8TB RED > 8TB Ironwolf?

[mealto]

ok, I am thinking I will pick up an 8TB drive to be used in a PC, not a NAS. I have always liked the REDs and run a few 3TB ones in a PC. Before I pick up the 8TB, I wanted to get some feedback on using a NAS drive as a storage drive in a PC. Any downsides? I remember that to relieve RAID controllers failing, if there is a bad sector, NAS drives would "drop" that sector to prevent RAID failures. Guess the downside is if there is a slight problem with reading data, there is less chance the PC will wait to recover it (as opposed to a regular drive where the drive will try many times to grab that data within the bad sector). Is this true?

 

I see the 8TB Ironwolf is pretty popular and it's cheaper than the 8TB RED. Am I crazy in thinking that the RED (5400 version) is regarded as a higher quality drive? Of course I would like to buy the cheaper drive but I am not sure I can get on board of any Seagate product. What do you think?

[manikyath]

from my googling point of view.. the seagate spins faster, has more cache, the same mean time between failures, and has the same pricetag ithin margin.

 

as for the actual "using nas drive for a desktop" side of things, i wouldnt see why not.

[PianoPlayer88Key]

I recently got a few 8TB HGST NAS 7200rpm drives (currently $259 each at B&H or $280 at Newegg) at Fry's for $269 each, and I like them so far for the most part.

 

One issue, though, is the screw holes - missing a couple on the side, so I couldn't mount them to my normal 3.5" drive cage sleds.  I had to use some other 3.5" to 5.25" adapters that I'd already purchased because of running out of 3.5" drive bays and having some spare 5.25" bays.

 

One factor in my purchase decision was the reliability rating HGST drives get in the BackBlaze tests (scroll to "Hard Drive Reliability by Manufacturer"), compared to Western Digital and Seagate.  I've used WD a lot in the past, and more recently have tried a Seagate or two.  (several various WD Green drives in my desktop, plus a couple older Black & IDE drives), and a Seagate in my current laptop that's on the blink.  I have an SSD in the laptop right now in place of the Seagate HDD.)

 

WD has generally been pretty good for me, although I've had to RMA a drive or two.  The only other Seagate I have somewhat recent experience with was the one that came with my dad's 2008 Dell D830.  That drive started having problems after a few years, so we replaced it with a 500GB WD Black.  That drive is still fine (yes he still has & uses that 9-year-old laptop as his daily driver), although the warranty (WD Black) has recently expired.

 

Also the three 8TB HGST NAS drives aren't the only / most recent ones.  I got 3x 5TB in November 2016 (2 of them for $100 each (!)), and 3x 4TB in early 2015 when I built my desktop, and all of them are running fine.  (On the drives purchased before that BackBlaze article was posted, they were consistently getting great reviews on Newegg/Amazon/etc.) I'm using most of them as storage drives, although the 8TB drives will be used for backup.  Not in a RAID though, as I wasn't able to get to building a dedicated NAS box for various reasons.  I'm backing my stuff up, then pulling them out & storing them back in the boxes.

[mealto]

So who else runs NAS drives on their desktops?

[mr moose]

17 hours ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

I recently got a few 8TB HGST NAS 7200rpm drives (currently $259 each at B&H or $280 at Newegg) at Fry's for $269 each, and I like them so far for the most part.

 

One issue, though, is the screw holes - missing a couple on the side, so I couldn't mount them to my normal 3.5" drive cage sleds.  I had to use some other 3.5" to 5.25" adapters that I'd already purchased because of running out of 3.5" drive bays and having some spare 5.25" bays.

 

One factor in my purchase decision was the reliability rating HGST drives get in the BackBlaze tests (scroll to "Hard Drive Reliability by Manufacturer"), compared to Western Digital and Seagate.  I've used WD a lot in the past, and more recently have tried a Seagate or two.  (several various WD Green drives in my desktop, plus a couple older Black & IDE drives), and a Seagate in my current laptop that's on the blink.  I have an SSD in the laptop right now in place of the Seagate HDD.)

 

WD has generally been pretty good for me, although I've had to RMA a drive or two.  The only other Seagate I have somewhat recent experience with was the one that came with my dad's 2008 Dell D830.  That drive started having problems after a few years, so we replaced it with a 500GB WD Black.  That drive is still fine (yes he still has & uses that 9-year-old laptop as his daily driver), although the warranty (WD Black) has recently expired.

 

Also the three 8TB HGST NAS drives aren't the only / most recent ones.  I got 3x 5TB in November 2016 (2 of them for $100 each (!)), and 3x 4TB in early 2015 when I built my desktop, and all of them are running fine.  (On the drives purchased before that BackBlaze article was posted, they were consistently getting great reviews on Newegg/Amazon/etc.) I'm using most of them as storage drives, although the 8TB drives will be used for backup.  Not in a RAID though, as I wasn't able to get to building a dedicated NAS box for various reasons.  I'm backing my stuff up, then pulling them out & storing them back in the boxes.

 

That blackblaze article is not worth the 3Kb of data it takes up on their server.   Their test method is deeply flawed, their samples sizes are grossly mismatched and the drives they are using are not designed for load they put them under much less the fact they are a hodge-podge of refurbished and second hand drives.

