Which 4 TB drive should I buy?


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I dont know how different they really are, but the 0S03665 is a "NAS" drive.  My guess is its just a marketing thing!

 

While that's possible, I don't think it's the case.  The NAS units from all of the vendors incorporate additional anti-vibration technology, and even if that's "marketing" they DO have different firmware than the lower-end drives.  I suspect these enhancements are more than just marketing, as the vendors also warrant them for longer periods (typically 3 years instead of 2).

 

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  • 1 month later...

Ok, there are a few people who had ran into a bad hd, but that is normal too.  Think of how many of these wd40efrx drives have been sold, who just didn't bother to post a review. There are a lot more people running these drives with no problems than those with problems.  WD has a great RMA program, better than other manufactures IMO.

 

With 6tb drives out, I would be looking at 5tb drives now if I were you, and I would still recommend WD.

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The review of some 5TB drives is equally as bad.

 

Early on in this thread Hitachi came out as the more reliable 4TB drive, typically at a higher price. This appears to continue under WD as the HSGT drives are widely reported to have lower failure rates and marginally higher prices.

 

Then comes the hotly debated "specialty" drives. These are NAS, RED, or other labeling to indicate they are different than commodity desktop drives. Without a doubt these drives are different. They often have a different warranty period, slightly higher than commodity pricing, and are expected to deliver different performance. Reliability is open as they are still new. A lot of the frustration around these drives is the expectation of higher reliability, but drives still fail. Drives will always fail.

 

True commodity desktop drives are the final group. Typically the lowest price/TB, short warranty. Those that purchase drives from this segment understand that drives fail and are prepared. Due to the lower drive cost these preparations are less expensive.

 

First choice, HGST on sale at Seagate external pricing, rare, but happens.

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wow, you are right about the 5tb reviews, I haven't been keeping up on this stuff.  there is even a lot more reviews on the 4tb since I last looked at them, which are not great.  While I'm sure there are many people using that drive out there with no issues, I would not recommend WD.  Looking at price and reviews, I would agree with you and go with the HGST 4TB Deskstar - NAS drive.  They are getting great reviews.

 

  While I have a couple of WD Reds at home and we have several at work - I have not had any issues.  Our qnap at work did have a couple fail, but we just rma and good to go.  2 out of 20 and they failed within a couple of months.

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I just picked up 2 Western Digital 6TB NAS HDDs at Frys... I am replacing my Parity HDD now. :) Once that is completed I will install the 2nd new 6TB too.

Cool, let us know how they perform.  I recommend you look at the SMART data and watch for disk and LOG errors.  Did you PreClear them?

 

I decided to buy the HGST HG0S03664 4TB Deskstar, will be here tomorrow.

 

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Is Smart Data the part on the main page where it shows all the drives and errors? I am only doing the Parity drive now... I just powered the unit down and removed the old 4TB Parity drive, installed the new 6TB Parity drive, and booted it up.  When I went into windows I selected the new drive in place of the old Parity drive and it started a Parity Sync. It has over 18 hours left to go... It will do the preclear automatically won't it? Once it completes the Parity drive I will have it check Parity, and then install the other 6TB hdd.

 

When I install the old Parity drive in the array (as a standard drive)... Do I need to do anything special to it, like maybe preclear it again?

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The best place to get the SMART reports is in UnMenu => if you don't have that installed, I definitely recommend it.

 

No need to pre-clear the old parity drive, since it's already been well-tested in use.  HOWEVER, you may want to run one pass just to get the "cleared" signature so it will add very quickly instead of tying up your system for many hours while it clears the drive.

 

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Note that you can run pre-clear with the -n option, and it will simply clear the drive and put the "cleared" signature on it => skipping both the pre- and post- read operations.    This will only take about 1/4th of the time of a full cycle.  It DOES skip the read verifications ... but for a drive that's been very well tested through normal use you may be more interested in the time than the extra read cycle.

 

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Note that you can run pre-clear with the -n option, and it will simply clear the drive and put the "cleared" signature on it => skipping both the pre- and post- read operations.    This will only take about 1/4th of the time of a full cycle.  It DOES skip the read verifications ... but for a drive that's been very well tested through normal use you may be more interested in the time than the extra read cycle.

 

Thanks, I have UnMenu installed too.Next will be to figure out how to setup my movies to be on the 6TB, and then the 4TB drive... Do people usually do a a-m on one drive and then n-z? Currently I have my movies spread over 3 HDDs, which doesn't allow my drives to spin down. I think I have just enough drive space between the 2 HDDs to move all my movies to them, and then with some moving around i should have 8TB more left for movies with my other 2 4TB drives cleared.

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You can organize the drives however you want.  Personally, I just let UnRAID place them wherever it wants, but have the split level set so no movie is split across multiple disks.  Unless you have multiple people watching multiple movies at the same time, and those movies are on separate disks, then any disks not involved in the playing of the movie you're watching will still spin down.

 

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Well you already have Gary helping, so you are in great shape - he is a KING in these forums.  :) and I have learned a lot from his posts/help.

