Western Digital RED

[cyberjock]

You're correct.

To answer your question I'll quote my previous posts ;)

So does TLER matter for ZFS? This answer to TLER really is based on the hardware and less so the software to the best of my knowledge. As long as your hard drives aren't being dropped out of the array and as long as the hard drive will not try to read the sector in perpetuity then you should be okay. As long as you are accepting the fact that when a bad sector is found and you're watching a movie that movie may freeze for 30 seconds or so all will be fine.

I'm not sure I've seen anyone have this problem in the forum, so it might not be an issue you are likely to encounter. I will tell you I'm using consumer drives (no TLER) in all of my NASes and we've had zero problems. Of course, all of our drives have behaved themselves. No failures yet or any issues aside from a few kilobytes here and there when doing a resilver.

 

[jgreco]

TLER only matters with hardware RAID, ZFS/FreeNAS shouldn't have any problems with it at all as long as you're not using a hardware RAID controller and let ZFS handle the RAID.

That's incorrect. Some of us need to design systems that don't fail-by-snoozing.

Just because it doesn't cause FreeNAS to crash doesn't mean that it is an acceptable behaviour. If it's causing iSCSI initiators to time out, drop the datastore, and causing VM's to crash, that is a catastrophe.

 

[cyberjock]

That's incorrect. Some of us need to design systems that don't fail-by-snoozing.

Just because it doesn't cause FreeNAS to crash doesn't mean that it is an acceptable behaviour. If it's causing iSCSI initiators to time out, drop the datastore, and causing VM's to crash, that is a catastrophe.

Not trying to disagree with you, but has anyone actually had a problem with TLER on FreeNAS? I haven't seen any posts regarding it so I'm curious.

 

[ashughes]

My Drobo recently died after 4 years of near 24-7 up time and I am considering building a FreeNAS. I currently have 2x3TB 1x2TB 1x1TB drives (all WD Green) in the Drobo. I was thinking of selling off the 1TB and 2TB drives and buying a 3rd 3TB drive for the FreeNAS. Using ZFS RAIDZ1, I'm guessing this will give me ~6TB space with 3TB of redundancy.

Based on local supply here in Vancouver, I can get the WD Red 3TB for $186 compared to $182 for a WD Green 3TB or $149 for a Seagate Barracuda 3TB. Has anyone encountered any issues with the WD Red drives? or would you recommend the cheaper Seagate? I basically just use my NAS as an HTPC companion (it holds my movies, music, etc) so reliability and read performance are my biggest priorities, write performance less so.

I've seen threads recommending Hitachi and Samsung drives but unfortunately those are not accessible to me. Hitachi is too expensive ($368 for a 3TB drive) and Samsung is not available locally.

Thanks

My apologies if this comes off as hijacking the thread, I can move this to a new thread if necessary.

 

[Stephens]

Hitachi took over IBM's HDD business. Western Digital took over Hitachi.
Seagate took over Maxtor's HDD business. Seagate took over Samsung.
There are still "Samsung" drives in the market, but if you get one, you'll see it's made by Seagate. I've no idea if they're as good as the "real" Samsung drives were.

All drives have plusses and minuses.

WD Green: Slow, low heat, not made for NAS (but works)
WD Red: Slow, low heat, but made for NAS (easier to RMA if you have to for NAS-related issues)
Seagate Barracuda: Faster, cheaper according to your post

You really have to apply your own personal priorities to make your "best" decision. You definitely want at least a RAIDZ1. But ask yourself how you'll feel if a drive crashes and while you're trying to rebuild after a drive replacement (RAIDZ1), another drive crashes under the load it takes (hours to days) and you lose your whole array. That's why many of us use RAIDZ2 giving us 2 drives of redundancy.

 

[lexieb007]

Pardon for Noob Q, but what does "RMA" mean as in "easier to RMA if you have to for NAS-related issues..." Thanks

 

[Stephens]

You live a charmed life if you've never run into the term RMA. I'm jealous. "RMA" = Return Merchandise Authorization. Most companies require you to speak with them and obtain an authorization for return (RMA) before you can ship the product back to them. So basically I was saying you can return the drive easier for NAS-related issues if you buy a Red drive. If you try to return a Green Drive because it isn't working in your NAS, Western Digital may laugh at you (not so you can hear, of course). They'll just say it passes all their tests for the way the drive is intended to be used (desktop storage drive).

