4TB - WD Red or Seagate NAS?

[JustinAiken]

Both are $200 right now, both have a 3 year warranty...

 

More worried about cool running and lifespan than performance.

[garycase]

Tough call.  I haven't used any 4TB Reds yet, but have used both 3TB Reds and 4TB Seagate NAS units.  Based on that experience, I can note that the Seagates are faster, but otherwise they're both VERY good drives.

 

I believe the Seagates rotate at 5900rpm vs. 5400 rpm for the Reds ... but both units ran very cool.

 

There have been some reports of DOA drives for both, but I've been fairly lucky.  I've purchased about 8 WD Reds and 7 of the Seagate NAS units, and have had no DOA's.    I did return two of the Seagates due to questionable pre-clear results, but they had arrived in VERY badly damaged box from Newegg, so I attribute that to the packaging, not to Seagate's drives.

 

One thing I have noted is that the Reds have had much more consistent and "perfect" pre-clear reports after a couple cycles of pre-clears.    The Seagates have had a few parameters that dropped just a tad -- but still well within spec.    Neither set of drives have had ANY reallocated sectors.

 

As I said, it's a tough call.    I don't think you'd go wrong with either one.    If I was buying today, I'd probably go with the Seagates, but ONLY because I liked the slightly faster performance.    In reality, I don't need any right now; and am planning to use the forthcoming 5TB WD Reds for my next upgrade IF they are 1.25TB/platter drives, which hasn't yet been confirmed.

 

[KC]

With 3tb drives going for 130.00 each?

 

I'd stick with the 3tb models.

 

[garycase]

With 3tb drives going for 130.00 each?

 

I'd stick with the 3tb models.

 

3TB @ $130 = $43.33/TB  x  4 = $173.33

 

There are plenty of 4TB drives you can buy for < $173.33 ... a quick Google shows several for $159 - $169 ... and if you want to buy an external unit and strip out the drive you can get them even cheaper.

 

That's NOT, however, the point => the NAS drives (WD Reds and Seagate NAS) are definitely better drives and are worth a bit more.    Paying $50/TB instead of $43.33/TB is hardly a significant cost difference -- and you get (a) a more reliable drive;  (b) 4TB/SATA slot instead of 3 (this alone is a major advantage of using higher density drives);  © a better warranty;  (d)  lower power consumption (certainly lower/TB, and possibly lower in absolute terms depending on which drive you compare them to);  and (e) potentially higher areal density (the NAS units are all 1TB/platter -- not all 3TB drives use platters of that density).

 

[Dephcon]

I would say buy whatever is the cheapest when you need to buy it.  I prefer WD Red myself, but if you don't really have a preference then using multiple vendors is always a good thing and they both have a very similar performance profile.  The only tough call would be which to use for the parity drive.

[garycase]

I would say buy whatever is the cheapest when you need to buy it.  I prefer WD Red myself, but if you don't really have a preference then using multiple vendors is always a good thing and they both have a very similar performance profile.  The only tough call would be which to use for the parity drive.

 

As I noted earlier, it's a tough call.    I've been VERY satisfied with the WD Reds (that's all I used in my primary backup server);  the Seagates DO have a performance edge ... their sustained transfer rate is 9% faster than the Reds.  On the other hand, there's a nice new 5TB WD Red coming out in just a couple months that's certainly a tempting choice 

[ct1478]

Since you using both drives, would you say it is ok to use more than the 5 drive limit imposed by the mfg,

say 24  in a Norco 4224 case?

[BobPhoenix]

Since you using both drives, would you say it is ok to use more than the 5 drive limit imposed by the mfg

There's no such "5 drive limit", just marketing nonsense.

What he said.  I have 15 WD Red 3TB in one of my unRAID servers.  No problems that I've noticed.  Parity checks are inline with what others have reported.

[garycase]

Agree.

