NAS/RED VS Normal

[Dahak]

So in looking at building my new storage server I am trying to decide whether going with the NAS version of the drives (WD Red / Seagate NAS) vs just the normal drives.

The server is going to be most likely Server 2012 Essentials. I looked into FreeNas but for some reason there is something about the setup for some reason I cannot get my head around. Jails is another one

Looking to get about 4X 3TB drives

The price difference is only about $20-$25 (nas versions being more)

 

[Blain]

If you're using the NAS as a large recycle bin, get regular HDs.
If you're planning on storing data on it, go with the WD RE's or Reds.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

If you're using the NAS as a large recycle bin, get regular HDs.
If you're planning on storing data on it, go with the WD RE's or Reds.

What's wrong with the Seagate NAS drives, Blain?

I had labored over the options here and there for several weeks, and purchased two of those units.

Do you know something that I don't? Because I certainly don't know everything . . .

 

[alfa147x]

What's wrong with the Seagate NAS drives, Blain?

I had labored over the options here and there for several weeks, and purchased two of those units.

Do you know something that I don't? Because I certainly don't know everything . . .

http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/01/21/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/

 

[BarkingGhostar]

Even when looking at just one manufacturer (e.g. Western Digital) the task of choosing a product line can be frustrating. For instance, I am in the early stages of deciding the hardware for a FreeNAS server to run Plex on. There are RED NAS drives, Blue [better than Green] drives, Elite Black drives, and then there are the AV-GP drives.

I was thinking of buying 4x1TB drives for a RaidZ2 setup in FreeNAS for the intent of storing audio, video and images on and accessed by M$ and Apple devices. Looking on Amazon at the WDC 1TB internal drive prices they seem to run $60-75/drive. So, it really isn't a question of price.

Blue drives run at 7200 RPM, but Green and Red at 5400. AV-GP are the quietest, and Black is for when you think you are more special than everyone else. LOL And this is just from one manufacturer!

 

[BonzaiDuck]

That's interesting. I should have snagged that review in my search. I seem up to my a** in alligators, so I may have missed it.

It was a toss-up between the Red drives and the NAS drives. My own analysis of customer reviews swayed me, and as much as those reviews need to be taken with a grain of salt, they can tell you something.

Also I note that the drives I purchased weren't in the lab-test lineup.

I had abjured using Seagates many years ago because the general opinion -- including mine -- was that the temperatures were not confidence-inspiring. Mostly -- I've used WD's, and obtained a couple 1TB Samsung F3's which seem to be still "healthy."

It looks as though I should plan on picking up another couple drives -- maybe the Reds -- I'm not too sure at the moment.

With the higher capacities, one concludes one thing especially: back up frequently; duplication and redundancy only make good sense.

Now -- I almost wish I'd spent the extra $40 each on WD Black drives.

 

[Dahak]

Yea, I'm in the same boat too. Can't decide

my current storage machine has 2X1TB Hitachi's and 2X2tb Seagate drives and have been fine. And I have used WD's primarily too

My current gaming machines has two Seagates in and been fine. Previous build was wds primary.

I don't think my question was clear enough, its not that comparing between the seagate nas vs the wd reds but more would it be better to use a nas flavor drive (nas /red) vs a regular desktop drive.

As the nas flavored drives are designed more for standalone nas units like synology's/qnap/etc.

These will be added to a StoragePool in S2012E, and will be various shares, for media/music/backup/isos

**Edit**

I had seen that backblaze post before as well and while yes it shows that seagate's tend to fail a lot there is also some other considerations to think about.

1) that drive model is no longer available (the 1.5)
2) the sample size as well, sure Seagate is going to show more failures of nearly 12,000 vs the 3000 of Western Digital, although they do have high seem to have high failure rate on the normal 3tb seagate drive too. But what would happen if it was reversed? or on the same par



Arrrg.... over thinking everything

 

[alfa147x]

12,000 vs the 3000 of Western Digital, although they do have high seem to have high failure rate on the normal 3tb seagate drive too. But what would happen if it was reversed? or on the same par

Their sample contained more Hitachi drives than Seagate. Hitachi preformed the best out of the 3 leaving WD in the middle. So your theory doesn't work.

