Picking HDD for NAS. IronWolf vs WD

[Barina]

Hi guys, New here

I'm building a small home NAS system for Plex (no hardware transcoding AMD APU) and backups. it will probably do more than that in the future..

I want to start with a 1x4GB NAS drive and in time add more for a total of 16GB max (probably 8 gonna do it..) in one enclosure.

I came across 2 HDD's that are slightly different.. Seagate IronWolf ST4000VN008 vs Western Digital WD40EFZX (can I post links here to Amazon?)

Differences are +500RPM for the IronWolf vs +64mb cache for the WD..

My question is does a 500RPM difference more noticeable than 64mb difference in cache?

[da na]

I 100% recommend the WD drive with the bigger cache. Partially because I don't have good experiences with Seagates as well 

[Barina]

I have good experience with both overall in the desktop area.. except for 1 WD black that prematurely died years ago.

I also tend towards 128mb cache instead of a measly 500 RPM lol it also a bit cheaper right now...

But I still not sure

[FloRolf]

I have both, Ironwolves and Reds and have had no issues with either of them. You can't really go wrong. 

 

 

EDIT: And if you are on 1gbit Ethernet then you will very likely see no difference at all in speed. 

[Barina]

If it really doesn't matter I will probably better got for WD as it currently more valuable for me now. Thank you both

[Barina]

Oh and BTW, I know the IronWolf HDD's are hot-swappable, it's a NAS drives feature right? so the WD can also be hot-swap correct?

Its not that important to me in this setup but its a nice-to-have feature 

[Blue4130]

2 hours ago, Barina said:

Oh and BTW, I know the IronWolf HDD's are hot-swappable, it's a NAS drives feature right? so the WD can also be hot-swap correct?

Its not that important to me in this setup but its a nice-to-have feature 

That's up to the nas not the drive. 

[doommood]

From what I have found, ST4000VN008 is SMR, 5400 RPM drive and WD40EZRZ is CMR, 7200 CMR drive

https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/15/seagate-2-4-and-8tb-barracuda-and-desktop-hdd-smr/

https://shop.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-blue-desktop-sata-hdd#WD5000AZLX

For general usage, I would suggest going with a CMR WD40EZRZ drive. It is good for random and sequential read and write operations thus you will get expected performance. 
https://www.vmwareblog.org/shopping-hdds-notes-right/

[paddy-stone]

14 minutes ago, doommood said:

From what I have found, ST4000VN008 is SMR, 5400 RPM drive and WD40EZRZ is CMR, 7200 CMR drive

https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/15/seagate-2-4-and-8tb-barracuda-and-desktop-hdd-smr/

https://shop.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-blue-desktop-sata-hdd#WD5000AZLX

For general usage, I would suggest going with a CMR WD40EZRZ drive. It is good for random and sequential read and write operations thus you will get expected performance. 
https://www.vmwareblog.org/shopping-hdds-notes-right/

No, the ironwolf drives are definitely CMR

[doommood]

1 hour ago, paddy-stone said:

No, the ironwolf drives are definitely CMR

I have just found on this list ST4000VN008 is not an SMR drive.

https://nascompares.com/answer/list-of-wd-cmr-and-smr-hard-drives-hdd/
At this source, I have found it is actually a PMR drive. https://www.thestreamingblog.com/seagate-ironwolf-4tb-nas-hard-drive-review/

 

[Barina]

Weird, they're both marked as CMR at Amazon and the WD one is 5400, and yes I do want CMR

Seagate IronWolf ST4000VN008

Western Digital WD40EFZX

 

[Blue4130]

4 hours ago, doommood said:

I have just found on this list ST4000VN008 is not an SMR drive.

https://nascompares.com/answer/list-of-wd-cmr-and-smr-hard-drives-hdd/
At this source, I have found it is actually a PMR drive. https://www.thestreamingblog.com/seagate-ironwolf-4tb-nas-hard-drive-review/

 

PMR and CMR are the same thing. Perpendicular/conventional magnetic recording. 

[ranger671]

Barina, I am here to warn you. I fell down the Plex rabbit hole a couple of years ago. Figured I'd start with around 10tb and that it would be plenty for sometime, boy was I wrong. I now have 2 zfs pools consisting of 275tb and still growing. I have found the Seagate EXOS drives to actually be a cheaper drive to get and are the "enterprise" rated drives. I've had no problems with them in my setup and consistently good performance.

 

Hope this helps.

[Blue4130]

2 hours ago, ranger671 said:

Barina, I am here to warn you. I fell down the Plex rabbit hole a couple of years ago. Figured I'd start with around 10tb and that it would be plenty for sometime, boy was I wrong. I now have 2 zfs pools consisting of 275tb and still growing. I have found the Seagate EXOS drives to actually be a cheaper drive to get and are the "enterprise" rated drives. I've had no problems with them in my setup and consistently good performance.

