Best internal HDD for torrents and Blue Iris camera recordings?

[tracerit]

I currently have three 3TB HDD (2 WD Red 5400rpm, 1 Seagate 7200rpm). Both have 64MB caches.

1 of the WD Red HDD and the Seagate are for long term storage. I just put files on there and rarely touch them again.

THe other WD Red HDD is my drive I'm using for active storage for downloading and seeding torrents and also have 500GB on this drive for recording video to 24/7 for my home cameras through Blue Iris.

I should use the Seagate for the active storage since it's 7200rpm but I read about their questionable reliability a few years ago so I'm not using it much.

I'm looking to spend about $200-300 on a new active storage drive for the torrents and camera footage but I haven't kept up. It seems the WD Black series is a good choice but I'm worried about the noise level on those.

 

[bononos]

If you're getting a new drive, WD recommends purple drives for always on 24/7 surveillance recording operations for the home user. Seagate also has its own surveillance model.
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/surveillance/Default.aspx

 

[Captain_WD]

~snip~

Hi there tracerit

As bononos pointed out, the WD Purple drive is recommended for recording video data from DVR and NVR systems. However, if you already have the recorded footage (lets say on a card or another storage device from your camera) you can transfer that file to another drive without the need of having additional features like the ones on Surveillance-class drives.

Using surveillance-class drives in regular desktops isn't really recommended as there may be some problems. I would recommend to go either with WD Blue (if the data isn't that demanding for performance) or with WD Black (if you prefer better performance, multitasking and longer warranty).

Post back if you have any questions

Captain_WD.

 

[rsutoratosu]

dammm, they keep coming up with new colors.. lol... so if you're storing video on nas, do you get the nas version or surveillance version ???

purple

 

[paperwastage]

dammm, they keep coming up with new colors.. lol... so if you're storing video on nas, do you get the nas version or surveillance version ???

purple

go for the cheaper version?

just look at the warranty and specs (7200rpm, cache size, spindle density)... the more expensive version typically has better or different binning/spec-verification/sleep-timings

backblaze decided to use non-enterprise drives for their cloud backup
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-q4-2015/

 

[Captain_WD]

~snip~

All WD NAS devices come with WD Red drives as they are designed to work in NASs and Servers and in RAID arrays and have additional features to do that safely. WD Purple drives are designed to be used in DVR/NVR systems and to record footage directly from a camera without any frame losses due to other applications' requests as well as to sustain harsher environments.

Captain_WD.

 

[CakeMonster]

I'm confused with these colors still... I see people recommend Red or and Black "to be safe" for regular desktop computers and regular use (OS/games/apps), where I would assume that Green would be fine since the usage is light. How different is really the behavior of these drives?

 

[Elixer]

Using surveillance-class drives in regular desktops isn't really recommended as there may be some problems.

Care to elaborate on this?
I can't think of any problems that this would cause, the HD itself isn't aware of the data type, so, it has no idea what is actually being put on the HD besides the length of the request.

On a pure reliability standing, HGST is the most recommended these days, followed by seagate, and toshiba & WD heading up the rear.
As was pointed out earlier, if you look at the backblaze data:

Does that mean HGST will never fail, and WD will always fail? Nope.
We are dealing with sample sizes here, but it does give you a rough picture on what is going on.
Frankly, I have had more WD RED issues (multiple drives just went belly up, with no SMART warning at all) than my WD black drives, and it is difficult to recommend WD RED these days, but, again, my sample size is too low to make any hard judgments.

OP, these days it don't seem to matter that much as to which HD you pick, you just need to use backups, and that will do away with the failure issues that all HDs (and SSDs) will eventually have.

 

[grimpr]

Care to elaborate on this?
I can't think of any problems that this would cause, the HD itself isn't aware of the data type, so, it has no idea what is actually being put on the HD besides the length of the request.

I'm interested in this too, seems WD wants to segment the hdd market without any concrete information, personally although a fan of the company i got tired of this segmentation and buy now exclusively the Desktop NAS drives from HGST for all my hdd needs and scenarios, these drives are fast and very reliable.

https://www.hgst.com/products/hard-drives/nas-desktop-drive-kit

 

[Elixer]

I know the firmware is tweaked on the purple drives (As it is on blue/red/gold/_insert_another_color_here), but, that shouldn't cause any reliability concerns when used as a 'desktop' drive. We aren't talking about RAID & TLER... so, unsure what it could be.

 

[tracerit]

Wow, I didn't know the WD Reds (and WD) in general were bad. The last time I looked into HDDs Seagate was the worst with HGST being the top. I was gonna get a WD Black 6TB 128MB cache but after reading how it's the loudest HDD I'm gonna pass as I leave my tower in my bedroom.

WD has segmented their drives way too much, while I'm sure any drive would work, I'm also worrying about choosing the "wrong" drive. The Blue would probably be the best for my use but I think I will look into the HGST drives now.

 

[Captain_WD]

~snip~

Such types of drives have their priorities on the sequential reads and specific caching algorithms. This is quite different compared to regular desktop drives and, for example, when you have an active document that you are working on and you want to save it and at the same time the computer does something with the drive that requires sequential writing the drive will prioritize and may leave out the other tasks, thus corrupting the data. This is in a way how surveillance drives work in order not to miss frames when recording camera footage. This is one of the main reasons why surveillance class drives are not recommended for regular desktop usage, although this is not very likely to happen and may people still use them as storage drives.

I can't really comment on the reliability report that is being released every now and then, but there's quite a lot of discussion if it's legitimate or not and how accurate it is.

I completely agree on the importance of backups, regardless of what HDD is being used. Hard Drives are mechanical units after all and failures can happen for one reason or another at any time, regardless of the drive's brand, model, type or usage.