 

I have 6 WD 3TB Reds in my main backup unit; and have built systems for others using as many as a dozen of them.    The "up to 5 drive" limit recommended by WD (and Seagate for their NAS units) is primarily marketing.

 

 

[alans17]

Agree.

 

I have 6 WD 3TB Reds in my main backup unit; and have built systems for others using as many as a dozen of them.    The "up to 5 drive" limit recommended by WD (and Seagate for their NAS units) is primarily marketing.

Agreed about the marketing. Once you pass 5 drives, WD/Seagate assumes you're an enterprise user and starts wanting you to buy enterprise-class drives with a 5 year warranty and even lower failure rates. However, that doesn't mean you CAN'T put more than 5 Reds into a server.

[jbartlett]

It's not like the 6th drive is going to say "Oh buggar, there's five other drives before me! I will refuse to work!"

 

I've never heard of a drive knowing what other drives are installed.

[vl1969]

It's not like the 6th drive is going to say "Oh buggar, there's five other drives before me! I will refuse to work!"

 

I've never heard of a drive knowing what other drives are installed.

 

well you never know.

the electronics is getting smarter and smarter every day.

we might soon be getting a toaster that would say "ohh this is not Wonder Bread, and slice is a wrong shape.  I will not toast that."

:-)

[garycase]

While I seriously doubt that drive PCB's are going to be querying the SATA bus for other drives anytime soon (or ever) ... it IS true that the capability could be added 

 

Many printers already "talk" to their cartridges and won't work with expired or reloaded cartridges !!

(although there are workarounds for this problem)

 

[tyrindor]

I recently ordered 40 4TB Reds in bulk. I precleared them and had a 0% failure rate. Not a single bad sector. Obviously, non-bulk will have higher failure value rates but I am very happy with these drives. The 3 year warranty alone is worth the price over the 4TB greens. The fact these things are designed for 24/7 means a lot as well. They get about 140-155MB/s at the start of preclears, and towards the end they do about 75-80MB/s. They run colder than my 2-3TB Greens. I think the hottest I saw was 39C during parity check, where the greens were at about 40-41C.

[shat]

I can align with gary and tyrindor. I have cleared a total of 55 WD red drives, all 3TB, largest bulk was 20 drives. Of the batch of 20, one failed during clear. Got a new one in and no issues. Typically I don't like WD, especially because of the failure rates I have experienced with greens, but the reds are quite nice.

 

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk 4

 

 

[docbill]

It's not like the 6th drive is going to say "Oh buggar, there's five other drives before me! I will refuse to work!"

 

I've never heard of a drive knowing what other drives are installed.

 

No.  But what you will find is the more drives you add, the more torque that will be exerted as the drives spin up and down, and the more vibration.  This will impact the life expectancy of both the drives and the supporting hardware.  How much so, is hard to know.  Certainly there is a significant effect.  It used to be enterprise drives were not counter rotating, but at some point the manufactures figured out if they counter rotated the platters they had fewer warranty replacements.  So pretty much all enterprise drives use counter rotating platters.  I'm fairly certain the recommendation of no more than 5 is based on sound statistics as to when the effect starts to cause problems.  But that is on a large statistical average...  Since the actual life span of a drive itself is random, with say a dozen drives you aren't going to have a large enough statistical sample to determine if there really is an effect on your system.  e.g. You could get a batch of drives that would have lasted twice as long as average, so you would still see a better than average life span.  Or you could get a batch of drives that would last below average anyway...

 

 

[kal]

counter rotating drive platters? you sure about that?

[garycase]

counter rotating drive platters? you sure about that?

 

NO drive is designed like that.  All of the platters are on the same spindle, which is turned by a single motor.    The biggest factor in how "smooth" the drive spins is how perfectly circular the platters are, and how exactly centered the hole for the spindle is -- both of these are done with VERY precise tolerances for all modern drives.

 

I'm not aware of ANY drive that has ever been designed to counter-rotate the platters ... from the 14" platters of the 70's through the 1.8" platters of many of today's tiny notebook drives.

