FreeNAS killing my hard drives?!

[ibex333]

Since I built a FreeNAS box, it has been nothing but trouble. First of all, it was nothing easy like some people say. It was pretty damn hard to set it all up and make it all work properly. (but I digress)

Since I am not rich, I used regular hard drives. Not something specifically designed for servers, but basic, home use, consumer hard drives I had laying around.

First, a 3TB drive failed, taking my raid 0 array down with it. I didn't care about redundancy, so the loss of data is my fault. The loss of hardware on the other hand, made me frown...

And now, a 1TB drive failed! This time, I am not just sad anymore, but very very sad indeed! That's already a loss over $100 in hardware all together.

Seriously, what gives?! I get it, these are not server grade hard drives, but my case is spacious, there should not be overheating or anything like that. There wasn't a lot of reads/writes since I don't use my server very often. Maybe once in every 2-3 months to offload a bunch of crap from the main PC.

Does running in such a "server" fashion put extreme stress on hard drives? Is it really such a bad thing to use non-server HDDs in a server?

I suppose I must note that these drives are long out of warranty so I am SOL. However, they lasted for years, and would have likely lasted at least as long, if not for the damn FreeNAS.

Is it just a matter of time now before another drive fails?

 

[VirtualLarry]

I suppose I must note that these drives are long out of warranty so I am SOL. However, they lasted for years, and would have likely lasted at least as long, if not for the damn FreeNAS.

Is it just a matter of time now before another drive fails?

*Shrug* Old drives are old. They're mechanical, they seem to fail eventually. In fact, how old are these drives we're talking about? 3-5 yrs? Older?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Throwing a bunch of years-old HDDs that you had lying around? Yeah, you're going to have failures. They're old HDDs.

Do you have them set to drive sleep, or are they spinning 24/7?

Is it just a matter of time now before another drive fails?

It is always a matter of time before an HDD fails.

Meet the bathtub curve:

The upswing in failure rate starts around the 5 year mark.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I pro-actively replace most of my drives around the 5-year mark, for 24/7 server duty.

I'm unsure how long they'll last, if spun down when not used. (As in my unRAID server.)

I've got eight 2TB Hitachi 7200RPMs in there. Two were added, from NIB that had sat on my shelf, and six of them were from the original build, which was years ago.

AFAIK, they're all still good, but I haven't actually checked them. I probably should. Been meaning to move from unRAID to FreeNAS myself.

 

[mxnerd]

First, RAID 0 is a big no, no in any condition, you will lose data in no time, even if the drives didn't die.

2nd, if you have any kind of RAID, you better have similar size & similar speed of disks.

3rd, all drives die eventually. It could happen anytime, really, even brand new ones, let alone old drives.

4th, NAS usually means you have multiple HDDs in a compact space. Heat is a major killer for HDDs. Make sure your HDDs are cooled properly. If HDDs are not cooled properly, they die very fast.

 

[crashtech]

RAID 0 really has no place on a NAS, imo. Select a RAID level with some fault tolerance and get some decent drives (HGST). It's not FreeNAS that's out of whack, it's your expectations. I have 4 2TB Hitachis in my NAS that I bought new, and over the last four years, I've had to replace one, not because it failed, but because it was throwing SMART errors. I get a daily email on the status of the server and drives.

 

[bigboxes]

I wouldn't think that FreeNAS would have a hand in prematurely ending your hard drives. I have no experience though with FreeNAS. However, throwing random old drives in a RAID array is asking for trouble. You know that RAID is not a backup? Even if you had redundancy, RAID is not back up. RAID is for uptime. Even if you didn't have a catastrophic failure you still have data loss. It's important to keep your data backed up offline as well as online.

Another HDD killer would be power. One, starting up a server/NAS for the first time is the biggest stress you will put on your hard drives. I would never cheap out on your power supply and definitely have the whole system connected to a UPS. Protection from voltage fluctuations is essential for stability.

 

[bigboxes]

I pro-actively replace most of my drives around the 5-year mark, for 24/7 server duty.

I've had lots of drives fail in my lifetime. However, I don't think I've made it to the 5-year mark before I started to replace drives with larger capacity drives. A couple years ago I started replacing my older drives with new larger capacity HGST drives, even if I had to pay more. Reliability has started to take precedence over cost. Although I have everything backed up offline I still hate being down because I decided to buy latest price breaker special that I ran across.

 

[w3rd]

What are you using a mechanical raid for...?
I stopped using RAID arrays about 8 years ago, when SSDs came out.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

What are you using a mechanical raid for...?
I stopped using RAID arrays about 8 years ago, when SSDs came out.

Some of just have several TB of data.

 

[w3rd]

And..? Why do you need a raid, for space..?

 

[Malogeek]

What are you using a mechanical raid for...?
I stopped using RAID arrays about 8 years ago, when SSDs came out.

That makes no sense for large capacity redundant storage arrays. You have no idea what you're on about sorry.

@ibex333 what were you using RAID 0 in a NAS for? Did you really need the extra speed?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

And..? Why do you need a raid, for space..?

Storage virtualization. Easier to manage a single storage pool. Parity RAID (RAID-Z or Z2) means you don't have any given chunk of data on a single device where a single HDD failure could take it out.

Backups should make that a moot point, but rebuilding a RAID array is easey-peasey, no down-time.

 

[crashtech]

w3rd, you should at least get minimally conversant in the various RAID levels before wading in. There's more to this than just striping spinners for speed, which at this stage, is a bit moronic, I'll grant.

 

[mxnerd]

And..? Why do you need a raid, for space..?

RAID is for redundancy, up time, larger volume & performance.

You really should read some articles about RAID.

 

[ibex333]

@Malogeek

RAID 0 allowed me to get more usable space. Had I used the redundant option my space would be cut in half.

 

[crashtech]

@Malogeek

RAID 0 allowed me to get more usable space. Had I used the redundant option my space would be cut in half.

So we can safely say that you really don't care if you lose your data?

 

[mxnerd]

So we can safely say that you really don't care if you lose your data?

In this thread alone we have 2 users don't care about their data.

"The Fast and the Furious" glory!

 

[dave_the_nerd]

@Malogeek

RAID 0 allowed me to get more usable space. Had I used the redundant option my space would be cut in half.

I really think you should be using unRAID.

 

[Anteaus]

I agree with those above. There is nothing inherently wrong with using RAID, but it is meant for uptime and depending on which level you use can stress them beyond what is considered normal for consumer drives. Physical stress is only part of it. Heat is another enemy that isn't generally an issue until you start running a group of drives 24/7, but it can build up. Unless you invest in a proper hardware setup with adequate cooling and NAS spec drives, I would limit RAID use to mirroring (Raid 1).

To expand on dave_the_nerd's recommendation, I would use a non-raid, drive pooling solution such as Unraid or Stablebit Drivepool. SnapRAID has some value here also.

Last and the most important lesson. Regardless of your configuration, it is your risk to take. None of the solutions mentioned count as a backup. Generally speaking, if your data is important you should have at least three copies; your working copy and two backups. Hard drives fail, which means even backups fail. It is very easy to end up in a situation where your system dies so you go to your backup, only to find out that your backup has issues.

I personally like Raid 0 for media drives in spite of the risk because they work fast, don't impact drives like RAID5/6, and are super fast to build. That said, because I have good backups I could care less if it crashes. Ultimately it just means downtime while I copy everything back over. Don't let anyone dictate how you use your system as long as you willing to own the consequences.