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

[StDragon]

23 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

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

Actually you are correct. Apparently it's been over 20+ years that they now park on a ramp. This used to not be the case.

 

I still wouldn't trust them for long-term archival. Servo track data has been known to degrade (you don't really "low-level" format a drive as this track is factory set and never changed). Also, HDDs are HEAVY. You can only stack so many on top of each-other before a wooden pallet reaches its maximum gross weight carrying capacity.

 

EDIT: gross capacity is up to 5,500 pound per pallet. Can stack bricks! 

Edited April 19, 2020 by StDragon

[Curufinwe_wins]

2 minutes ago, StDragon said:

Actually you are correct. Apparently it's been over 20+ years that they now park on a ramp. This used to not be the case.

 

I still wouldn't trust them for long-term archival. Servo track data has been known to degrade (you don't really "low-level" format a drive as this track is factory set and never changed). Also, HDDs are HEAVY. You can only stack so many on top of each-other before a wooden pallet reaches its maximum gross weight carrying capacity.

This is also a relatively small thing, but if you have a shock that does damage the platters, it's very easy for an HDD to completely shred the entire device, while tape is recoverable under most circumstances outside the damages area.

 

That's actually how I dispose of HDDs. Flathead screwdriver, hammer it into the housing, shake it a bit and now it's completely  #wrecked.

[S w a t s o n]

1 hour ago, jagdtigger said:

In terms of price:

1TB SSD = 4 TB HDD

2TB SSD = 10 TB HDD

 

So yeah, hell no.

 

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

 

Considering the drive is also 2x as fast and not a huge ass drive that weighs like 10x more and has multiple moving components. I thinks it's worth

[jagdtigger]

5 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

That's actually how I dispose of HDDs

I dont like taking chances:

 

  

2 minutes ago, S w a t s o n said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Considering the drive is also 2x as fast and not a huge ass drive that weighs like 10x more and has multiple moving components. I thinks it's worth

Yeah and i would need several HBAs to get the same capacity as i could do with HDDs. And those things aint cheap.....

[StDragon]

6 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

That's actually how I dispose of HDDs. Flathead screwdriver, hammer it into the housing, shake it a bit and now it's completely  #wrecked.

I'm not sure if all modern drives use glass substrate for the platters. But I know when I whack a laptop drive, it instantly turns into a maraca! 

[S w a t s o n]

4 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Yah and i would need several HBAs to get the same capacity as i could do with HDDs. And those things aint cheap.....

Yeah and just like HDD's you can buy them in larger capacities if you have the need.

[Guest willies leg]

I don't mind if they're SMR as long as they tell me they are. Gotta match similar drives in a RAID. Without knowing that makes it hard doesn't it?

 

SMR is a lot faster on sequential reads and writes, but a lot slower on random reads and way slower on random writes.

 

Gotta use them in a media server, for example.

[jagdtigger]

3 minutes ago, S w a t s o n said:

Yeah and just like HDD's you can buy them in larger capacities if you have the need.

Last time i checked the biggest is 4 TB and that thing is obscenely expensive. Id rather pick up one 10TB spinning rust for less.....

[S w a t s o n]

Just now, jagdtigger said:

Last time i checked the biggest is 4 TB and that thing is obscenely expensive. Id rather pick up one 10TB spinning rust for less.....

Enjoy having 10TB of data accessible at something like 1/10-1/4 of the speed on a single drive that will fail as soon as someone taps the enclosure it's in. If you have to use raid to offset the complete shit reliability of hard drives, save yourself the pain and go flash. Lmfao

[jagdtigger]

4 minutes ago, S w a t s o n said:

Enjoy having 10TB of data accessible at something like 1/10-1/4 of the speed on a single drive that will fail as soon as someone taps the enclosure it's in. If you have to use raid to offset the complete shit reliability of hard drives, save yourself the pain and go flash. Lmfao

For one its inside my NAS and use VPN to remote in, top it off my network is gigabit so no benefit in SSD. I will certainly enjoy the huge saving from going with HDD and spend it on more important stuff than the bragging rights SSD's would grant me......

[S w a t s o n]

Just now, jagdtigger said:

For one its inside my NAS and use VPN to remote in, top it off my network is gigabit so no benefit in SSD. I will certainly enjoy the huge saving from going with HDD and spend it on more important stuff than the bragging rights SSD's would grant me......

