built it in 2014 is the SSD! (I said paid for as I got given a slightly faster CPU for free, wouldn't have upgraded otherwise) I will, however, when I finally take time for it, repurpose my old SSD into another laptop.

 

I could definitely use an 8 year old graphics card, as I have a few computers with not that great GPUs, or just no GPU at all.

 

15 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

And to draw a line here and make a conclusion, I'm on 2TB main drive for like a decade now. 2TB WD Black HDD for at least 5 years and now 2TB Samsung 850 Pro SSD for around 5 years too. And this 2TB still feels like plenty.

I've sadly ran out of storage...  I was going to buy some second hand HDDs as backup drives, so I could use my 2 TB drive as actual storage instead of just backup, but with these current events I guess I can better wait for a bit.

 

19 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

I estimated that the investment of 850€ for SSD will serve me for good 10 years easily. And I'm somewhere half way there now with no appearance that it wouldn't be able to serve me for that long. And I'll probably just keep it until it'll literally die and it'll be usable till very end. What other component we spend hundreds of € on can claim such longevity? None. Maybe a case or something like monitor. And that's about it.

HDDs?  And just everything? My mother's laptop and my sister's laptop will be turning 10 next year or so.  I also have plenty of other old hardware around the house being used, many of which on a daily basis.

 

22 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

It's just such a game changing tech not having it is the biggest waste of money, not those 400 something € you spend on 4TB SSD. Or 200 something € on 2TB.

I'd argue having a big SSD is actually quite a big waste of money. I bought a 120 GB SSD for €90 in 2014 and used it on my main computer until 2019. The main reason for upgrading was that I'd have to reinstall Windows anyways for moving to Windows 10.  The main reason for getting a 960 GB one last year (150€ ish), instead of a smaller one, was because the price/GB rate was atrocious under 1 TB.

 

26 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

HDD's served us well for many many years, but they are now what, 70 years old tech? It's really time SSD fully replaces them and HDD's only remain in the mass storage realm because they are so cheap and disposable coz they are literally ancient technology

Cars are even older, we still use those too...

HDDs are much cheaper than SSDs. For mass storage like video, there is just not much difference between an SSD and an HDD, while the price difference is steep.

 

[StDragon]

35 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Where RAID array just shitting its pants because regular and SMR don't go together in RAID is something that was just waiting to happen and I'm wondering what the hell were they thinking, that no one would notice? Of all, they are storage experts and they thought they'd get away with it. Heh.

I don't have a problem with SMR so long as it's fully disclosed. And there are many reports of SMR drives just dropping out of an array for no apparent reason. Because mass storage rely on proper engineering, those engineers also need to me made aware of the specifications too.

 

That all said, I was of the understanding this was a solved issue with TLER. If there's truly a firmware bug where a drive can't keep up or handle error when writing back to an SMR platter, there should be an acknowledgment to that fact back up to the controller. For a drive to literally disconnect itself without warning is BAD MOJO. It's tantamount to just yanking a drive out of the bay for no reported reason. It's not like the RAID controller kicked it out which would be another matter entirely; and there would have been system logs recorded to that effect too.

[Arika]

3 hours ago, Kilrah said:

Cloud backup is ridiculous for large amounts of data for most people, not everybody has Linus' internet connection. 

I modified 40GB of data today, this would take 6 hours maxing out my upload to the point I can't do anything comfortably just to sync. Updating my local HDD backup it's 2 minutes.

If i had to cloud backup even half of what i would call important files that i don't want to lose (which would be just under 1TB), i'm looking at 50 days of upload non-stop at my speeds on a good day, but it would also tank the rest of my internet to be unsable. yay for 7mbps/0.7mbps adsl.

 

Hence why everything is backed up locally

 

 

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, Arika S said:

If i had to cloud backup even half of what i would call important files that i don't want to lose (which would be just under 1TB), i'm looking at 50 days of upload non-stop at my speeds on a good day, but it would also tank the rest of my internet to be unsable. yay for 7mbps/0.7mbps adsl.