 

 

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/17/backblaze_how_not_to_evaluate_disk_reliability/

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/6028/dispelling-backblaze-s-hdd-reliability-myth-the-real-story-covered/index2.html

 

 

To the OP, from my understanding, in domestic use you will not really notice the difference between them.  If you compare them to the barracuda and blue drives the barracudas will be fastest. but both the red and the ironwolf are designed to spin 24/7.  If you turn your pc off or it spins down it's drives after X inactivity then you may not see a difference in longevity.     One would expect the ironwolf to last longer but there are many NAS enthusiasts who ague spinning up and down a NAS drive will shorten it's life. 

 

 

[mealto]

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

 

 

To the OP, from my understanding, in domestic use you will not really notice the difference between them.  If you compare them to the barracuda and blue drives the barracudas will be fastest. but both the red and the ironwolf are designed to spin 24/7.  If you turn your pc off or it spins down it's drives after X inactivity then you may not see a difference in longevity.     One would expect the ironwolf to last longer but there are many NAS enthusiasts who ague spinning up and down a NAS drive will shorten it's life. 

 

 

It's interesting to know that there is a theory that NAS drives in a desktop will not last any longer than a regular drive in a desktop. Interesting. At the 8TB RED price point, what other desktop drives are there besides the Seagate Archival (not going to touch these).

[mr moose]

40 minutes ago, mealto said:

It's interesting to know that there is a theory that NAS drives in a desktop will not last any longer than a regular drive in a desktop. Interesting. At the 8TB RED price point, what other desktop drives are there besides the Seagate Archival (not going to touch these).

not many that I've seen.  There really are only 3 or 4 manufacturers.  seagate, WD, Hitachi and Toshiba.

[seagate_surfer]

A lot of valid points about NAS drives in desktop use have already been mentioned, OP stated that NAS drive firmware is more designed to drop the data and not spend as much time trying to fix/recover as a desktop drive would because in a NAS application it is designed to be a member of a RAID and pass on to another disk. We've seen this mentioned in NAS-specific forums we participate in. In general its firmware is just much, much more suited for NAS environments than desktops, but sometimes people are just really drawn to the more robust workload capabilities and longer warranties than standard desktop drives.

One high performance solution which may better suit your needs is a Seagate BarraCuda Pro 8TB (model ST8000DM005). A standard NAS drive will most likely have a 180TB per year workload rating, the BarraCuda Pro has a 300 TB per year workload rating, has a 5 year warranty, larger cache, 7200 RPM speed, and even comes with a free 2 years of rescue services.

Edited August 2, 2017 by seagate_surfer
elaborated on details in second paragraph

[mealto]

50 minutes ago, seagate_surfer said:

A lot of valid points about NAS drives in desktop use have already been mentioned, OP stated that NAS drive firmware is more designed to drop the data and not spend as much time trying to fix/recover as a desktop drive would because in a NAS application it is designed to be a member of a RAID and pass on to another disk. We've seen this mentioned in NAS-specific forums we participate in. In general its firmware is just much, much more suited for NAS environments than desktops, but sometimes people are just really drawn to the more robust workload capabilities and longer warranties than standard desktop drives.

One high performance solution which may better suit your needs is a Seagate BarraCuda Pro 8TB (model ST8000DM005). A standard NAS drive will most likely have a 180TB per year workload rating, the BarraCuda Pro has a 300 TB per year workload rating, has a 5 year warranty, larger cache, 7200 RPM speed, and even comes with a free 2 years of rescue services.

Good info, thanks. But unfortunately, that Pro model is pricier than the 8TB RED or the Seagate Ironwolf 8TB. Probably runs hotter as well. I don't think I will go for that.

[System Error Message]

You will be fine with NAS drives. The difference between the NAS and regular drive is the firmware, the firmware idle times and other things. The NAS drive should not tie up the sata controller in the event of errors

[AshleyAshes]

Threads like me leave me wondering if I'm the only only one brazen enough to run Seagate Archive's in a server.

[Mira Yurizaki]

1 hour ago, seagate_surfer said:

One high performance solution which may better suit your needs is a Seagate BarraCuda Pro 8TB (model ST8000DM005). A standard NAS drive will most likely have a 180TB per year workload rating, the BarraCuda Pro has a 300 TB per year workload rating, has a 5 year warranty, larger cache, 7200 RPM speed, and even comes with a free 2 years of rescue services.

Is this total data or read xor write?

 

EDIT: Also to add (and semi relevant to the quoted text), I think the prevalence of using a NAS drive instead of a "regular" drive was to get something better, or at least has features that let you sleep better at night, than the "low tier" drives like WD Green or Blue for not a whole lot more in cost.

[seagate_surfer]

On 8/2/2017 at 2:34 PM, M.Yurizaki said:

Is this total data or read xor write?

 

EDIT: Also to add (and semi relevant to the quoted text), I think the prevalence of using a NAS drive instead of a "regular" drive was to get something better, or at least has features that let you sleep better at night, than the "low tier" drives like WD Green or Blue for not a whole lot more in cost.

This figure is for combined read and write data, thank you for helping clarify that.

And we understand that a specific drive we suggest may or may not always be the exact right fit for the user, we are just making sure they are aware of the various options available so they are informed when they go to make the choice on what is right for their needs. Knowledge is power. :-)