Can you even saturate gigabit reliably lol. You could enjoy your nas being 1/4 the size and weight and instead of spending money on raid you spend on better technology upfront. I'm also of the mind the average person doesn't need to hoard 47447393937 blue ray rips, every song released in the past 2 decades in FLAC and every photo or video they have ever taken literally ever in 4k. Photos and videos are only kept as.needed and documents don't take up shit. If you need more than 4TB as an individual you are hoarding

 

[jagdtigger]

5 minutes ago, S w a t s o n said:

If you need more than 4TB as an individual you are hoarding

Or store everything on the NAS including instaled games(because on linux it wont complain about its on a network share unlike on some other junk), and not only me but my family has stuff on it too......... Sorry but SSDs arent an option. And just as an FIY RAID5 ca easily saturate a 1 gig link....

[StDragon]

6 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

For one its inside my NAS and use VPN to remote in, top it off my network is gigabit so no benefit in SSD. I will certainly enjoy the huge saving from going with HDD and spend it on more important stuff than the bragging rights SSD's would grant me......

 

True. With single gigabit link, the most you'll ever stream off that NAS is 125MB/s. All an SSD would provide is better IOPS, but still even that's extremely limited over the network; specifically if you're accessing the data over an SMB share instead of iSCSI.

 

13 minutes ago, S w a t s o n said:

Enjoy having 10TB of data accessible at something like 1/10-1/4 of the speed on a single drive that will fail as soon as someone taps the enclosure it's in. If you have to use raid to offset the complete shit reliability of hard drives, save yourself the pain and go flash. Lmfao

SSD or HDD, doesn't matter. If you need fault tolerance, a RAID1 at least should be suggested. I've seen SSDs brick themselves before. Maybe not as common as in the generations past, but still a possibility.

[S w a t s o n]

13 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Or store everything on the NAS including instaled games(because on linux it wont complain about its on a network share unlike on some other junk), and not only me but my family has stuff on it too......... Sorry but SSDs arent an option. And just as an FIY RAID5 ca easily saturate a 1 gig link....

Damn so it takes RAID 5 to saturate a link a single SSD can do. If my family had more than 4TB of shit i'd tell them to do some spring cleaning.

13 minutes ago, StDragon said:

 

True. With single gigabit link, the most you'll ever stream off that NAS is 125MB/s. All an SSD would provide is better IOPS, but still even that's extremely limited over the network; specifically if you're accessing the data over an SMB share instead of iSCSI.

 

SSD or HDD, doesn't matter. If you need fault tolerance, a RAID1 at least should be suggested. I've seen SSDs brick themselves before. Maybe not as common as in the generations past, but still a possibility.

If you truly need fault tolerance you go with the highest base resistance to faults. A single SSD is almost certainly more fault tolerant than two of the latest HDD's in raid 1, or even 3 drives RAID 5 imo.

Guys, tape can sequentially read pretty fast too these days, make a tape drive nas.
https://www.lto.org/solutions/benefits/performance/
 

Spoiler

 

[StDragon]

12 minutes ago, S w a t s o n said:

Damn so it takes RAID 5 to saturate a link a single SSD can do. If my family had more than 4TB of shit i'd tell them to do some spring cleaning.

If you truly need fault tolerance you go with the highest base resistance to faults. A single SSD is almost certainly more fault tolerant than the latest HDD's in raid 1, or even RAID 5 imo.

Guys, tape can sequentially read pretty fast too these days, make a tape drive nas.

A *single* 6TB 5400 RPM HDD will provide up to 190MB/s read rate. Due to the intrinsic nature of platter geometry, the inside track will be less so. Should be at least the 125MB/s limit (or around there).

 

So while a single SSD is more reliable to an HDD, I still wouldn't trust having just one in a NAS. Again, if you need that high availability. If it's not critical, fine, just use one and take your time on RMA and restoring from backup. It's entirely situational to one's needs. I only mention NAS because it's often used by more than one person. YMMV.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-reliable-are-ssds/

[S w a t s o n]

2 minutes ago, StDragon said:

A *single* 6TB 5400 RPM HDD will provide up to 190MB/s read rate. Due to the intrinsic nature of platter geometry, the inside track will be less so. Should be at least the 125MB/s limit (or around there).

 

So while a single SSD is more reliable to an HDD, I still wouldn't trust having just one in a NAS. Again, if you need that high availability. If it's not critical, fine, just use one and take your time on RMA and restoring from backup. It's entirely situational to one's needs. I only mention NAS because it's often used by more than one person. YMMV.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-reliable-are-ssds/

A single 1TB 7200RPM drive will also do about 200MB/s sequential but try saturating a gigabit link with it unless you're moving one of your 58495849058340 blue ray's across the network in a transfer, not even watching it. My point is that one you factor the cost of RAID1/5, you can afford an SSD of the same capacity with at least the same level of likelihood of data loss.