 

Hence why everything is backed up locally

 

 

I've got good internet (I say good its 20/4 Mbps) and I would even contemplate trying to back everything up to the cloud.  If I was dedicated enough I could probable start with new stuff, but the last 20 years of photos and videos aren't going anywhere near the cloud without a dedicated 10Gbps uplink. 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

3 hours ago, TomvanWijnen said:

...Imagine being rich enough for all SSD storage

Easy. Just work hard for 40 or 50 years and save your pennies.

[Kilrah]

8 hours ago, RejZoR said:

I estimated that the investment of 850€ for SSD will serve me for good 10 years easily.

I upgraded my storage 6 months ago, at the prices you quote for the 4TB SSDs and for the same amount I got in HDDs which I estimate to be good for 6 years or so I'd have needed 11500€ of SSDs...

[leadeater]

8 hours ago, StDragon said:

It's not like the RAID controller kicked it out which would be another matter entirely; and there would have been system logs recorded to that effect too.

Technically the RAID controller does kick it out, but for the reason you said, it's disappeared. If a drive doesn't respond to an I/O command after a set time it is kicked from the array which what is happening.

 

TLER you can configure the retry/recovery time for a read/write error and is configurable, default is 7s/7s. Recovery is done by remapping sectors and the drive will try to do this for the length configured, you want the drive to try to do this as if it doesn't and it reports the error the disk will be marked as failed. If you configure the timer longer than the RAID implementation timeout and the remapping goes for longer than the timeout but does not hit the configured TLER then the disk will be kicked out of the array.

 

What is happening is actually expected behavior from the RAID implementations, if disks stop responding they will be kicked.

 

The question I have is because TLER is an error function related feature then this would actually have nothing to do with the DM-SMR function of the drive, what ever cleanup is happening is not an error so TLER is not in play. But how long is the data cleanup supposed to take? Is there a timeout? How does it respond to I/O commands during this?

 

Sounds to me like the drive goes in to a locked state or stops responding to I/O commands when it does large background data moves and this is taking longer than standard timeouts in NAS software/ZFS etc. If we know how long it's supposed to take we could adjust the timeouts and the disks will stopped getting kicked from arrays.

[jagdtigger]

11 hours ago, Kilrah said:

Cloud backup is ridiculous for large amounts of data for most people, not everybody has Linus' internet connection. 

And not everybody works with several GB files, plus a good backup SW wont upload the whole file again just the changes and apply it to the existing file on the other side.

[Kilrah]

2 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

And not everybody works with several GB files

No, but you did recommend cloud backup to someone who does...

[RejZoR]

26 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

I upgraded my storage 6 months ago, at the prices you quote for the 4TB SSDs and for the same amount I got in HDDs which I estimate to be good for 6 years or so I'd have needed 11500€ of SSDs...

Yeah, but no amount of HDD's in any type of array can replace just 1 SSD's random access performance. I'd have absolutely no use of 850€ worth of HDD's if my system would still be slow, noisy and hot as a result.

[jagdtigger]

3 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

No, but you did recommend cloud backup to someone who does...

He only mentioned how much storage he has. No mention of file sizes. Anyway only the initial backup is slow. From there it is going to be incremental which is way faster.

[Kilrah]

  

3 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Yeah, but no amount of HDD's in any type of array can replace just 1 SSD's random access performance. I'd have absolutely no use of 850€ worth of HDD's if my system would still be slow, noisy and hot as a result.

 

Of course everything that needs to be fast is on SSDs, but for me 2TB is enough. The other 32TB don't care about "only" being accessible at 500MB/s.

[RejZoR]

5 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

  

 

Of course everything that needs to be fast is on SSDs, but for me 2TB is enough. The other 32TB don't care about "only" being accessible at 500MB/s.

Sequential is irrelevant unless you're dumping video and you just need it to get over with quickly. It's random access that matters. So, those 500MB/s wouldn't really mean anything coz Windows would still boot slowly with it, same for apps and games. You'd have slight advantage over single HDD, but nowhere near any SSD.

