Seagate IronWolf 2TB vs WD Red 2TB

Status
Not open for further replies.

Ykno

Dabbler
Joined
Jan 31, 2017
Messages
27
To start sorry I know this has been asked before but I want new thoughts as people have had more time to test them. Also want it to be more personalised for my situation.

So I need some new drives in my system currently I have 1 3TB drive I was gifted all the rest of my 2TB drives in my NAS have died or are dying.

So I have temp moved my data to a cloud service whilst I repair my NAS.

I cant afford 3TB drives hell I cant really afford 2TB drives,

IronWolfs are cheaper than WD reds so I'm favouring IronWolfs.

But is one better than the other are they both as good each other is it just personal preference?

but yeah any thoughts?
 

Stux

MVP
Joined
Jun 2, 2016
Messages
4,367
I buy the IronWolfs if they are significantly cheaper.
 

nojohnny101

Wizard
Joined
Dec 3, 2015
Messages
1,478
If money is your primary concern, buy the seagate ones.
 

nojohnny101

Wizard
Joined
Dec 3, 2015
Messages
1,478
IHMO, it's a Chevy vs. Ford question. I can say non-scientifically that the Reds see to be more popular on here. I use Seagate's.
 

Stux

MVP
Joined
Jun 2, 2016
Messages
4,367
IMO the WD Reds are better.

For 4£ get the reds.

But if you already have a 3TB you should think about getting 3s instead.
 

joeschmuck

Old Man
Moderator
Joined
May 28, 2011
Messages
10,970
The WD Red lineup has been on the market longer and therefore has a very good reputation of being reliable. The Seagate drives have not been on the market as long. Because of this you will find that many FreeNAS users are using WD Reds. Had Seagate placed a consumer NAS drive on the market sooner then the data may be skewed in their favor. I have not heard of any issues with the Seagate drives to date that would make me feel that they are less reliable. Both drives have a 3 year warranty period. Both drives are about the same cost.

Some other factors which you may want to consider but would not influence my decision are:
1. The WD Reds can have the head parking timer manipulated, the Seagates cannot.
2. The WD Reds spin at 5400 RPM but the Seagates spin at 5900 RPM. This means that the Seagates should have a lower latency but it's not significant. Also the Seagates could be generating slightly more heat.

Here in the U.S. I can purchase the 2TB drives for exactly the same price, but today only I can get the Seagates for $8.48 less. The 3TB drives are $4.00 less for the Seagates. All prices include the Free delivery.

My advice is to honestly select the drives you want. The cost difference is the main difference between the drives at this point in time in my opinion. If it were me buying new drives (I will be in this situation likely in less than 1 year) then I will have to evaluate everything as well.

By the way, here are the stats on my 2TB WD Reds from this morning report, all drives have over 4 years of continuous power on time, and this is the drives spinning and heads loaded. I purchased four drives and then later two more drives which is why you will see a difference in the hours run between ada0, ada1, and the other drives. I will factor in my fantastic results into my next purchase. The UDMA CRC Errors for ada4 were issues with the SATA cable, not the drive itself. They have not increased since replacing the cable.

Code:
+------+---------------+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-------+-------+--------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+----+
|Device|Serial		 |Temp|Power|Power|Start|Spin |ReAlloc|Current|Offline |Multi |Load  |UDMA  |Seek  |High  |Command|Last|
|	  |			   |	|On   |On   |Stop |Retry|Sectors|Pending|Uncorrec|Zone  |Cycle |CRC   |Errors|Fly   |Timeout|Test|
|	  |			   |	|Hours|Years|Count|Count|	   |Sectors|Sectors |Errors|Count |Errors|	  |Writes|Count  |Age |
+------+---------------+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-------+-------+--------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+----+
|ada0  |WD-WMC301176xxx| 28 |37471|4.278|  307|	0|	  0|	  0|	   0|	 0|   199|	 0|   N/A|   N/A|	N/A|   0|
|ada1  |WD-WMC301183xxx| 28 |37016|4.226|  290|	0|	  0|	  0|	   0|	 0|   186|	 0|   N/A|   N/A|	N/A|   0|
|ada2  |WD-WMC300411xxx| 29 |40920|4.671|  513|	0|	  0|	  0|	   0|	 0|   386|	 0|   N/A|   N/A|	N/A|   0|
|ada3  |WD-WMC300412xxx| 28 |40904|4.669|  509|	0|	  0|	  0|	   0|	 0|   592|	 0|   N/A|   N/A|	N/A|   0|
|ada4  |WD-WMC300411xxx| 29 |40924|4.672|  521|	0|	  0|	  0|	   0|	 0|   394|	28|   N/A|   N/A|	N/A|   0|
|ada5  |WD-WMC300410xxx| 30 |40928|4.672|  524|	0|	  0|	  0|	   0|	 0|   396|	 0|   N/A|   N/A|	N/A|   0|
+------+---------------+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-------+-------+--------+------+------+------+------+------+-------+----+


I wouldn't be surprised if similar statistics could be shown for the Seagate drives.