[StDragon]

7 minutes ago, S w a t s o n said:

A single 1TB 7200RPM drive will also do about 200MB/s sequential but try saturating a gigabit link with it unless you're moving one of your 58495849058340 blue ray's across the network in a transfer, not even watching it. My point is that one you factor the cost of RAID1/5, you can afford an SSD of the same capacity with at least the same level of likelihood of data loss.

Fair enough. That said, I target all my home computers to a NAS using Veeam Agent (free) with a password protected SMB share. The password is hashed in the backup program. The purpose is to prevent a ransomware wipeout. Anyways, depending on what works was performed on the local computer, the daily delta changes can be large. So there are times that gigabit link gets saturated. I prefer the backup job complete as quickly as possible.

[jagdtigger]

31 minutes ago, S w a t s o n said:

A single SSD is almost certainly more fault tolerant than two of the latest HDD's in raid 1, or even 3 drives RAID 5 imo.

Except if your ssd dies you are screwed, 1 hdd fails in a raid 5 nothing will happen..... (if you are paranoid you can use raid6 and have fault tolerance up to 2 disk failures.)

[S w a t s o n]

28 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Except if your ssd dies you are screwed, 1 hdd fails in a raid 5 nothing will happen..... (if you are paranoid you can use raid6 and have fault tolerance up to 2 disk failures.)

If you are worried about the SSD dying then you can put those in RAID too but I trust 1 SSD vs RAID 1 of two HDD's any day of the week. Raid 5 is probably approaching parity of risk.

[Kilrah]

 

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

Enjoy having 10TB of data accessible at something like 1/10-1/4 of the speed on a single drive that will fail as soon as someone taps the enclosure it's in. If you have to use raid to offset the complete shit reliability of hard drives, save yourself the pain and go flash. Lmfao

No problem saturating a gigabit link with a single HDD. And if you consider your SSD to be reliable on its own without RAID/backups you like living dangerously. Go talk to the guy in the other thread posted today who has an SSD on which the controller just died overnight. Seen 2 of those this week. 

 

No storage solution is safe without redundancy.

[S w a t s o n]

Just now, Kilrah said:

 

No problem saturating a gigabit link with a single HDD. And if you consider your SSD to be reliable on its own without RAID/backups you like living dangerously. Go talk to the guy in the other thread posted today who has an SSD on which the controller just died overnight. Seen 2 of those this week. 

I discussed this earlier in the thread, I am aware a single 7200rpm drive can sequentially saturate a gigabit link on file transfer. Try doing it with a single HDD while just using it normally. The link speed basically doesnt matter to the people with NAS's here, they have no hope of being able to use it other than initial writes or copies. I do absolutely consider my SSD to be as reliable as a RAID 1 of spinning rust.

[jagdtigger]

38 minutes ago, S w a t s o n said:

If you are worried about the SSD dying then you can put those in RAID too but I trust 1 SSD vs RAID 1 of two HDD's any day of the week. Raid 5 is probably approaching parity of risk.

Im not worried about it, i know it will. Only question is when it will happen. As for your trust issues i have an old 200 GB WD that still didnt kicked the bucket. It got its fair share of wear and tear being my main drive for several years(OS and everything). It got 5 bad sectors in the first 2 years but ever since then it runs flawlessly.  So far i didnt had any HDD failures. (Currently i have 20+ HDDs.)

[TechyBen]

2 hours 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.

Same with SSDs as with the HDDs the case/pcb and controller chip is one of the contributing costs (along with distribution and packaging etc). So there is a min cost, and even 32gb SSDs are £20, while 256gb are £55 at times, 500gb at £75 and 1TB at £100 (for cheaper tech) or £130 (for average speeds/chips). That's a MASSIVE price disparity, but because of supply and demand, your 2TB drive is not often £150/£180 but closer to £250+!

 

Same happens with HDDs. Drives pushing the tech/density to the max start to increase in price for "must haves" of density or storage space. Small drives have the cost of having a platter (I remember when some older drives only used half a platter, one sided  , no idea if it was wasted space, or actually warped/scratched platters put to good use on budget parts), so again, min price is never £5, but closer to £20-£50.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

2 hours ago, StDragon said:

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 .

