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2-12-2019 04:53:51 Mobile | Show all posts |Read mode
Ive finally got round to getting my first NAS, all i need now is some drives to put in in.

I was looking at the default option, WD reds but I've now had Toshiba N300s brought to my attention.

Are the N300s as good as the WD reds or am i better off turning my attention back to the WD drives?

For about £20 more i can get a 8TB N300 instead of a 6TB WD red.
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2-12-2019 04:53:52 Mobile | Show all posts
Which NAS did you buy?  Have you checked the Compatibility / Recommended drives for that NAS?
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 Author| 2-12-2019 04:53:53 Mobile | Show all posts
Ive not looked, i didn't realise certain drives would be recommended for it. Its a Synology DS918
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2-12-2019 04:53:54 Mobile | Show all posts
I'm just spitballing a bit in the hope of stimulating the thought process, but whenever assessing whether X is "better" then Y one really needs to get into the scientific method a bit and come up with some measurable metrics in order to make the determination, otherwise one runs the risk of making an emotional decision or getting sucked in by the advertising/Internet and hype.

I'm by no means a storage expert, but the sort of thing one might consider are things like MTBF, noise, heat, seek times, transfer times (both "burst" and "sustained,") cost per GB, spin up times, energy usage, warranty length (and terms,) etc. etc. Maybe some feature comparitors (can they be "slept," do they have a cache on board and how big, will it survive power cuts without losing integrity, etc.) And finally, one my try to give a "score" to reputation, though one might perhaps give that less weight than the more objective measures.

Sometimes when one tablulate this sort of thing and then cross compare, one starts to discern what it more or less important on the decision making process. Indeed, sometime s a ranking of the criteria emerges as one starts to consider what is most important.That "thing" I thought was really important at the outset (say) lots of storage for my money, might be tempered by (say) shorter warranty or noisier mechanism or whatever.

Of course, one always runs the risk of over-thinking it as well.
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2-12-2019 04:53:55 Mobile | Show all posts
Try this site if you are really interested in comparison of hard drive performance, failure rates etc.

You searched for Hard Drive Stats | Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup

They regularly publish the statistics for the drives they manange in their cloud based systems - 'As of March 31, 2019, Backblaze had 106,238 spinning hard drives' according to their Q1 2019 article. You will also see their data referenced occasionally on Hexus.net.

Bear in mind that these are primarily Enterprise class drives, but taken with a pinch of salt, the information can still be a useful indicator of how reliable (or not) a particular manufacturer's products currently are.

Additionally they should eventually have results for new technologies such as HAMR and MAMR that are implemented in Enterprise drives first, before we see them in consumer drives - it never hurts to know just how useful the latest acronym really is before it's used to tempt those of us with more modest budgets.
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2-12-2019 04:53:56 Mobile | Show all posts
I have had 4x4TB Seagate ST4000VN000 running for 1281 day(s) 5 hour(s) continuously according to my QNAP 4 bay NAS, so I hope that may help with another brand.
P.S. they have been faultless to date
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2-12-2019 04:53:58 Mobile | Show all posts
I have WD Reds, Toshiba N300's and Seagate Ironwolfs in my NAS.

Other than I think the Seagates are slightly noisier due to a higher RPM I've detected no difference.

Also have a look at the price of WD MyClouds/My Books storage devices.

I picked up a couple of these - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0752HSBP4/ref=twister_B076Y1FKW4?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

For just over £400 each a couple of months ago. It contains 2x 10TB WD Reds which are normally ~£300 each. Sometimes the 20TB is on offer, sometimes the 16TB sometimes the 12 etc.
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2-12-2019 04:53:59 Mobile | Show all posts
Incidentally, it's worth mentioning that HDD's are mechanical devices and for all their increasing cleverness and reliability, sometime they still just go bad for no apparent reason or are duff from the get go. Some years ago I worked for a company that manufactured HDD's and in our offices, one of the teams was dedicated to examining failed HDD's and trying to look for any systemic causes (that might, for example, indicate a materials or manufacturing problem in a particular batch.) It always amused me that the walls of the HDD teams office was covered in circular "maps" of the failed sectors on discs. It was like walking into the TARDIS (circa 70's Dr. Who.)

Anyway, in context of that - I've got some WD Reds and most of them have been faultless for the last 4-5 years or so. But one of them showed signs of being a "bit dodgy" early on and after a couple of years of watching the error rates go up, in the end I replaced it before it went bad permanently. (My server "scrubs" my discs once a week to check the integrity of the data they store - it's a feature of the ZFS file system - so I get some stats weekly.)

My point being that, sometimes you're just unlucky and get a bad one, but it doesn't necessarily imply the entire range or product is inherently faulty. In such a situation, a manufacturer with a good after sales reputation and/or longer warranty period could be argued to be of greater value.
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2-12-2019 04:54:01 Mobile | Show all posts
With HDDs you can more or less ignore the technical stuff, as they will all fail. Look for the best price for the desired drive capacity with the warranty you want.

I have currently WD Reds and Red Pros in my NAS. Had one 4TB fail after 2years 9months, WD replaced it with a new drive within a week.
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2-12-2019 04:54:02 Mobile | Show all posts
i had a WD drive start to fail in my nas a while back, so replaced with a new WD red. failing drive was a WD green with a manufacture date of 2010. not too disappointed if i get 9 years from a drive (which used to be in a pc and used regularily. with raid replacing a drive ain't a major deal

i've always stuck to WD, i had a side role a long time ago building custom pc's for folks and experience at the time was that they were the most reliable, however thats a long time ago but the habit has remained
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