What reasonably priced hard drives do people use?

[Skro]

I have a small NAS on which I'd like to start to expand the storage. My primary pool uses WD Reds but my other pools were set up with non-NAS drives that I had lying around at the time and it is those I'd like to change out to increase storage space and improve redundancy.

Unfortunately, because of a career change I'm in the middle of, my budget is VERY limited. I've seen some of the gurus around here recommend various drives that are cheaper than reds that they find reliable enough to use or suggest (used or new) and it is those that interest me. I'd like to get drives in the 3-6TB range.

I'm also curious about what SSDs people recommend (for boot or other)? I've only ever used Samsung SSDs, are there other brands considered as good?

FYI: I don't like Seagate drives, I've been burned using them and seen too many others that have to...it's not just that they have issues, most companies likely have had issues, it's the fact that they have denied, obfuscated and ignored those issues rather than own them and I'm not ok with that. This isn't really the discussion I'm interested in, I'm just throwing it out there so people will suggest drives other than Seagate.

Thanks!

 

[Chris Moore]

Disk Price/Performance Analysis Buying Information 07-Nov-2018
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...e-performance-analysis-buying-information.62/

 

[joeschmuck]

Hard drives are a very subjective topic here. Some folks like one brand and some like others, money saved between one brand and another useually is minor or there is a downside to the cheaper drive and people live with it. If you like the WD Red's then I'd recommend you stick with them. But in reality you need to provide us a lottle more detail such as the drive capacity, what it will be used for, does it need to be super fast or is slow okay? No matter what, do not get a Shingled Drive. You can save money but there is a cost of speed. If your budget is tight then just replace one drive as you can afford them. Buy a larger capacity and once you have repalced all the drives in a VDEV then they will grow to the new capacity.

Chris beat me to this link he listed above, it's a good resource and I've used it as well.

 

[Skro]

Hard drives are a very subjective topic here. Some folks like one brand and some like others, money saved between one brand and another useually is minor or there is a downside to the cheaper drive and people live with it. If you like the WD Red's then I'd recommend you stick with them. But in reality you need to provide us a lottle more detail such as the drive capacity, what it will be used for, does it need to be super fast or is slow okay? No matter what, do not get a Shingled Drive. You can save money but there is a cost of speed. If your budget is tight then just replace one drive as you can afford them. Buy a larger capacity and once you have repalced all the drives in a VDEV then they will grow to the new capacity.

Chris beat me to this link he listed above, it's a good resource and I've used it as well.

Ah yes, I should have provided more information about my usage. Besides secondary storage for my important files, I'm using my NAS for a Plex server and storage. I also usually have 1-3 VMs running at a time, one is a Ubuntu Server for a family game server and the others are usually just Linux distros I'm trying to learn. I also have a handful of jails for website development, a local DNS, and Tautulli. So, I don't think I need anything super high speed as I haven't had any speed issues even with the old drives I'm using. I'm thinking drives in the 3-6TB range would be about where I could find a balance of space/cost and it seems like I've read somewhere on the forums that people don't recommend the really large drives, although I don't remember why and I may have misunderstood/dreamt that.

Thanks, I haven't heard of shingled drives, I'll go look that up so I understand it and why I don't want them. :)

 

[Skro]

Disk Price/Performance Analysis Buying Information 07-Nov-2018
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...e-performance-analysis-buying-information.62/

Wow, that is pretty impressive. I spend a lot of time on the forums these days and I'm amazed at the amount and quality of information, and how much of it I've failed to find.

 

[Skro]

If your budget is tight then just replace one drive as you can afford them. Buy a larger capacity and once you have repalced all the drives in a VDEV then they will grow to the new capacity.

Thank you, that's sound advice and what I guess I will end up doing. I'll look at the spreadsheet and try to find a drive with a balance that works for me.

I hadn't really even considered energy much yet and I'll have to figure out the calcs for that as I think I'll also have to look at a bigger PSU.

 

[danb35]

Especially in the larger capacities, the most cost-effective thing to do is to buy an external USB hard drive and shuck it. I got two WD 8 TB disks for ~ $150 each that way.

 

[Jailer]

Your a day late dollar short. I just picked up six 8TB WD Easystore external drives on a black friday special for $130 each. Keep an eye on Best Buy. Regular price for the 8TB model is $200 but they regularly runs sales for $150 for them.

 

[Skro]

Kind of a question for all/any of you, and forgive my newbieness, are there any functional issues with larger drives (8 and 10TB) drives compared to <6TB?

I'm asking because I swear I saw a conversation where people were recommending not going above 6TB but I dint remember why (and my search abilities on this forum frequently don't get me where I think I'm going or where I think I've been).