Since they are using % of failure annually I don't believe the sample size matters besides that it is larger than just a few drives (Toshiba and Samsung).

I do agree. We do tend to overthink things but going with Seagate can't be a good idea...

 

[stlc8tr]

I don't think my question was clear enough, its not that comparing between the seagate nas vs the wd reds but more would it be better to use a nas flavor drive (nas /red) vs a regular desktop drive.

As the nas flavored drives are designed more for standalone nas units like synology's/qnap/etc.

From what I've read, the drive manufacturers are trying to position the NAS drives for users who want to use the drives for 24/7 access. The lower cost desktop drives are not suppose to be for 24/7 use. The "rated workload" (measured in TB/year) of NAS drives is also supposedly higher than the desktop versions.

Of course, that's what they are trying to say. Whether or not we believe them is another matter.

 

[Essence_of_War]

The BackBlaze cannot be used to support the proposition "seagate is a bad brand".

There was extensive discussion of this on this forum:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=35981494

and this post in particular points out several problems:

You can find the model numbers used in the study here: http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/01/21...-should-i-buy/

The drive with the highest fail rate, ST31500341AS (25.4%), is a Seagate 7200.11 drive from 2008. A six years old model using three 500GB platters. This makes me doubt there are any useful conclusions to be drawn from this drive's survivability when compared to newer 1TB per platter drives. It is clearly an outlier which you can't use to judge Seagate's reliability in general, especially that of their current drives. The second highest failure rate was on ST31500541AS (9.8%), much improved over the -341AS. But even this one is a five year old model, not exactly relevant any more. For example, ST4000DM000 is a new drive with 3.8% failure rate, similar to WD's numbers.

I don't think these results should be taken as "Seagate sucks, Hitachi rocks", one has to look at each model separately instead of blindly trusting one brand over another, and also weigh the cost of the drive and the length of its warranty against the likelihood of it failing.

Also, importantly, the study did not include many of the popular general purpose home PC drives, sorted here in order of number of reviews on newegg:

1. WD Black WD1002FAEX
2. WD Blue WD10EZEX
3-6. Smaller WD Blue drives
7. (was included) ST3000DM001
8. ST1000DM003
9. ST2000DM001
10. WD Black WD2002FAEX

Instead, mostly lower RPM drives or older 7200RPM drives were in, and results for either of those may not apply to new 7200 RPM drives. I would also love to see results for Toshiba hard drives.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

From what I've read, the drive manufacturers are trying to position the NAS drives for users who want to use the drives for 24/7 access. The lower cost desktop drives are not suppose to be for 24/7 use. The "rated workload" (measured in TB/year) of NAS drives is also supposedly higher than the desktop versions.

Of course, that's what they are trying to say. Whether or not we believe them is another matter.

Products marketed for NAS are not the only products marketed for 24x7 service usage. The AV-GP are advertised for their 24x7 video streaming ability.

 

[stlc8tr]

Products marketed for NAS are not the only products marketed for 24x7 service usage. The AV-GP are advertised for their 24x7 video streaming ability.

True. Enterprise drives are also rated for 24x7 operation but the OP was comparing NAS drives to regular desktop drives so that's why I brought up that point.

 

[serpretetsky]

Here's another very recent thread you can read through:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1815325

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Here's another very recent thread you can read through:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1815325

I think some folks wonder whether you can only use "NAS" drives in a "NAS box" as opposed to a "server." I doubt it makes a difference.

I spoke to someone who does tech-support for drive-management software. They told me they had quite a few Seagate NAS drives and didn't see any problem with them.

For a server box, you'll likely run it "24/7" so if the drive is made for "24/7" -- it should be fine -- I think. This is all new territory for some of us, though.

I may have said that I wish I'd paid extra for the WD Black drives of the same 2TB size. The fact is -- in this house we run machines a lot "24/7." Those black drives can take a licking and keep on ticking.

I'm going to give these Seagates a shot. I'm also going to religiously make backups at least once weekly. I'm going to "look into that" more carefully, and see how it might be done continuously.

