Damn drives are pricey! New server is setup but naked, I only have an 500GB SSD and I'm been putting off the hard part of buying HDs. Ideally I get them all setup at once so I can move my old server (27TB) over at once which means I need 5 drives. If I got the red route that's $1600 where if I go the seagate route it's $1150 so a $450 savings which is another drive for backup all ready to go. I've read a lot about the archive drives and they seem fine for unraid but the only thing making me second guess them is read speeds for plex. Has anyone done a benchmark on how many streams could be read at once? I'm assuming these could easily keep up with transcoding/network speeds but I want to make sure first. I'm not really worried about write speeds since I have a cache pool and things really never change once they're written. Advice?

The archive drives are fine for read.. ITs writing that is slower.. Combine it with a cache drive and they are actually a fine choice.. I would not using them for a parity drive though..

 

I am using WD RED's myself for my main rig and archives for my backup system.

I wouldn't use SMR drives for parity either but, to be fair, a number of people do so very successfully. Perhaps a combination of Reds or IronWolfs for parity and Archives for data disks would be a good choice?

I would use WD Red myself, but each to their own.

Ideally I get them all setup at once so I can move my old server (27TB) over at once which means I need 5 drives.

I'd recommend NOT sourcing them all from the same vendor on the same order. Much of the drive failures you see are caused by rough handling, either by the vendor or the shipping company(s) that handled them from factory to you. If you get all of them at once, then if some dockworker knocked over the pallet, or the UPS truck got cut off in traffic and the package hit the floor from the top shelf, all your drives will have the same latent trauma. Much better to stagger purchase dates, vendors, and drive brands if possible.

A tough choice.  Personally I've used both, and have been happy with both ... but the helium-sealed 8TB Reds are all I buy now.    If cost is a big factor, however, you're quite right that you could save a few $$ by using the Seagate Archive units.  Several folks are using them with excellent results -- even for parity.  If I was going to build a new server with all 8TB drives I'd probably still just use the Reds, but I suppose I'd at least consider using a Red for parity and the archives for the data drives.

 

As already noted, READ performance is excellent with the Archive units -- the shingled technology doesn't even come into play in that case.

 

... Damn drives are pricey!

 

Depends on your perspective ... and how long you've been doing this stuff =>  my first hard drive (~ 1980) was a 26MB 14" Seagate "Winchester" unit that cost a cool $4500 (afer a 10% discount !).    That's over $173,000,000 per TB !!!    The "pricey" 8TB WD Reds are about $40 per TB