 

[danb35]

are there any functional issues with larger drives (8 and 10TB)

Not any that I'm aware of, but I have limited use with FreeNAS.

 

[Skro]

but I have limited use with FreeNAS.

I think your Thanks Received suggest otherwise, but ya can't know everything :D

 

[Jailer]

The only "issue" that I've seen talked about concerns shucking the external drives. Some of the newer drives are SATA 3.3 compliant and won't work out of the box with some power supplies. It seems to be the white label drives that are culprit. It can be worked around so it's not a deal breaker just something to be aware of if you choose to shuck drives for your server.

 

[Redcoat]

Maybe the "larger drives" issue you have seen mentioned related to long resilver times during a drive replacement?

 

[Skro]

Some of the newer drives are SATA 3.3 compliant and won't work out of the box with some power supplies.

Ok, thank you. I didn't know that. It looks like I will need to consider that as well with your and @danb35 suggestions on external USB drives, which otherwise sound like a deal worth considering.

 

[Skro]

Maybe the "larger drives" issue you have seen mentioned related to long resilver times during a drive replacement?

Perhaps. Do longer resilver times increase the likelihood of damage to a drive or do something that makes them less reliable?

 

[Jailer]

Perhaps. Do longer resilver times increase the likelihood of damage to a drive or do something that makes them less reliable?

It increases the chances of another drive having issues while you have reduced redundancy in your pool.

 

[joeschmuck]

Maybe the "larger drives" issue you have seen mentioned related to long resilver times during a drive replacement?

This is exactly the main reason for being cautious when using large hard drives. Even a 6TB drive could take a few days to resilver if it were a full pool.

It increases the chances of another drive having issues while you have reduced redundancy in your pool.

And right again.

If you plan to use larger hard drives then you really must design your pool properly to make it more resistant to total failure. For example if I were to make a pool using 10TB drives then I'd want a RAID-Z3 setup as it could take a week to resilver a drive and if two more drives fail during that period of time then I'm looking to be in a bad place soon when that next drive fails. However a RAID-Z3 setup using 10TB drives is also expensive. Also know what capacity you are shooting for. If you are smart then you will maintain a backup of your data on another drive or server just in-case you do have a major issue. I have a smaller second FreeNAS setup where I copy my important data to, it's not a backup of all my files, just the important ones. You could do this to a USB hard drive as well if you desired because your important backup doesn't need to be a NAS, just a hard drive that can hold your data.

So ask yourself this question: How much storage do you think you will need for the next 3 to 5 years? Take that value and add 20% and that is the minimum capacity you should buy. Now lets say you come up with 10TB of total storage, now you did establish a pool, what configuration is it, RAIDZ1, RAIDZ2, Mirror? How many drives does it consist of? And do you want to maintain that specific configuration because you can only afford to replace one drive at a time over a long period of time? If you can afford to buy all the drives and then create a new pool then you will be better off that an old configuration if it's not build properly. Also are you limited by drive bays or power connectors, SATA connections, etc... You havenm't provided a listing of your hardware so it's difficult to give you a possible solution however if I were to need 10TB then I'd look at purchasing five 4TB drives or six 3TB drives which would give me 10.9TB of raw storage or 10.9TB - 2.18TB (20%) = 8.7TB of Usable Storage in a RAID-Z2 configuration. If you are using iSCSI then you would want to have 50% free space for an optimal setup and LOTS of RAM.

So if you have a specific abount of storage you desire, figure out the best way to build your pool. If you tell us what you desire then we can show the the options to look at.

Good Luck!

 

[Skro]

Sorry for my slow reply, busy time of year and then I was having issues accessing the forums, which I'm guessing was due to the new forum upgrade.

First, thank you all!

After some thought I will say that @Redcoat was right, it was the resilvering times that I'd seen and that concerned me with the larger drives, so I think I will likely stick to drives in the 4-6TB range and will keep my eyes open for external drives and sales on some of the other drives listed on the spreadsheet that fit my budget.

I'd look at purchasing five 4TB drives or six 3TB drives which would give me 10.9TB of raw storage or 10.9TB - 2.18TB (20%) = 8.7TB of Usable Storage in a RAID-Z2 configuration.

As it turns out, this example is about similar to where I think I'll want to be in the next 5 years, so I will use that as a guideline. In addition, I will need to look at a larger PSU and some additional RAM, so I will start with those first and then start changing out my drives on my secondary and tertiary vdevs. Having three vdevs, one for essential backup for our computers/file, one for media, and a third for VMs and jails sounds about right to me.

You havenm't provided a listing of your hardware so it's difficult to give you a possible solution

As a side note, my system is listed in my signature, but I did make changes to it recently so please let me know if you can't see it. I can see it but maybe I did something wrong when I updated it.

Thanks again for all your help!