 

And like I've said, 2TB SSD is a sweet spot at the moment for majority of storage needs in general. You can easily have everything on it, OS, tons of apps, games and even movies and you'll still have space. If you're a hoarder not even that 4TB SSD would be enough. Or those 32TB of HDD's...

[Kilrah]

Again I'd never recommend HDDs as boot drive, but lots of stuff is just fine on HDDs.

 

The 40% of those 32TB that are used so far don't hold any games, apps or entertainment stuff, they hold 25 years worth of my life since I started using computers, 8TB of my photography work etc.

[TomvanWijnen]

9 hours ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

Easy. Just work hard for 40 or 50 years and save your pennies.

Fair! I'm not there yet in life though, and I assume most people aren't either. And if I was, I would decide to save more of my pennies and just go with whatever works (almost) just as well. That is completely up to your own desires, though.

 

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

Yeah, but no amount of HDD's in any type of array can replace just 1 SSD's random access performance. I'd have absolutely no use of 850€ worth of HDD's if my system would still be slow, noisy and hot as a result.

HDDs aren't slow in every task, and they certainly aren't always noisy or hot. Sample size of two: My NVME SSD is 33 °C, my old sata SSD is 21 °C, and my two HDDs are 23 °C. I don't hear any of them, as it is completely drowned out by the fans.

 

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

Sequential is irrelevant unless you're dumping video and you just need it to get over with quickly. It's random access that matters. So, those 500MB/s wouldn't really mean anything coz Windows would still boot slowly with it, same for apps and games. You'd have slight advantage over single HDD, but nowhere near any SSD.

 

And like I've said, 2TB SSD is a sweet spot at the moment for majority of storage needs in general. You can easily have everything on it, OS, tons of apps, games and even movies and you'll still have space. If you're a hoarder not even that 4TB SSD would be enough. Or those 32TB of HDD's...

Perhaps for some people dumping big(ish) files is exactly what they need? I have Windows and my games on my SSD, but my 1+ TB of video and 100+ GB of photos are just as fine and accessible on my HDD.

[S w a t s o n]

17 hours ago, Unixsystem said:

And why is it wrong or any of your business what other people of with their data? There's a market for slow, cheap mass storage and companies have been filling it. The only issue with that arrangement is when the companies lie about the products that they are selling. 

 

Whether or not SSDs are superior to HDDs isn't even tangentially related to the topic. 

Slow cheap mass storage is sata ssd's. Spinning rust may as well be tape at this point. If i'm a large company doing archival, fine. Otherwise, no

[StDragon]

6 hours ago, leadeater said:

Technically the RAID controller does kick it out, but for the reason you said, it's disappeared. If a drive doesn't respond to an I/O command after a set time it is kicked from the array which what is happening.

 

-----------------------------

 

The question I have is because TLER is an error function related feature then this would actually have nothing to do with the DM-SMR function of the drive, what ever cleanup is happening is not an error so TLER is not in play. But how long is the data cleanup supposed to take? Is there a timeout? How does it respond to I/O commands during this?

 

Sounds to me like the drive goes in to a locked state or stops responding to I/O commands when it does large background data moves and this is taking longer than standard timeouts in NAS software/ZFS etc. 

Eh, I suppose it depends on POV. At the end of the day, yes the RAID controller drops the drive and moves on so as to not hold up the volume. But it's not because it was a proactive measure insomuch as a system level event reporting a SATA device dropped offline (like a drive's controller locking up)

 

I've never written RAID drivers or firmware, so I could't tell you how verbose / granular the logging can be. I could only recall the logging information available to me at the time and it was more limited than I prefer. 

 

During a TLER event, I'd expect those to be logged even if the SATA channel is reported to still be occupied. Even if that means the RAID controller taking proactive measure to drop the drive from the array while the SATA channel is left in a connected state.
 

[jagdtigger]

1 hour ago, S w a t s o n said:

Slow cheap mass storage is sata ssd's.

In terms of price:

1TB SSD = 4 TB HDD

2TB SSD = 10 TB HDD

 

So yeah, hell no.