MORE: I've done some web-searches and to those of us insufficiently specialized or otherwise rusty about the HDD technology, the marketing of these drives may throw up some "hesitations." They are called "NAS" drives because they're targeted at people you buy a NAS solution to a home or SOHO file-server. These are all SATA drives -- period. They have features that make them "optimal" for RAID like TLER, but they aren't much in the way of "suboptimal" even for use as a desktop workstation drive (but they're slower). They (more or less) take less power, and the consumer units (like "RED" and "NAS") spin at between 5400 and 5900, so they're likely to be slower.

BUT! You can do what you wan' -- whatevah, whatevah.. . . --- with those drives. As long as it mostly involves hooking them up to an SATA port for whatever available configuration tweaks your beak.

 

[jb510]

That Backblaze data is great on specific models, but you definitely can't extrapolate it to generalizations about brands.

One might assume WD is way more reliable than SG based on the 36 month chart, but they elsewhere state that:
1) The 3TB WD Green drives failed so badly and quickly for them they're not included.2) 2) 2) They include the 1.5TB Seagate ST31500341AS with it's exceptionally high failure (25%) rate.
3) They conclude by saying their drive of choice at the moment is a Seagate drive the 4TB ST4000DM000. If generalizations were true, that wouldn't be their choice.

It's not wrong data, it's just a misleading chart.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

That Backblaze data is great on specific models, but you definitely can't extrapolate it to generalizations about brands.

One might assume WD is way more reliable than SG based on the 36 month chart, but they elsewhere state that:
1) The 3TB WD Green drives failed so badly and quickly for them they're not included.2) 2) 2) They include the 1.5TB Seagate ST31500341AS with it's exceptionally high failure (25%) rate.
3) They conclude by saying their drive of choice at the moment is a Seagate drive the 4TB ST4000DM000. If generalizations were true, that wouldn't be their choice.

It's not wrong data, it's just a misleading chart.

I had one DOA drive delivered to me from the Egg over the last half-decade or longer. It was a WD Blue 1TB drive. Their RMA process is time-saving, efficient. The replacement drive is still working.

Now . . . earlier this month, I ordered two Seagate NAS 2TB'ers. One is working fine, SMART software reports total wonderfulness. The other one died within five minutes of operation, so it's on its way back RMA today -- just returned from the UPS drop-off.

I don't know about "higher failure rates" with higher-capacity disks, but it had been a "rumor." The customer-reviews as a biased sample statistic still doesn't look good, even acknowledging the bias of the Galactically Disgruntled.

And since I ordered two more -- the original plan was to boost my inventory by four 2TB'ers -- I can only wait and see. And I can't wait too long, or that 30-day window will expire for RMA.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

I will not use Seagate over their fiasco 3-4 years back with the 1TB drive firmware catastrophe. I bought 4 of those drives, one failed on delivery and Egg replaced it. Another failed within a month, but by then Seagate admitted to the product issue and Egg removed the product SKU from their website and treated customers moving forward as if they never sold it.

Seagate and Egg are out of my life.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I will not use Seagate over their fiasco 3-4 years back with the 1TB drive firmware catastrophe. I bought 4 of those drives, one failed on delivery and Egg replaced it. Another failed within a month, but by then Seagate admitted to the product issue and Egg removed the product SKU from their website and treated customers moving forward as if they never sold it.

Seagate and Egg are out of my life.

Actually, there's a history of those sorts of problems in the industry. Similar or terrible problem with a line of IBM disks. Afterward, they sold off the division to Hitachi -- I think it was. The next generation of drives were "OK" by most standards.

Anyway, I downloaded SeaTools and put the remaining disks through the ringer. It appears that I misdiagnosed the "failed" drive: it was a failed controller port. the unit which I RMA'd was probably OK.

But -- you see customer reviews, you hear stories (or read forum posts), and it becomes too easy to think you got the s***-end of the quality-control stick.

I just read another forum post here (another thread) where someone had replaced an HDD with an SSD, and the SSD failed within a month! Not something you would expect. Seems -- when it comes to data integrity and preservation -- we're like starving dogs in a kennel hoping their next bowl of kibbles doesn't have strychnine in it.