Captain_WD.

 

[Elixer]

Such types of drives have their priorities on the sequential reads and specific caching algorithms. This is quite different compared to regular desktop drives and, for example, when you have an active document that you are working on and you want to save it and at the same time the computer does something with the drive that requires sequential writing the drive will prioritize and may leave out the other tasks, thus corrupting the data. This is in a way how surveillance drives work in order not to miss frames when recording camera footage. This is one of the main reasons why surveillance class drives are not recommended for regular desktop usage, although this is not very likely to happen and may people still use them as storage drives.

From what I understand, if the recording program sends ATA streaming commands to the drive, it will attempt to satisfy all commands as quickly as it can, giving priority to those commands. However, normal read/write commands could be delayed, but, they won't be dropped. AV drives are tweaked for random performance (IIRC) above all else.

The system would cache (or resend) all those read/write commands until the request is met, otherwise the I/O driver's status bit would be useless.
So, what would be a corner case of the drive actually dropping data, thus causing corrupted data--without informing the OS about having to drop that data segment and return back a completion response?

Sorry to be a pain, but I think this needs to be explained more.

 

[tweakboy]

Forget it and move on! give yourself a break. gl

 

[Captain_WD]

~snip~

You are correct. I am not sure how much of our technology I can disclose here and I will ask what else I can share, but you are on the right track.
The Purple drives are specifically adjusted to give priority to the sequential reading above all in any case so they do not have frame drops or video cuts while recording or streaming.

I will get back at you if I can get more info. I'm happy to help with whatever I can, you are no pain at all!

Captain_WD.

 

[Mike64]

I'm confused with these colors still... I see people recommend Red or and Black "to be safe" for regular desktop computers and regular use (OS/games/apps), where I would assume that Green would be fine since the usage is light. How different is really the behavior of these drives?

Those recs are based on the reliability (or perceived reliability) of the drives, not their specs or (theoretical) performance. (Well, mostly. For drives holding more than just data, there's also the fact that WD's green drives are slower than their red or black ones.) And for what it's worth, in my experience the vast majority of people who make simple-minded, blanket recommendations like that are usually just parroting simple-minded, blanket generalizations they've read "somewhere on the Interwebs"...

 

[TheRyuu]

AV drives are tweaked for random performance (IIRC) above all else.

I think you mean sequential. Nearly all A/V playback is going to be non-random sequential access (think of playing a video/music file from start to finish).

Depending on your budget you may want to take a look at the HGST drives[1][2]. Remember that even if you purchase the most reliable HDD it's still mechanical and can fail. If you want reliability and safety (of stored data) then you should look into having some kind of redundancy (e.g. RAID).

[1] http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16822145912 (4TB model)
[2] http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16822145973 (6TB model)

 

[Elixer]

I think you mean sequential. Nearly all A/V playback is going to be non-random sequential access (think of playing a video/music file from start to finish).

I forgot where I read it, but I don't think that is the case for WD purple drives, they are tuned to have optimal r/w access but, seagate attacks the same problem with better sequential write access.

WD's purple drives are rated for X streams at once and the firmware is tweaked to handle them all as efficiently as possible, with always doing write priority over reads, (but, unsure what exactly happens to that read request, is it actually dropped, and the controller tells the OS resend or what...)

Then again, could be wrong, but I guess that is where Captain_WD will swoop in and correct any errors.

 

[sdifox]

just get an ssd for security video scratch drive, copy file off it daily. Torrent just keep on a spinner.

Get more near line storage.

 

[Cerb]

I'm confused with these colors still... I see people recommend Red or and Black "to be safe" for regular desktop computers and regular use (OS/games/apps), where I would assume that Green would be fine since the usage is light. How different is really the behavior of these drives?

Backups. Drive failure is too hard to predict, and with the drives being so big, relative to their capacity and transfer rates, even catching one while it's on the way out is no assurance you'll get your data out safely. Any reliability features that aren't just marketing (including those that are part of the manufacturing or quality control processes) are going to take large sample sizes to manifest themselves, and/or mechanical abuse that a PC staying put all the time is generally not going to have a problem with.

If you aren't using special features, such as the ATA streaming extensions, the differences are minor. My Purple gives slightly different CrystalDiskMark scores compared to Reds, favoring random writes over reads, and otherwise is about the same (other differences might show up with something like Iometer, that uses program traces). When it comes to doing file manual file management, Red and Purple both feel snappier, though I haven't found any objective benchmarks to prove it (like browsing directories that don't yet have cached metadata, and browsing around the drive while file copying is being done).

 

[Captain_WD]

~snip~

Unfortunately I can't really share more info on this, but generally, the drive can work in a regular computer, but since it's not optimized for random read/write speeds it will be slower than a normal drive in a regular PC configuration. Computers do a lot of random read/write operations and the drive will actually feel slower (not only on benchmarks).
Regarding the write priority and the caching, the drive will put on hold random operations until it completes the sequential writes and then continue on with the random operations (unless the system has timed them out in some way).

The read request stays on hold until the sequential operation completes. If you do some changes to the same file and needs to be read or written a few times but all of them are put on hold it may cause some problems, but this is generally very rare. The main issue is the speed of the drive when used in regular desktops.

Captain_WD.

 

[smitbret]

I worked as a team lead in advanced technical support for DirecTV for a couple of years. From 2011 to 2015 they used WD Green and Seagate Barracudas in their DVRs.

I think they may be operating off of the BackBlaze concept of whatever is the least expensive and they have a disclaimer that their DVRs are not intended to be used for long-term storage.

That being said, I have used nothing but WD Green, Seagate Barracuda and Toshiba DCx drives in my home server since 2010 and not had a drive fail yet.

 

[tweakboy]

Get a WD, very reliable.. gl