 

[ashughes]

Thanks for the advice, Stephens. If I was going to lay out priorities, I would say:

1. Data redundancy
2. Read speed
3. Write speed

I've not seen any real-world evidence that the WD Red drives are worth the price difference over the Seagate, so perhaps I'll hold off on the RED for now.

On a slight tangent, I can use mixed sized drives right? For example, if I have 2x3TB + 3x2TB I'll have 6TB of RAIDZ2 storage, right?
5 drives - 2 drives = 3 drives * 2TB = 6TB

Thanks again for the help.

 

[Stephens]

I'm going to have to let someone else handle that question. I'm from the school of keep it simple. I believe in a straight RAIDZ2 it will limit the 3TB drives to the size of the smallest drive (2TB). A 5-drive RAIDZ2 also isn't optimal. I just wouldn't recommend that setup. I'd go 6x3TB or 6x2TB.

http://forums.freenas.org/showthrea...explaining-VDev-zpool-ZIL-and-L2ARC-for-noobs!

 

[ashughes]

I'm going to have to let someone else handle that question. I'm from the school of keep it simple. I believe in a straight RAIDZ2 it will limit the 3TB drives to the size of the smallest drive (2TB). A 5-drive RAIDZ2 also isn't optimal. I just wouldn't recommend that setup. I'd go 6x3TB or 6x2TB.

http://forums.freenas.org/showthrea...explaining-VDev-zpool-ZIL-and-L2ARC-for-noobs!

Okay, thank you for that. I think this is sufficiently off-topic for this thread. If I have any follow-ups I'll take it to another thread. Thank you.

 

[joeschmuck]

Unfortunately I don't think anyone will know how well these drives work until they are put into use. I would think these drives would provide the most benefit to the users who desire to mount the drives close to each other in hard frames (maximum vibration between drives) and/or with hardware RAID cards. TigerDirect currently is selling for $129.00 for the 2TB drives, NewEgg has upped it to $180 for the same drive (now out of stock). Since I don't have a spare 2TB drive I have ordered two of the Red drives and plan to install one in the FreeNAS system, the second will likely go into another NAS I have since that drive is getting rather very old. I'll leave the Samsung F4 from the FreeNAS system as an emergency spare when needed.

 

[jgreco]

Not trying to disagree with you, but has anyone actually had a problem with TLER on FreeNAS? I haven't seen any posts regarding it so I'm curious.

I've seen problems with slow responses provided by an iSCSI target to an initiator. That's nothing to do specifically with FreeNAS - it can wreak havoc regardless of the NAS platform. TLER is one *cough* "technology" *snicker* that can reduce the impact. In the end, those of us who rely on this stuff for production use simply look to minimize the risk of breakage, and since it's wicked difficult to get a test jig to see how things like TLER work out in production, it ends up that we just buy drives that appear to be more suitable to the application if we can reasonably do so, and if/when a problem develops, we're likely going to replace the drive rather than mess around with it.

We pretty much had to abandon FreeNAS for iSCSI use with spinny media, the ZFS performance is sufficiently spiky that it was causing severe problems under light to moderate load. iSCSI on SSD is pretty cool though. "An alternative to TLER" you could say.

 

[aidasan]

Hello guys,
Have you any new idea about the RED series ?
I will create a new NAS in Japan and I have the choice between :
Seagate Barracuda 2To : ¥7180
Seagate Constellation CS 2To : ¥11980
Seagate Constellation ES2 3To : ¥25,980 (I have mistaken with the 3To so ...)
WD Caviar Green 2To : ¥7180
WD RED 2To : ¥8880
WD RE4 2To : ¥17780

The RED if it FreeNAS ready and ok will be the best choice for me.

Thanks

 

[cyberjock]

WD REDs seem to be a good choice and have had generally good reviews(at least.. they haven't been any worse than others). My opinion is that if you feel that REDs give you a good value then definitely go for them. Personally I'd go for anything WD before Seagate, but this is purely based on my personal experience. I'm sure other people would say go Seagate before anything WD. :P

Hard drives really do seem to be a roll of the dice lately. You buy 10 drives and they may all work great and give you a long life...or they may be failing left and right before you have much data on them. A friend bought 10 3TB drives and I had no issues, but someone else bought 12 drives and 10 were within just a few days(with many bad straight out of the box).

I would definitely recommend you purchase from a company that has a good RMA process and is known to be buyer friendly if you have to RMA a large part of the order.

