Replacing 8TB Seagate Iron Wolf HDD (Options Same HDD Drive, Samsung QVO or PM Enterprise Drive)

[vast]

Hi everyone,

 

I'd appreciate you opinion on this matter. I've been having a Seagate drive in my Plex Unraid server failing (SMART Report Reallocated sector count is increasing slowly) potentially due to overheating (Sometimes they run about 50 Celcius). Not sure if I should just leave it or replace it. Its the parity drive ironically. 

 

Unfortunately, I can't really get the server much cooler with noise/fan speed ratio as it is all in a cupboard and the hot air circulates in there. I was thinking a practical solution would be to just scrap all the hdds as they run quite hot and need quite a bit of cooling.

 

So I came across QVO drives by Samsung that have 8TB, the only thing I'm concerned about is them completely slowing down after a while, especially while being in an array. I was also thinking about the PM drives as they seem more resilient. I'm evaluating on replacing all my HDDs to SSDs.

 

I'm curious for your opinions and feedback. Thank you!

Edited May 28 by vast

[OrneryTaurus]

I wouldn't have a single SSD drive in an array. If it were the entire array, that's one thing, but you would also lose trim support IIRC (which may or may not be a problem depending on how much data you write/replace).

[JorgeB]

Also note that you will not be able to directly replace an 8TB disk with a same capacity SSD, since the partitions Unraid creates on SSDs are slightly smaller, it will complain that the device is smaller.

[vast]

4 hours ago, OrneryTaurus said:

I wouldn't have a single SSD drive in an array. If it were the entire array, that's one thing, but you would also lose trim support IIRC (which may or may not be a problem depending on how much data you write/replace).

Nope, so the idea would be replacing the entire array with SSDs only.

Edited May 28 by vast

[vast]

4 hours ago, JorgeB said:

Also note that you will not be able to directly replace an 8TB disk with a same capacity SSD, since the partitions Unraid creates on SSDs are slightly smaller, it will complain that the device is smaller.

Yep, I would assume so. I should have clarified this in my post, and will edit it, I would like to replace the entire array with SSDs if and when I do.

[JorgeB]

OK, but you would still need to recreate the whole array, normal replacement won't work.

 

IMHO, with just SSDs I would create a zfs raidz pool instead, it will perform much better, and I think you can still get away with raidz1 with SSDs, assuming decent backups.

[vast]

Yes, that is my expectation. I would offload all the data onto another server I have with Krusader, then take out replace all the drives and setup a new array. Yeah I was thinking of that and it sounds reasonable, but I heard that the QVOs would definitely not be good with that.. Maybe you can give advise on the drives you'd recommend for that purpose...

[JorgeB]

QVOs should still perform decently with raidz, assuming not a very write intensive use case, if it is very write intensive, I would stay way from QLC flash models.

 

For the array, I would probably avoid QLC flash, unless it basically WORM data.

 

 

[vast]

My worry is as soon as I start transferring everything (about 18 TB) back to the server with all the QVOs and writing it onto them, that the performance will completely plummet as soon as the transfer is complete. That would be the most write intensive task. Sometimes I write bigger shows with entire seasons or entire shows to the disks, sometimes it requires extraction of files too. So if those don't have major an impact it's fine, but if its an issue, then the QVOs would not do the job.

[JorgeB]

IIRC those SSDs drop to 160MB/s write speed once the pseudo SLC cache is exhausted, while not great it may still be decent for that type of use.