I hope all of this info helps you out.
 

tvsjr

Guru
Joined
Aug 29, 2015
Messages
959
I got burned by Seagate with their last big debacle, so I'm not much on their products. The HGST NAS drives are worth considering as well.
 

Stux

MVP
Joined
Jun 2, 2016
Messages
4,367
I got burned by Seagate with their last big debacle, so I'm not much on their products. The HGST NAS drives are worth considering as well.

I got burned with their debacle prior to their last, so I'm giving them a chance this time round ;)

As I've pointed out before, the price can be 25% cheaper in Australia for Ironwolfs. And I definately would go with the IronWolfs when they are that much cheaper.

IronWolf drives >= 8TB are 7200rpm. And they run significantly hotter than 5200/5900rpm drives. IME IronWolf 4TB drives run cooler than older WD Red 3TB drives. Go figure.

I recently had a 4TB IronWolf totally die within a few weeks of commisioning, and it was replaced by the store. The same thing has happened with WD Reds. At this stage, there just is not enough long-term experience across enough sample size to say if they are better/worse/same as WD Reds re reliability... but what you can say is that WD Reds are.

Just yesterday I had a WD Red appear to go flaky... it would not accept writes. Yet all SMART tests were passing. Turned out to be the SATA cable had gone bad... Its a funny thing when a cable with no moving parts is less reliable than the spinny disk.
 

joeschmuck

Old Man
Moderator
Joined
May 28, 2011
Messages
10,970
IME IronWolf 4TB drives run cooler than older WD Red 3TB drives. Go figure.
That is good to know. Hopefully someday someone will do some side by side comparisons so we can see some factual data. If I had the money I'd do it. Hum, you think Seagate and WD would send me six drives each of the 4TB drives so I could do a test? Then let me keep them? That would be awesome. Too bad it's a nice day dream.

I didn't mention the drive RPMs for the larger capacity drives since the OP was looking at 2TB and 3TB drives but you bring up a good point.
 

Ykno

Dabbler
Joined
Jan 31, 2017
Messages
27
Im decided to spend £300 on 3 3tb drives to match the 3tb I already have so they all be 3tb WD Reds but holding off buying them for a while as i need to move my data to temp location for now and my server is down atmo due to im renovating my office so might be couple months be for i buy them now.
 

joeschmuck

Old Man
Moderator
Joined
May 28, 2011
Messages
10,970
Since you are not in a hurry, keep an eye open for sales. Odds are you will find a sale taking another 10% to 15% off. That adds up. This is my plan when my first hard drive fails.
 

danb35

Hall of Famer
Joined
Aug 16, 2011
Messages
15,458
IronWolf drives >= 8TB are 7200rpm.
I have two Seagate NAS 6 TB drives (before the "ironwolf" brand), and they're also 7200 rpm drives.
 

jgreco

Resident Grinch
Joined
May 29, 2011
Messages
18,681
I recently had a 4TB IronWolf totally die within a few weeks of commisioning, and it was replaced by the store. The same thing has happened with WD Reds. At this stage, there just is not enough long-term experience across enough sample size to say if they are better/worse/same as WD Reds re reliability... but what you can say is that WD Reds are.

Infant mortality is a horrible thing to look at. There's a reason I say that you should burn these in for a thousand hours. Trying to make sense out of failures during burn-in doesn't actually yield much useful information other than the fact that manufacturing defects happen across all models.
 

joeschmuck

Old Man
Moderator
Joined
May 28, 2011
Messages
10,970
There's a reason I say that you should burn these in for a thousand hours.
Would that be running badblocks for 41 days straight? Dang, that is a long time however I do see merit in it.
 

Stux

MVP
Joined
Jun 2, 2016
Messages
4,367
Would that be running badblocks for 41 days straight? Dang, that is a long time however I do see merit in it.

Bad blocks doesn't do parallel or random io testing. I use sooner-array-tester as well which does do some of that, but it's read only.

Perhaps the best thing to do is to test a new server for a thousand days before commissioning ;)
 

joeschmuck

Old Man
Moderator
Joined
May 28, 2011
Messages
10,970
Perhaps the best thing to do is to test a new server for a thousand days before commissioning ;)
Let me know how that goes.
 

Stux

MVP
Joined
Jun 2, 2016
Messages
4,367
Let me know how that goes.

It's about what I do anyway ;)

The issue is you can't test a new he upgrade or replacement for a month, since you presumably need to do an upgrade (more capacity) or a replacement (to replace a failed disk)

Might as well just have the redundancy and backups to deal with the infant mortality.
 

joeschmuck

Old Man
Moderator
Joined
May 28, 2011
Messages
10,970
I agree. My drives are still in the burn-in process, I should be done when I hit 43,800 hours, only 2,848 hours to go.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top