One thing I've never heard mentioned in recent years is that hard drives are temperature sensitive. Here in Chicago temperatures can go below -10C. If your box of drives sit outside all day you shouldn't unpack them and install them right away as this can damage them because of how cold they get. I was told years ago that the best thing you can do for hard drives before you use them is to unpack them and let them sit in the room to equalize with room temperature for at least 3 hours before using them. I know its hard not to play with your new toy the second you get it but I always seem to have far better than average lifespans for hard drives. Even when I move and the computer sits in my car overnight or is otherwise left in an usually cold or hot location I leave it to sit for 3+ hours(overnight if it was really cold). This somewhat makes sense if you read over Google's hard drive document where they showed a fairly good link between hard drive temperatures and lifespan.

 

[jgreco]

Here in Chicago temperatures can go below -10C.

That's the lake effect and all that U.S. Steel heat pollution in Gary for ya.

 

[Z300M]

Seagate vs. WD

WD REDs seem to be a good choice and have had generally good reviews(at least.. they haven't been any worse than others). My opinion is that if you feel that REDs give you a good value then definitely go for them. Personally I'd go for anything WD before Seagate, but this is purely based on my personal experience. I'm sure other people would say go Seagate before anything WD.

Until just recently, all the dead hard disks I had encountered were WD. The first exception was a 300MB Seagate IDE drive that was out of (5-yr) warranty and had not been used for months: when I tried to use it again it turned out to be dead. The second exception was one of the four 2TB Seagate Barracuda drives I bought for this FreeNAS machine: it failed all the SeaTools tests but was still in warranty and was RMA'd -- but the replacement was a different model (rebranded Samsung?) with significantly less-favorable reviews on NewEgg. BTW, among the NewEgg reviews you will find people saying that they'll never buy another WD, just as others say they'll never buy another Seagate.

 

[Alfred Melvin]

I've been very pleased with WD drives over all. The first set of 4 that I purchased have lasted longer than the motherboard ( @ 3 years ) and are in the NAS I just built.
My Maxtor 45MB from days of old ( DOS 3 ) are still readable with IDE cable.

 

[cyberjock]

I've been very pleased with WD drives over all. The first set of 4 that I purchased have lasted longer than the motherboard ( @ 3 years ) and are in the NAS I just built.
My Maxtor 45MB from days of old ( DOS 3 ) are still readable with IDE cable.

WD Red drives haven't even been out for 1 year... just an fyi...

 

[toddos]

WD Red drives haven't even been out for 1 year.... just an fyi...

Well, it's a good thing he said "WD drives" and not "WD Red drives".

Seriously, though, WD Red drives are exactly the same as WD Green drives, hardware-wise. They just have a different firmware that makes them sleep less aggressively, a longer warranty, and a higher price. If you're looking only at WD and Green vs Red, I'd go for Red only because I don't want to mess with Green's aggressive idling. However, all my drives are Seagate. In 4 years of using Seagate drives in 1.5TB, 2TB, and 3TB sizes, I've not had any DOA failures. Some drives developed bad blocks eventually, but that happens. The 4x3TB Seagate drives in my FreeNAS box are going on 6 months old and chugging along just fine.

 

[cyberjock]

Well, it's a good thing he said "WD drives" and not "WD Red drives".

I know he said WD drives, but the thread topic is WD RED drives. Not 10+ year old WD drives. 10 years ago hard drives were much more reliable than today... Also I doubt anyone on this forum even cares about 10 year old drives. You'd be crazy to try to use one for a server only because of how tiny it would be.

Seriously, though, WD Red drives are exactly the same as WD Green drives, hardware-wise. They just have a different firmware that makes them sleep less aggressively, a longer warranty, and a higher price. If you're looking only at WD and Green vs Red, I'd go for Red only because I don't want to mess with Green's aggressive idling. However, all my drives are Seagate. In 4 years of using Seagate drives in 1.5TB, 2TB, and 3TB sizes, I've not had any DOA failures. Some drives developed bad blocks eventually, but that happens. The 4x3TB Seagate drives in my FreeNAS box are going on 6 months old and chugging along just fine.

Alot of us more experienced people think that(I think that).. but unless you're about to provide strong hard evidence to support your theory you shouldn't go around making such strong comments and I'm going to have to say that you are only trying to start more rumors about Red and Green drives. Provide hard evidence or stop trying to confuse people that may not know better.