 

From what I know, the parity sync process is to rebuild your parity drive - so you are once again protected.  You are not protected while the system is rebuilding the parity drive so that is why it's best to preclear so you limit the amount of time you are unprotected.  Once that part is done, you'll want to run a normal Parity check. Once that is done, I would go through your syslog and make sure you have no errors.  Use Unmenu to look at SMART data from time to time to make sure you are not seeing error count increases.  Of course you can also watch the man gui for errors, although I've never had any errors there in the past myself.  Most of my disk issues were discovered in the syslog and SMART data.

 

For next time, I would recommend that you preclear any new drive before adding it to your array.  As Gary already said, no need to clear the used drive if it has no issues.  That said, I would still check the SMART drive on that one too (in fact always watch SMART data on all drives - check once a month at least).  Reallocation errors seem to pop up on old drives with a lot of run hours.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hello guys I have been searching hard for another 4tb or 2, I want the longer warrenty so I was looking at wd reds or hitachi, then I stumbled upon this toshiba drive. It says it has warrenty till 2019 so I am very interrested to see if anyone has tested them on UNRAID.

 

Toshiba 4TB 7200RPM 3.5" SATA3 6Gb/s 64MB Hard Drive HDETR11GEA51

Factory sealed .  Direct Toshiba Warranty till 2019

 

I picked up two seagates last month 4tb stupidly not paying attention to warrenty. When I got them I seen 1 year warrenty. im not happy but for now one is parity and the other is just a tv drive so I will replace them over the summer.

 

My movies are all on old out of warrenty drives on my unraid. They are also on my older windows 7 pc as well on drives out of warrenty.

 

 

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As near as I can tell (looking at Newegg, Amazon, CDW, and a couple other suppliers), Toshiba drives sold in the US have 1 to 3 year warranties, depending on the specific model.    I can't find that specific model drive.

 

I'd tend to either stay with the WD Reds or use the very well reviewed HGST NAS drives, which also have 3 year warranties [ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145912 ].

 

If you want a 5-year warranty (and higher performance at the same time) buy the WD Blacks.

 

You noted you have your movies on both your UnRAID server and a local PC ... having good backups like that is FAR more important than how long the warranty is on the drives.    Use quality drives [WD Reds, HGST NAS, or Seagate NAS units], and be sure you have current backups, and you'll be fine  :)

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Hello guys I have been searching hard for another 4tb or 2, I want the longer warrenty so I was looking at wd reds or hitachi, then I stumbled upon this toshiba drive. It says it has warrenty till 2019 so I am very interrested to see if anyone has tested them on UNRAID.

 

Toshiba 4TB 7200RPM 3.5" SATA3 6Gb/s 64MB Hard Drive HDETR11GEA51

Factory sealed .  Direct Toshiba Warranty till 2019

 

I picked up two seagates last month 4tb stupidly not paying attention to warrenty. When I got them I seen 1 year warrenty. im not happy but for now one is parity and the other is just a tv drive so I will replace them over the summer.

 

My movies are all on old out of warrenty drives on my unraid. They are also on my older windows 7 pc as well on drives out of warrenty.

 

Length of a drive's warranty period does not indicate drive life span. It is not reasonable to replace a functional one year old drive because the warranty has expired.

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I understand that. Just my point on warrenty is in 4 years if my drive fails and I loose my data, I dont have to buy another drive, I send it in and get another with short remaining warrenty is why I like to pay for the longer warrenty. AS for seagate i bought 2 last month and got only 1 year of the drives usual 2 year warrenty is y im paying more attention this time. Alos in 25+years of building my old pcs seagates have been the most pron to failure for me. Yes wd's like to slow down with age but they keep going. My most reliables have been IBM/hitachi.

 

Thanks for your quick replys. I keep looking myself to find for sure if this toshiba does really have 5 year warrenty.

 

I'll keep my eye on the REDS I find on ebay marked as new with a reputable seller.

 

 

Heres link to the drive I emailed seller to see

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hitachi-Toshiba-4TB-7200RPM-3-5-SATA3-6Gb-s-64MB-Hard-Drive-HDETR11GEA51-/281424405058?pt=US_Internal_Hard_Disk_Drives&hash=item418633a242

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I did indeed email them.

 

Im legally blind since birth. I tried enlarging myself but was not able to read.

 

I'll chance and order one. Next month i'll get a WD red so I mix it up some 2xseagate already in server so 1 of these and next a wd red should split things up enough so they dont all start failing around sametime.

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Thanks for your guys input I just ordered one up to see how it is.

 

 

Thank you Garycase. I didn't want to cross post. I know many forums frown upon that.

 

UPDATE: finally recieved the drive yesterday, its been preclearing all night. I put it on 3 pass. its much noisier than the other drives in my tower. im going to try moving it to my other hotswap trays after preclear is done to see if its vibration causing the more noise. It is a 7200rpm drive and my cache drive which is not screwed in either runs at 10,000rpm and its much quieter.

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  • 2 weeks later...

UPDATE: finally recieved the drive yesterday, its been preclearing all night. I put it on 3 pass. its much noisier than the other drives in my tower. im going to try moving it to my other hotswap trays after preclear is done to see if its vibration causing the more noise. It is a 7200rpm drive and my cache drive which is not screwed in either runs at 10,000rpm and its much quieter.

 

 

Well after first pass of preclear the drive has quieted down, not sure why the first hour or so it was noisy causing vibration in my tower.

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