 

[kal]

It sounded pretty daft alright

 

If this was really an issue (which I believe not), would you not think rubber mounting the drives, or alternating their orientation would resolve somewhat easier then performing some sort of engineering miracle?

[garycase]

It's really not an issue with modern drives -- the manufacturing tolerances are VERY precise, so it's very unlikely the holes aren't virtually perfectly centered or that the platters aren't perfectly round.

 

[c3]

Vibration remains a significant factor for disk drive performance and failure. Manufacturing disk drives is a world where nothing is perfect. Tolerances are very tight, but nothing is perfect. Pretty much everyone can feel the vibrations of a disk drive, even when idle. Just put your finger on one, and power it off. You should feel the drive go "dead", the vibration stop. Even BackBlaze made comment of vibration induced failures, and changes to the pod to reduce them. Both WD (3D active balance) and Seagate (dual plane balance) mention firmware enhancements on the NAS product lines dealing with vibration to enahnce both performance and lifespan.

 

[garycase]

Agree it's not perfect -- but it's certainly close enough that there are mitigations you can do that reduce the issue to a minor annoyance.  Rubber shock mounting;  noise absorbing insulation;  etc.    You certainly can't reduce it to a level where feeling the drive won't make it apparent that it's running; but you can get it well enough controlled that you generally can't hear the drives in operation (except perhaps for operations that result in pretty aggressive seeking).

 

[dikkiedirk]

Does anyone have experience with the NAS drives from HGST? Bit late to the party, but might give them a chance. Already had one 4TB WD RED arriving as DOA. 3TBs after 6 months service still going strong though.

 

Are the HGSTs running much hotter and do they use much more power than WD or Seagate.

 

How is warranty handled?

[BobPhoenix]

Does anyone have experience with the NAS drives from HGST? Bit late to the party, but might give them a chance. Already had one 4TB WD RED arriving as DOA. 3TBs after 6 months service still going strong though.

 

Are the HGSTs running much hotter and do they use much more power than WD or Seagate.

 

How is warranty handled?

Never tried the NAS Hitachi drives I've only got the desktop variety.  The 7200rpm drives do run hotter than the cool spin variety but I have no idea how they compare with WD or Seagate on power.  Never having had to return any of my 25 drives for RMA can't tell you how warranty is handled but it looks relatively painless when I was checking the warranty on the only Hitachi drive I had die.  It was out of warranty at the time and was manufactured on Dec 2010.  The reliability of the drives more than makes up for any extra costs in my opinion.  I like my WD Red drives but have had more DOA's then I would like especially 4TB Reds.  But I expect the majority of the DOAs on my 3TB & 4TB drives were due to the packaging on the shipments from newegg. I got most of my Hitachi shipments from alternate locations.  Lately newegg has been doing better on their packaging because I have been getting better looking shipments.  So either something happened to my 2 most recent DOAs on 4TB WD Red at newegg itself or they really aren't as reliable as Hitachi drives.  3TB Reds seem to be more reliable than the 4TB Reds for me so far.

[Fireball3]

I tend to buy Hitachis only at the moment.

 

I experienced issues with WD (green) drives as well as Seagates.

Due to thermal reasons I'm using mostly (green) drives and the WD's were definitely dissapointing.

One died while preclearing, others lost data (not in unRAID). --> impressed negatively so I somehow have a bad feeling with WD

 

I have some Seagates in my pool also and many of them have bad sectors (platters seem to deteriorate).

 

Got some used 4TB Hitachi and they seem fine, considering the operating hours they have.

No reallocated sectors, quiet and cool.

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=32564.msg300499#msg300499

 

This reflects my personal feelings about WD and Seagate and is not scientifically proven.

 

I'm trying to get the drives as cheap as possible. Therefore I don't care about warranty terms anymore.

Consumer drives warranty changed to 1 or 2 years mostly and in my usecase that's no reasonable period.

Drives with higher warranty periods are too expensive imho.