Hard Drive Recommendation

[sirchunk]

Hi everyone, at home my hard drive in my old trusty QNAP TS119p II is about to give up so I'm looking for recommendations on what hard drive to replace it with.

I'm looking for 3.5 inch 1tb sata drive or maybe upgrade to 2tb.

Been looking at WD Reds but I can't help thinking it's a waste as I'm not using RAID?

Then I've been looking at the Seagate's Barracuda drives but read they're not the most reliable.

Then there's 7200rpm Vs 5400rpm? I mainly use it to access my files when out, backing up my laptop and streaming music and videos.

So I'm in your hands, what do you recommend?

Thanks in advance

 

[abailey]

Personally I would go with a WD Red or Seagate Ironwolf. They are drives made for NAS and they hold up pretty good. As far as 5400 vs 7200, that is a personal choice. Both drives can max out a Gigabit connection on sequential reads. The 7200 will be a little faster on random reads and writes. But the 7200 will also run hotter which could effect how long the drive will last (depends on the cooling in your NAS). If you really needed to go less expensive then maybe look at the HGST Ultrastar. I think they are much better than the Barracudas. I use both WD Red and Seagate Ironwolf 5400rpm drives in my NAS.

 

[FatherLandDescendant]

I really like the WD Black, all of my HDDs are blacks.

 

[RMerlin]

I really like the WD Black, all of my HDDs are blacks.

Don't use WD Black in a NAS. Those disks tend to generate a lot of heat, which will be problematic in a NAS where everything is in a pretty tight enclosure. Only a few days ago, a friend of mine replaced a failed HDD in his RAID with a spare black that he had at hand, and while he was rebuilding his array, his RAID controller started logging overheating warnings for that black...

 

[RMerlin]

Been looking at WD Reds but I can't help thinking it's a waste as I'm not using RAID?

I do not recommend using a Red in a non-RAID. Those drive have TLER, which means the likelihood of losing data is higher than with a regular desktop HDD.

If it's not in a RAID, go with a WD Blue, or with a disk where you can manually disable TLER support.

7200 vs 5400 matters little in a home NAS, where you will rarely have concurrent access. It might help a bit if you do a lot of accesses to very small files, but for the typical music/video storage, it's not worth it. The 5400 will run cooler, which is often a plus in a NAS.

 

[RMerlin]

If you really needed to go less expensive then maybe look at the HGST Ultrastar.

I saw a few very good deals on HGST NAS disks recently. Was tempted to try them out as my own NAS was in need of a stockage upgrade. I ended up sticking with another Red since I wanted it to be quieter (5400 vs 7200) above all.

I was wondering however why the recent aggressive pricing on these HGST. They usually have a very good reputation, so I doubt it's because they'd be lemons.

 

[abailey]

I do not recommend using a Red in a non-RAID. Those drive have TLER, which means the likelihood of losing data is higher than with a regular desktop HDD.

If it's not in a RAID, go with a WD Blue, or with a disk where you can manually disable TLER support.

This is true and I forgot about it. I wonder if the HGST Ultrastar has TLER on by default?

 

[FatherLandDescendant]

Don't use WD Black in a NAS. Those disks tend to generate a lot of heat, which will be problematic in a NAS where everything is in a pretty tight enclosure. Only a few days ago, a friend of mine replaced a failed HDD in his RAID with a spare black that he had at hand, and while he was rebuilding his array, his RAID controller started logging overheating warnings for that black...

That friend may want to check their cooling solution in that device, or look at the age and/or wear on that drive. I had 4x2TB WD Blacks in a Qnap desk top array for over a year and never had any issues with temps. According to the on-board monitor they ran in the low 120ish F range during heavy read/write operations, and according to the spec sheet for those drives that is within manufacture recommended operating range. I've since moved those drives into a computer I built a few months ago and replaced them with 4x1TB WD Blacks and don't really use the array very much any more since I installed the bigger drives in my new PC and set up RAID in it.

In the PC I built I have a PWM Fan controller that has 4 temp sensor readouts, one of the temp probes I have stuck between 2 of the 2TB Blacks in the case (A CoolMaster HAF XB EVO case) and the temps run right at 90 F and there isn't very good airflow in the bottom of that case with all the cabeling, drives, drive cages and power supply, my M.2SSD on the motherboard runs hotter than those drives by about 3 degrees F.

 

[sfx2000]

I was wondering however why the recent aggressive pricing on these HGST. They usually have a very good reputation, so I doubt it's because they'd be lemons.

From enterprise/carrier experience - HGST stuff is good

 

[sfx2000]

I do not recommend using a Red in a non-RAID. Those drive have TLER, which means the likelihood of losing data is higher than with a regular desktop HDD.

RED's in a desktop/single drive - I wouldn't recommend a RED there - black/green/blue is probably better for WD's

TLER has nothing to do with it - most enterprise drives in SATA space have it enabled... there's no risk to have it enabled, no data loss, might time a bit more time to write if a write hits a bad block, but this is not exposed to the OS in any event - if one is having problems with TLER enabled, one has a bad drive, period...

RED's are optimized though for RAID, TLER is part of things, but it's also about the read/write patterns, along with power management.

WD-Black will run hot in a NAS, and I would not recommend Greens in any case for a RAID - good drives, but power management can run into problems with RAID5/RAID10 configs.