 

Hope this helps.

275tb for plex? Damn, share some pics. That's massive.

[ranger671]

Blue4130, interesting avatar. I grew up on Sun 2,3 and worked for a var installing Sun 4 back in the mid 80's. Good memories booting off QIC. 

 

What would you like to see? I have two boxes. Main box has a 9700k processor with 64gb of memory to drive both a 9300-8i and a 9300-8e HBA. The internal setup consists of 7 drives in a ZFS z2 config. The external is just another mid tower case with 3-5/3x5.25 bay configuration and can hold up to 15 drives. Currently, it is populated with 11 drives. They connect to a sas expander which allows a remote connection via mini-hd sas 8644 to the 9300-8e in the main box. The whole system is Linux based. I transcode using the igpu of the 9700k processor. Have had up to a dozen connections all running at the same time at 1080p with no problems. It's a decent setup. The kick is I rip from dvd, bluray or 4k and store in the format of the disc to reduce extra artifacts. This also gives me a good backup of my families' media. Whiiiich is another issue I'm currently working on. Have enough usb based devices to backup, but am looking for better solutions. The individual drives are ok. Have tried a yottamaster 4 drive device via usb-c  which is still slower than the individual drives. I think the jmicron chipset is the issue. Anyway, That's where I'm at. Would love to get a 4 drive device which could support using the drives to the best of their abilities. I would like to see 500+ MB/s in a raid config within the device itself. 

[Barina]

6 hours ago, ranger671 said:

Barina, I am here to warn you. I fell down the Plex rabbit hole a couple of years ago. Figured I'd start with around 10tb and that it would be plenty for sometime, boy was I wrong. I now have 2 zfs pools consisting of 275tb and still growing. I have found the Seagate EXOS drives to actually be a cheaper drive to get and are the "enterprise" rated drives. I've had no problems with them in my setup and consistently good performance.

 

Hope this helps.

That's impressive! thanks for the heads up, the WD is already on the way

Overall I feel very safe now to say that I know where I can get help with this stuff  

 

BTW I know I said Plex but actually I may use Jellyfin instead, I tried it for a couple of days and its very nice. but this is more like 'priority 2' my repository isn't that big and it won't grow that fast

[ranger671]

I've heard Jellyfin can be quite good as well. I chose plex as my mother and less so, others in the family, are not overly tech savvy and plex looks/feels more like a netflix type interface and they seem more comfortable with it.

 

Anyway, if you want any ideas on the physical drive and connectivity layers, I'll be happy to share what I know. Good luck.

[paddy-stone]

20 hours ago, Barina said:

That's impressive! thanks for the heads up, the WD is already on the way

Overall I feel very safe now to say that I know where I can get help with this stuff  

 

BTW I know I said Plex but actually I may use Jellyfin instead, I tried it for a couple of days and its very nice. but this is more like 'priority 2' my repository isn't that big and it won't grow that fast

Have been running Jellyfin now for a couple years approx. I love it most of the time, I can run many instances at the same time when I have to. I like that I can transcode with my GPU when needed without paying for premium service, also anyone that's got an account and is on my home network can download stuff directly to their devices from Jellyfin... it's a small thing I know, cos they can connect to my server and do that anyway, but it's sometimes easier when they can use a GUI and view info like synopsis and such.

Sometimes it can be a pain, it doesn't refresh when it should to show new media, but that could be down to the device viewing it, I usually pre-empt it by force closing, and re-opening Jellyfin whenever I go onto it... and then it's fine.

[jde3]

If you're on ZFS the drives you use really shouldn't matter too much so long as they are:

 

a) from a known vendor

b) CMR/PMR

c) meet your performance metrics

I recommend going cheaper and getting a spare or two more than more expensive drives. All drives fail, even the fancy ones.

Also +1 for Jellyfin, I have a Emby lifetime license so I usually use that but yeah.. good software.

[Barina]

On 3/22/2022 at 3:38 PM, paddy-stone said:

anyone that's got an account and is on my home network can download stuff directly to their devices from Jellyfin...

Oh that's nice!

 

On 3/22/2022 at 4:54 PM, jde3 said:

a) from a known vendor

b) CMR/PMR

c) meet your performance metrics

All checked  I think.. 

 

I didn't try transcoding yet, does Ryzen 3 5300U APU can handle it?

I haven't build it yet (waiting for missing parts) and still didn't decide what software to use at first

 

I had some subtitles issues with Jellyfin tho