Are enterprise drives suitable for a home unraid system?


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Hi,

Toshiba Enterprise hard drives seem to be sold at a much lower price than traditional NAS hard drives like WD RED.

 

Are they suitable for home use in an Unraid system? In terms of reliability, noise, temperatures. Specifically asking about MG08 14TB with helium inside - https://www.newegg.com/toshiba-mg08aca14te-14tb/p/N82E16822149785

 

My current setup:

image.thumb.png.5396b8e74db0d8c3dec7aabdad46a7a7.png

 

Wanted to replace the 6TB data HDD (which is more than 5 years old) with 14TB.

 

Thanks

Edited by ds123
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  • ds123 changed the title to Are enterprise drives suitable for a home unraid system?

I use lot of Toshiba MG04/MD04/X300 6TB disk, ~13 and only 1 got fault. Then no more Toshiba because shuck disk have better C/P and also low failure rate.

 

Seldom people use helium fill Toshiba disk, because high price usually, so hard to got feedback.

 

PS: I never trust those marketing terms, enterprise, red, golden ....

Edited by Vr2Io
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1 hour ago, ds123 said:

Perhaps the question is more general, whether enterprise drives are suitable for a home unraid system.

Does anyone have any experience with such drives?

I'm using WD Ultrastars which are enterprise drives.  No issues so far.  I got them because of the deal at the time, not because I care that they are enterprise drives.

The Backblaze data is rather eye opening if you've never seen it.  There does not appear to be a compelling reason to use enterprise drives, when focused purely on costs (warranty/support associated with enterprise relationships are an entirely different consideration).

 

Edited by whipdancer
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19 minutes ago, whipdancer said:

I'm using WD Ultrastars which are enterprise drives.  No issues so far.  I got them because of the deal at the time, not because I care that they are enterprise drives.

The Backblaze data is rather eye opening if you've never seen it.  There does not appear to be a compelling reason to use enterprise drives, when focused purely on costs (warranty/support associated with enterprise relationships are an entirely different consideration).

 

 

They actually seem to be sold at a much lower price, for example -

WD RED Plus 14TB - 410$ https://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-14TB-Internal-Drive/dp/B08V13TGP4

Toshiba MG Series Enterprise 14TB - 330$ https://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-14TB-SATA-7200RPM-Enterprise/dp/B07DHY61JP

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3 hours ago, ds123 said:

 

They actually seem to be sold at a much lower price, for example -

WD RED Plus 14TB - 410$ https://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-14TB-Internal-Drive/dp/B08V13TGP4

Toshiba MG Series Enterprise 14TB - 330$ https://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-14TB-SATA-7200RPM-Enterprise/dp/B07DHY61JP


IMO WD <Color> <anything> is currently overpriced.  The exception probably being Blue drives which have slower RPM and smaller cache and don't come in a size I'd consider for data storage - but otherwise, attributes that make very little difference in Unraid in my limited, strictly anecdotal, experience.

I'm curious if those price trends are recent and/or more indicative of Toshiba, than of general pricing strategies.  I know that 12TB Iron Wolf, RED Pro, Exos, Iron Wolf Pro, Red+, Toshiba NAS were all over $360-ish when I was looking last summer.  Technically, each of those models is targeted toward a different market, but that does not factor in to my purchases (which is why I bought the enterprise drives I did, when i did - strictly $/TB).

Nostalgically speaking, what I wouldn't give for some WD Green 18TB drives.  My green drives all gave me better than 40k hours of service before I retired them.  4 of them now live in a friends QNAP (or whatever) NAS.

Edited by whipdancer
word choice
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18 hours ago, whipdancer said:


IMO WD <Color> <anything> is currently overpriced.  The exception probably being Blue drives which have slower RPM and smaller cache and don't come in a size I'd consider for data storage - but otherwise, attributes that make very little difference in Unraid in my limited, strictly anecdotal, experience.

I'm curious if those price trends are recent and/or more indicative of Toshiba, than of general pricing strategies.  I know that 12TB Iron Wolf, RED Pro, Exos, Iron Wolf Pro, Red+, Toshiba NAS were all over $360-ish when I was looking last summer.  Technically, each of those models is targeted toward a different market, but that does not factor in to my purchases (which is why I bought the enterprise drives I did, when i did - strictly $/TB).

Nostalgically speaking, what I wouldn't give for some WD Green 18TB drives.  My green drives all gave me better than 40k hours of service before I retired them.  4 of them now live in a friends QNAP (or whatever) NAS.

 

So if pricing is not a factor, are you saying it doesn't really matter whether it's an enterprise drive or not?

I'm mainly concerned about the noise level and temperatures, because enerprise drives are designed for use in data centers, where noise is less important and where there are massive cooling systems.

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10 hours ago, ds123 said:

 

So if pricing is not a factor, are you saying it doesn't really matter whether it's an enterprise drive or not?

I'm mainly concerned about the noise level and temperatures, because enerprise drives are designed for use in data centers, where noise is less important and where there are massive cooling systems.


I don't care whether it is an enterprise drive or not. I've had consumer drives give me 40k hours of service and are now another 5k or 6k beyond that in a friends NAS (IIRC my oldest drive was a consumer drive with 59k hours when it died).

My server Tower is in my office and sounds like a relatively quiet desk fan. I certainly can hear it when everything spins up though. I don't have any extra cooling in my case. I did upgrade to some better quality fans to minimize the noise.  My SSD drives report getting hot whenever I'm copy a bunch of stuff onto them (400 - 900GB will take long enough to raise their temps).  I have a couple of drives that seem to routinely report a high temp, but it always seem to come back to normal pretty quickly.

Basically, you can here my server when it's running, but it doesn't stand out from the environmental noise that is present in the room I use as my office - off the kitchen and utility room - so dishwasher, washing machine, dryer, sous vide circulator, oscillating fan - something is always running.

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  • 1 month later...

Out of my 28 drives, 20 are enterprise drives, a mix of 12TBs & 14TBs of Ultrastars, HGSTs, and Toshibas MG07 and MG08 (5 of which are the MG08 14TB). Idle they all run around 28-30C and the ones that are constantly on, run around 34-35C. Never seen any of them go higher then 36C at worst. Temps are not an issue as long as you have the hardware to support it, i use a supermicro 847 server. Noise wise tho, I hear my server from my bestment into the first floor lol. General pricing ranges from as low as $280 to $600 USD depending on the brand. The Toshibas 14TBs are usually my favorite ones since they run around 280-320 with 5 year warranty. You just need to make sure that you are buying for a seller that covers the 5 year warranty from their end since Toshiba won't cover it if its OEMs.

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