I pretty much agree with everyting you said. However, your estimate of SSD life in cold storage is a wee bit overoptimistic. The actual figure can vary widely depending on the kind off SSD (enterprise or retail. SLC, MLC, TLC, QLC), the amount of data stored on the drive, the number of remaining writes, the phase of the moon, etc. Enterprise have a far shorter cold storage life than consumer drives but this isn't an issue since they normally run 24/7.

 

Still, SSDs still are not suitable for any kind of cold storage like you are talking about. Tape is king for that. HDDs come in at a poor second but are still miles ahead of SSDs.

 

Cold storage is not with its dangers, however, the greatest danger being the technology of the storage will eventually become obsolete, rendering the data irretrievable.  Data archival has to be at least somewhat active, not static.

1 hour ago, StDragon said:

 

True. With single gigabit link, the most you'll ever stream off that NAS is 125MB/s. All an SSD would provide is better IOPS, but still even that's extremely limited over the network; specifically if you're accessing the data over an SMB share instead of iSCSI.

 

SSD or HDD, doesn't matter. If you need fault tolerance, a RAID1 at least should be suggested. I've seen SSDs brick themselves before. Maybe not as common as in the generations past, but still a possibility.

Any medium, be it Tape, HDD, SSD, tape, paper, stone tablets, is subject to sudden, irrecoverable failure with no warning at all. Redundancy, such as RAID, will only protect against drive failure. Data can be lost from far more than just drive failure, such as user error, malware, weather, theft, power surges, etc. The only way to reasonably ensure data is safe is for it to exist in three separate locations, the wider spread the locations, the better. An example of this is on the computer, on an onsite external backup drive, and on an offsite external backup drive. For a backup drive to be a true backup, it must be kept disconnected from the computer, powered down, and stored away from the computer.

[CarlBar]

1 hour ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

I pretty much agree with everyting you said. However, your estimate of SSD life in cold storage is a wee bit overoptimistic. The actual figure can vary widely depending on the kind off SSD (enterprise or retail. SLC, MLC, TLC, QLC), the amount of data stored on the drive, the number of remaining writes, the phase of the moon, etc. Enterprise have a far shorter cold storage life than consumer drives but this isn't an issue since they normally run 24/7.

 

Still, SSDs still are not suitable for any kind of cold storage like you are talking about. Tape is king for that. HDDs come in at a poor second but are still miles ahead of SSDs.

 

Cold storage is not with its dangers, however, the greatest danger being the technology of the storage will eventually become obsolete, rendering the data irretrievable.  Data archival has to be at least somewhat active, not static.

Any medium, be it Tape, HDD, SSD, tape, paper, stone tablets, is subject to sudden, irrecoverable failure with no warning at all. Redundancy, such as RAID, will only protect against drive failure. Data can be lost from far more than just drive failure, such as user error, malware, weather, theft, power surges, etc. The only way to reasonably ensure data is safe is for it to exist in three separate locations, the wider spread the locations, the better. An example of this is on the computer, on an onsite external backup drive, and on an offsite external backup drive. For a backup drive to be a true backup, it must be kept disconnected from the computer, powered down, and stored away from the computer.

 

There's also the question of what's being stored. A huge slice of my storage is taken up by a combination of my games and the associated files/tools/work folders/e.t.c. for modding. For the most part saves are stored outside the save directories, ditto for the modding stuff that isn't on the steam workshop. So i don't care about backing up the games, and how much i care about the tools and mods depends on a bunch of factors but a lot of that isn;t backed up s it's quick and easy to replace. So for most of my, (and i imagine for most of most peoples storage needs), a lot of it just dosen;t need any more reliability than provided by a single HDD.

 

The whole idea of needing two HDD's in a RAID to match the reliability of an SSD, (regardless of whether thats acurratte), really misses the point that the majority of data stored on peoples home systems is not important enough to need even the level of reliability offered by a single HDD. And the data that does want more reliability is so inherently important a redundant solution should be used regardless of the storage media used.

 

Not that my storage really follows those rules, my last computer upgrade left everything an utter mess, (My Win 8 install bricked itself whilst trying to upgrade to Win 10 for the new hardware and a screwup with my HDD's combined with a failure shortly thereafter of an old one meant all the extra space my two new drives added got taken up by a combination of reinstalling stuff lost and a recovery attempt which i still haven't properly sorted through tbh). I could really do once i can afford it taking another stab at upgrading my storage and consolidating things so it';s not all spread across 5 different drives.