 

[Charlie98]

But -- you see customer reviews, you hear stories (or read forum posts), and it becomes too easy to think you got the s***-end of the quality-control stick.

I just read another forum post here (another thread) where someone had replaced an HDD with an SSD, and the SSD failed within a month! Not something you would expect. Seems -- when it comes to data integrity and preservation -- we're like starving dogs in a kennel hoping their next bowl of kibbles doesn't have strychnine in it.

I had a 2TB Red in my HTPC, it shipped with bad sectors. I have a number of Seagate Barracuda drives in both my desktop and HTPC (no .11 drives, thank goodness) and have never problem one with them, let alone a failure. I had a premium SSD fail in less than a year, but a much maligned OCZ SSD continues to perform.

I don't really know why everyone beats drive selection to death. The Big 3 (WD/Hitachi, Seagate, Toshiba) make decent drives in a number of different flavors based on intended task and support level. EVERYONE has made bad drives, very often realized only after they have been put into general circulation. Given my very limited experience, I still wouldn't hesitate buying a WD drive over a Seagate, depending on the price.

Pick a drive based on it's intended role and the level of performance and support you desire. WD Reds or Seagate NAS? Which one is on sale? There's your answer.

EDIT: Bonsai, I'm not aiming my post at you, rather using your comments to springboard my comments. No flame intended.

 

[Unoid]

If I had to replace my 2x Samsung F3's 2TB in my synology, I would opt for the higher rated WD NAS drives.

Although every Seagate and WD HDD I've bought for the past 8 years has died within 1 year....... Samsung's rock. too bad they sold out.

 

[keyed]

Problem solved.

HGST 3 gb NAS drives are on sale at Newegg for $130 with today's mailer. Just ordered 4 of them to go along with a QNAP NAS.

 

[Raduque]

I've had drives from all manufacturers fail, Seagate, Western Digital, and today a Samsung (seems to be a Seagate?) drive died.

Of course, I run all my drives 24/7 except my externals. I'm going to start replacing the drives in my WHS with WD Red NAS drives, though.

 

[sao123]

If I had to replace my 2x Samsung F3's 2TB in my synology, I would opt for the higher rated WD NAS drives.

Although every Seagate and WD HDD I've bought for the past 8 years has died within 1 year....... Samsung's rock. too bad they sold out.

I keep thinking about buying the WD SE drives (for the 7200 rpms and 5 yr warranty) for a NAS... but reading this: http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=182&t=90021

keeps pointing me back to the reds...

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I had a 2TB Red in my HTPC, it shipped with bad sectors. I have a number of Seagate Barracuda drives in both my desktop and HTPC (no .11 drives, thank goodness) and have never problem one with them, let alone a failure. . . .

. . . . EDIT: Bonsai, I'm not aiming my post at you, rather using your comments to springboard my comments. No flame intended.

I don't see how I could possibly have taken it that way.

Right now, I have three 2TB Seagate NAS drives in the server, and a fourth -- tested and proven (see below) -- still in anti-stat on the table awaiting "disposition." I had misdiagnosed one of these as "failed" because of a port on the new controller, and discovered that the "bad port symptom" was a result of using the wrong drivers. In the latter case, you could blame the sparse documentation on what is otherwise a very reliable little 4-port "Marvell" controller board. But my quick judgment about the HDD grew from my frets and worries over customer reviews of the same model in 3 and 4TB flavors.

There's a pile of reasons people will fret over drive longevity. It requires more attention to backups. Some, like me, would prefer keeping a spare drive in storage in case a RAID or drive-pool configuration has a failing unit. It's a PITA to clone a drive, and it's a pain to perform the physical removal and replacement. If you lose an HDD, you could lose your entire operating system installation, software installs -- data and so on.

I can't remember if SeaTools works properly with drives configured as RAID. I do know that it was reassuring to perform the "slow" format on each one and test them with SeaTools' "All-long" test option on another system configured for AHCI. I suppose the resellers plan on this sort of "false positive" leading to RMAs. It's just a bit embarrassing when I don't get it right myself.