[Curufinwe_wins]

35 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

In terms of price:

1TB SSD = 4 TB HDD

2TB SSD = 10 TB HDD

 

So yeah, hell no.

So, the first is true, but 1TB SSD also = 2 1TB HDDs, and most 10TB HDDs (only exception I know of atm is shucking an external one) are noticeably more expensive than 2 TB SSDs, the 8TB models tends to be more commonly in the same price range.

 

But either way, cold storage shouldn't generally be SSDs anyways due to information leak at extended times without power. And either way, SSDs are still more expensive.

 

The way I personally think about it is that smaller than 5TB total hot storage it makes sense to go all SSD, and above that, SSD primary plus HDD-based NAS makes the most sense. I personally have 3TB of SSD attached with 12 (9 usable) TB HDD sitting in a NAS.

[jagdtigger]

2 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

are noticeably more expensive than 2 TB SSDs

I loked prices up, samsung 860 evo 2TB - 111990 HUF vs Ironwolf  10 TB - 110790 HUF

[Curufinwe_wins]

31 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

I loked prices up, samsung 860 evo 2TB - 111990 HUF vs Ironwolf  10 TB - 110790 HUF

Oh sorry. Obviously things can vary by market. I meant the US market. Here in the US 10TB drives are 250-450 dollars with *huge price variation* (minus one external WD one at 190 right now), and 2TB ssds are in the 170-220 range. 

 

1TB SSDs are 80-110 dollars, and a 1TB HDD is 40-60 dollars generally.

[StDragon]

There's no question about it, on a cost per GB bases, HDD reign supreme over SSDs. Just ask Backblaze. But it's not an all or nothing proposition when it comes to storage; it's why tiered storage exists (hybrid of heterogeneous storage technologies).

 

On a cost per GB, tape is still the cheapest. On average, an LTO-8 tape (12TB native / 30TB compressed) lists for $124 per tape. Assuming none of the data can be compressed further, let's assume 12TB. That's still 96GB on the dollar. Not bad. But yes, there's overhead on the cost of the tape readers themselves. But past the initial investment, the savings add up real quick past a certain number of tapes purchased.

Almost assuredly that Amazon Glacier is storing data in tape format with a robotic reader array.

 

And for those that aren't aware, the world of GIS (SEG-Y data format) can amount in the Petabytes and in some cases Exabytes! The ocean floor is vast with lots of side-scan sonar data being stored. Much of the old data has been archived to WORM for historical reasons.

 

Current SSD technology will retain data without power between 5 to 10 years. Meaning, NAND will NEVER be used for long-term archive data. And when I say long-term, I'm talking about boxing them up and storing them in a warehouse for the next 20+ years later. HDD archival is dicey too because the heads can stick to the platter .

[jagdtigger]

16 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Oh sorry. Obviously things can vary by market. I meant the US market. Here in the US 10TB drives are 250-450 dollars with *huge price variation* (minus one external WD one at 190 right now), and 2TB ssds are in the 170-220 range. 

 

1TB SSDs are 80-110 dollars, and a 1TB HDD is 40-60 dollars generally.

Yeah, i also should keep in mind that. But most of the time i just check my usual go-to store an look up prices in my region forgetting it can swing wildly market-to market. Anyway HDDs are still, and will be for a long time a go-to choice for mass storage.

 

  

15 minutes ago, StDragon said:

HDD archival is dicey too because the heads can stick to the platter .

Correct me if im wrong but there are HDDs out there that does not park the head on the platter when its idle/off.

[StDragon]

The problem with current NAND technology isn't the complexity of the end product itself, rather the manufacturing of the chips themselves. More specifically, the limited global production capacity. It truly is a commodity. With HDD's it's rather different because it's easier to produce even if it has all sorts of metal, coils, and rare earth magnets.

 

With SSDs, once you produce one, you can stamp them out like cookies so long as you have the chips themselves. The rest is just firmware and the controller.

 

The Chinese government is mandating a native x86 chip for all computers in their country. At some point, they will be adding more chip fabrication plants to the global supply as a result too. If the world can produce more supply of NAND than demand, I expect SSDs to plummet in cost-per-GB.