 

[System Error Message]

WD reds arent that great in reliability when you go with 4TB and higher. Below 4TB WD reds are reliable. If you want a drive for NAS, WD reds, seagate ironwolf are the best drives even for raid but you can raid other drives too like WD blue, black, seagates, etc. Just avoid seagate archive and wd green drives.

HGST make very reliable drives too.

 

[RMerlin]

TLER has nothing to do with it - most enterprise drives in SATA space have it enabled... there's no risk to have it enabled, no data loss, might time a bit more time to write if a write hits a bad block, but this is not exposed to the OS in any event - if one is having problems with TLER enabled, one has a bad drive, period...

TLER enable means if your hard disk has any kind of difficulties reading a sector, it will immediately give up, because it expects the disk to be in a RAID, and the other elements in the array would return the correct data. This is done to prevent RAIDs completely marking the array as degraded as a hard disk retries for many seconds to read a troublesome sector.

So yes, TLER in a non-RAID situation does increase the chances of data losses, as data that might be otherwise recoverable through retries will be lost - the hard disk will give up far too quickly on recovering it.

That friend may want to check their cooling solution in that device, or look at the age and/or wear on that drive.

The idea here is that almost any kind of home NAS will have very limited airflow, making the Black more likely to overheat than in a typical desktop environment for which they are designed.

WD reds arent that great in reliability when you go with 4TB and higher. Below 4TB WD reds are reliable.

I assume you are referring to the Backblaze data. I find their Red feedback quite puzzling personally.

 

[System Error Message]

The idea here is that almost any kind of home NAS will have very limited airflow, making the Black more likely to overheat than in a typical desktop environment for which they are designed.



I assume you are referring to the Backblaze data. I find their Red feedback quite puzzling personally.

In an enclosed space WD blacks will overheat, but with airflow it wont. So if your NAS has a fan and fins you can use WD blacks.

i consider any backblaze data that involves at least thousands of drives to be reliable.

 

[RMerlin]

In an enclosed space WD blacks will overheat, but with airflow it wont. So if your NAS has a fan and fins you can use WD blacks.

i consider any backblaze data that involves at least thousands of drives to be reliable.

Not rejecting their results, just surprised by them.

Sent from my P027 using Tapatalk

 

[System Error Message]

Not rejecting their results, just surprised by them.

Sent from my P027 using Tapatalk

me too, im also surprised. Thankfully all my WD drives are less than 4TB and most common drives are below that. seems like WD and seagate are the least reliable compared to other drives like HGST.

From the perspective of how they make their drives, seagate puts more into the electronics like the chips, CPU, even firmware is in a chip, whereas in WD's design their firmware is on the platter. This is why in the past WD was more reliable while seagate was faster but now it seems like seagate has pulled ahead. I do have a seagate archive drive that is so slow but i just use it as a large 8TB storage while i have 8TB ironwolves in raid 6 for a 24TB array.

 

[Screwdriver]

So...I have the same question. Should I avoid a NAS drive like the WD Red? Or go with a Blue in a single drive NAS?

 

[RMerlin]

So...I have the same question. Should I avoid a NAS drive like the WD Red? Or go with a Blue in a single drive NAS?

Same answers we've already given in that thread: don't use a NAS drive in a single drive setup.

 

[Screwdriver]

Same answers we've already given in that thread: don't use a NAS drive in a single drive setup.

So I got a 3TB WD Blue and the QNAP TS-128A would not recognize the new drive. Checked that it was seated correctly etc. Pulled the drive and added to a dock and formatted it in Win 10, tested etc and there were zero errors. Installed it back into the NAS and it works. Asked QNAP about this and they said that I should of used a NAS disk, that there are compatibility issues with non NAS disks. They said there are no issues with TLER and single disks.

 

[RMerlin]

So I got a 3TB WD Blue and the QNAP TS-128A would not recognize the new drive. Checked that it was seated correctly etc. Pulled the drive and added to a dock and formatted it in Win 10, tested etc and there were zero errors. Installed it back into the NAS and it works. Asked QNAP about this and they said that I should of used a NAS disk, that there are compatibility issues with non NAS disks. They said there are no issues with TLER and single disks.

Then I simply disagree with their opinion. TLER means in case of any minor read error, your hard disk will immediately give up trying to re-read the sector (as it expects another element of the RAID to take over for it), and result in a hard read error, instead of being potentially able to recover the data on that sector by retrying to read it.

Granted, it's not an every day issue, but in the long term it does reduces your chances of being able to recover from a read error.

 

[Screwdriver]

Then I simply disagree with their opinion. TLER means in case of any minor read error, your hard disk will immediately give up trying to re-read the sector (as it expects another element of the RAID to take over for it), and result in a hard read error, instead of being potentially able to recover the data on that sector by retrying to read it.

Granted, it's not an every day issue, but in the long term it does reduces your chances of being able to recover from a read error.

I agree with what you say, and it's why I went with the WD Blue. I asked the "pros" in the Qnap forum about TLER and am curious what their opinion is. Anyhow the NAS is working correctly.

I do wonder if the firmware looks for a "compatible" drive and has an issue if it does not see one. As it is now, only Seagate NAS drives are listed.

Thanks