What hdd should i get

[d00m1ord]

Hi

 

I need to upgrade my 1tb hdd in my gaming pc and i was looking to get probably 4tb but im not sure what the best drive to get for my games would be

 

Many thanks

[Electronics Wizardy]

10 minutes ago, Pangea2017 said:

WD Red or Seagate Ironwolfs since they are not much more expensive then Barracudas or Blue/greens.

but there often slower, and there is no reason to use one in a desktop, the features won't be used in a desktop.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Pangea2017 said:

what do you mean with slower? IOPS or sequential read/write? 

both, lots of nas drives are 5400rpm to save power. wd reds are 5400rpm drive.

 

Just get a desktop ddrive for a desktop, also no tler means better recovery if you ever have to(backups people)

[GDRRiley]

I love my Toshiba X300, 5TB is hitting over 200 mb/s for writes. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

23 minutes ago, Pangea2017 said:

Seagate Ironwolfs are 7200 rpm (160mb/s read, 4tb model). The benefit ot the nas drives are reliability and less noise/vibration.

Reliability is about the same as desktop drive, keep backups and your data is safe. There not much better and about the same failure rates. 

 

They have vibration restance, but make about the same vibration and noise. No reason to go nas in a desktop unless cheaper.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Pangea2017 said:

p.s which desktop drives are you using that you get vibration like nas drives have out of them?

The wd reds I have are about the same as my desktop drives(lots of wd green, seagate 7200's, a hew hitachi). 

 

5 minutes ago, Pangea2017 said:

But they have better balanced disk inside which mean lower noise during idle.

This doesn't seen to be true. The inside of drives like wd reds are about the same as desktop drives. Enterprise/datacenter drives are a good amount better, but those features aren't normally found in a nas drive.

 

6 minutes ago, Pangea2017 said:

With Amazon packing beeing the highest risk of drive failure

Huh? Packaging from amazon is fine. I just got a few hdds from amazon and they were packed fine. And head parking makes them able to take much more abuse when stopped.

 

 

[seagate_surfer]

2 hours ago, d00m1ord said:

Hi

 

I need to upgrade my 1tb hdd in my gaming pc and i was looking to get probably 4tb but im not sure what the best drive to get for my games would be

 

Many thanks

At 4TB, what you're going to encounter is some thinking to do around RPM speed. If you are going to have an SSD for your OS, then this won't matter as much since the drive will just be extra storage & our fit for that use case would be the BarraCuda (model ST4000DM004). If this is gonna be your main OS drive and/or performance is more of a concern, then when it comes to our BarraCuda, 4TB and larger capacities are 5900 RPM (Revolutions Per Minute) which is considered on the lower end of the spectrum as far as performance goes. If you need 7200 RPM, then a couple options are:

1. Drop to 3TB capacity ST3000DM008. With standard 3.5" BarraCuda, 3TB and smaller capacities are 7200 RPM.
2. BarraCuda Pro 4TB model ST4000DM006. With BarraCuda Pro 3.5", all capacities are 7200 RPM, 5 year warranty + 2 free years of rescue services

Some users are discussing NAS drives, but unless you're going to be getting at least 2 of them to run in RAID, this is actually not recommended because certain features of NAS drives like our IronWolf & IronWolf Pro, while helping them fine-tune performance & manage wear & tear on the drives, can make them not ideal for standalone (non-RAID) desktop use. This mainly has to do with a set of conditions called error recovery time limiting. Basically, when a drive is a part of a NAS team, if it runs into data it is having trouble dealing with, the controller can say "Hey buddy, alright, you're taking too long with that data and it's slowing us all down, pass it to the next guy in the array so we can move on", good for NAS and for RAID, not so good when that isn't the use-case because it can cause errors to pile up on the drive without aggressively trying to correct them. For these reasons, you will probably want to stick to desktop engineered drives unless you're buying multiple and going RAID.

[seagate_surfer]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

The wd reds I have are about the same as my desktop drives(lots of wd green, seagate 7200's, a hew hitachi). 

