Seagate EXOS 18TB?

[ArcticApe]

Is this drive good? It's so relatively cheap compared to other drives of similar capacity. Is there a backside to this drive? (for home NAS)

[Oshino Shinobu]

They're great drives, designed for datacentres (though will do fine in a NAS). 

[Rysters Tech]

I have had 4 firecuda sshd's fail on me in 1 year, the seagate laptop drives, no go. But the exos drives from what ive heard are better made as they are enterprise drives, but if you can afford say a WD Red plus or pro get those instead as WD has a better track record for reliability. A red pro 18tb is only 90 dollars more, is a more mature drive model. The WD elements desktop drives are easily shuckable as well although those are 5400rpm and the red is 7200. i would never buy the exos personally knowing this disaster linked here. https://linustechtips.com/topic/1381378-the-tale-of-4-firecuda-sshds-why-you-should-avoid-them/#comment-15048749

[Oshino Shinobu]

20 minutes ago, SiliconMagician said:

I have had 4 firecuda sshd's fail on me in 1 year, the seagate laptop drives, no go. But the exos drives from what ive heard are better made as they are enterprise drives, but if you can afford say a WD Red plus or pro get those instead as WD has a better track record for reliability. A red pro 18tb is only 90 dollars more, is a more mature drive model. The WD elements desktop drives are easily shuckable as well although those are 5400rpm and the red is 7200. i would never buy the exos personally knowing this disaster linked here. https://linustechtips.com/topic/1381378-the-tale-of-4-firecuda-sshds-why-you-should-avoid-them/#comment-15048749

Recommending to avoid the EXOs drive due to your experience with a completely different line, drive technology and capacity is ridiculous, they're entirely unrelated. 

 

A lot of the scepticism about Seagate's reliability comes from Backblaze's "reliability" reports (I think they've stopped calling it that and just say it's their stats, as they always should have done) which are flawed in so many ways that they're entirely useless for determining any drive's reliability, Seagate or otherwise. They have a strategy of taking the cheapest drives they can get and putting them in a datacentre environment and just replacing them once they fail. If you look at their reports, they have multiple times more Seagate drives in their systems compared to any other brands because they're just buying the cheapest drives they have to offer, inevitably leading to high failure rates when you put them in harsh conditions they're not designed for. I have multiple posts on the forum breaking down exactly why they should not be used as any measure of reliability for consumers. If you search my username and Backblaze you'll probably find one of them. 

 

That said, WD Red Plus and Pro drives are good, but not worth the extra money really. The Exos drives are comparable to WD's Gold drives or HGST Ultrastar, which are a step up from their NAS lines. For some reason, at least here in the UK, the EXOs drives are massively discounted at the moment. 18TB EXOs drives are £290, which WD Red Pros are £520. Considering they both are well regarded in terms of reliability and performance and have the same warranty period, the EXOs is the much better deal. 

 

Speaking of shucking WD drives, the vast majority are white label drives with the 3.3v issue that needs to be worked around for most consumer systems. I personally have a few shucked WD Elements, but if you're going to recommend it, at least mention the issue so people don't freak out when their expensive drive they've probably just voided the warranty on doesn't seem to work. 

[Rysters Tech]

1 hour ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

Recommending to avoid the EXOs drive due to your experience with a completely different line, drive technology and capacity is ridiculous, they're entirely unrelated. 

 

A lot of the scepticism about Seagate's reliability comes from Backblaze's "reliability" reports (I think they've stopped calling it that and just say it's their stats, as they always should have done) which are flawed in so many ways that they're entirely useless for determining any drive's reliability, Seagate or otherwise. They have a strategy of taking the cheapest drives they can get and putting them in a datacentre environment and just replacing them once they fail. If you look at their reports, they have multiple times more Seagate drives in their systems compared to any other brands because they're just buying the cheapest drives they have to offer, inevitably leading to high failure rates when you put them in harsh conditions they're not designed for. I have multiple posts on the forum breaking down exactly why they should not be used as any measure of reliability for consumers. If you search my username and Backblaze you'll probably find one of them. 

 

That said, WD Red Plus and Pro drives are good, but not worth the extra money really. The Exos drives are comparable to WD's Gold drives or HGST Ultrastar, which are a step up from their NAS lines. For some reason, at least here in the UK, the EXOs drives are massively discounted at the moment. 18TB EXOs drives are £290, which WD Red Pros are £520. Considering they both are well regarded in terms of reliability and performance and have the same warranty period, the EXOs is the much better deal. 

 

Speaking of shucking WD drives, the vast majority are white label drives with the 3.3v issue that needs to be worked around for most consumer systems. I personally have a few shucked WD Elements, but if you're going to recommend it, at least mention the issue so people don't freak out when their expensive drive they've probably just voided the warranty on doesn't seem to work. 

I personally had really bad experiences with firecuda sshd's. In the united states exos drives are 310 where wd red pro both 18tb are like 390. Linus Media Group to my knowledge has had good experiences with exos drives. I was wrong in this post, in stating how my issues with firecuda drives made me question the quality of seagate especially when all the drives were less than a year old. When i had many drives from other brands that are at least 8 years old with no issues. I am one person with the experience from their own experiences, i cannot stand for the experiences of others.  I actually just found out the 3.3v issue, the last time i shucked an elements was many years ago. 

[vsteel]

On 3/3/2022 at 10:20 AM, ArcticApe said:

Is this drive good? It's so relatively cheap compared to other drives of similar capacity. Is there a backside to this drive? (for home NAS)

Yes they are good drives.  I did a lot of research into them before I got a set.  I have 2 of them in a RAID 1 configuration.   No issues.  I don't know if they have 3.3v issues because I don't have that going to the drives.    Just make sure you get the drives from a reputable place and when you first fire them up make sure they don't have a ton of hours on them.   Look at the smart data to see the time on them.  Enterprise drives sometimes get resold after they have a couple of years of use on them.