 

This doesn't seen to be true. The inside of drives like wd reds are about the same as desktop drives. Enterprise/datacenter drives are a good amount better, but those features aren't normally found in a nas drive.

 

Huh? Packaging from amazon is fine. I just got a few hdds from amazon and they were packed fine. And head parking makes them able to take much more abuse when stopped.

 

 

Oi. This is an interesting convo. 

As far as acoustic metrics go, we've pulled some product specs for our desktop & NAS lines, which we will link as we go along, just for comparison:

3TB BarraCuda (desktop): idle - typical 2.4 bels max 2.6 bels, seek - typical 2.6 bels max 2.7 bels
3TB IronWolf (NAS): idle - typical 2.7 bels max 2.8 bels, seek - typical 2.8 bels max 2.9 bels

6TB BarraCuda: idle - typical 2.3 bels max 2.5 bels , seek - typical 2.5 bels max 2.6 bels
6TB IronWolf: idle - typical 2.7 bels max 2.8 bels, seek 2.8 bels max 2.9 bels

8TB BarraCuda: idle - typical 2.3 bels max 2.5 bels, seek - 2.5 bels max 2.6 bels
8TB IronWolf: idle - typical 2.3 bels max 2.4 bels, seek - 2.5 bels max 2.6 bels

So our NAS drives are actually louder or the same to comparable desktop models.

As far as comparing the nuts-and-bolts of the drive, this Storage Review article is a touch outdated, but is a really good overview nonetheless:

Pick The Right Drive For The Job — 24/7 NAS HDDs vs. Desktop HDDs

It also has to do with workload ratings. Standard BarraCuda is rated for 55TB per year, 8 hours a day x 5 days a week use, while our IronWolfs (never quite sure if we are supposed to be calling them IronWolves...) are rated for 180TB per year and 24x7 use.

[Spotty]

4 hours ago, seagate_surfer said:

Some users are discussing NAS drives, but unless you're going to be getting at least 2 of them to run in RAID, this is actually not recommended because certain features of NAS drives like our IronWolf & IronWolf Pro, while helping them fine-tune performance & manage wear & tear on the drives, can make them not ideal for standalone (non-RAID) desktop use. This mainly has to do with a set of conditions called error recovery time limiting. Basically, when a drive is a part of a NAS team, if it runs into data it is having trouble dealing with, the controller can say "Hey buddy, alright, you're taking too long with that data and it's slowing us all down, pass it to the next guy in the array so we can move on", good for NAS and for RAID, not so good when that isn't the use-case because it can cause errors to pile up on the drive without aggressively trying to correct them.

Does this feature work in software RAID (ZRaid) as well or only hardware RAID?

Is there a way to disable this feature for it to function more reliably as a standalone drive outside of a RAID configuration?
Asking for a friend who totally isn't me who has multiple 6TB and 8TB Ironwolf's in his PC (no RAID) as well as his NAS (software RAID [FreeNas ZRAID]) and is now worried about errors on the drives.

[seagate_surfer]

On 4/13/2018 at 8:10 PM, Spotty said:

Does this feature work in software RAID (ZRaid) as well or only hardware RAID?

Is there a way to disable this feature for it to function more reliably as a standalone drive outside of a RAID configuration?
Asking for a friend who totally isn't me who has multiple 6TB and 8TB Ironwolf's in his PC (no RAID) as well as his NAS (software RAID [FreeNas ZRAID]) and is now worried about errors on the drives.

As far as your friend's NAS setup, he should theoretically be in better shape there, although not an expert with FreeNas personally, one would think NAS software knows how to work with features of firmware specifically engineered for NAS use. The non-RAID setup is probably where your friend will want to keep a closer eye on things. 

Usually changing these features requires knowing your way around Unix-based or Unix-like systems, as they can be played around with a bit within the monitoring controls, some have a command called smartctl, etc. depending on which system is being used. The best advice we can offer is to research extensively for their setup and know what they're doing before going in and changing these levels of settings in their system.