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Storage drive thoughts

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ihrsetrdr

Señor Senior Member
Joined
May 17, 2005
Location
High Desert, Calif.
I'm using a 1TB WD Purple as a storage drive. It's a bit slow to mount so for that reason I'm scrutinizing it closely. Four years old, 5400 RPM, Gnome-disk-utility Smart Data & Self Tests reporting "OK" but reporting "pre-fail" and "old age" type attributes.

My data needs aren't huge > 1TB, but I'll take more disk space if the price is right. ;)

Thoughts or suggestions?
 
I moved all my data onto SSDs a few years ago. Put some gaming on one of them. I have two of them mirrored for data only, sort of. My OS drive and some programs are on an NVMe. I understand the arguments about sudden, unpredictable failure of SSDs so have two. They're cheap enough these days, quiet, small footprint, and in my case, reliable as of today.
 
Tim are you wanting to stay with spinner drives or upgrading to SSD's? I only ask because I was thinking of moving over to SSD's from spinners, but I still find the spinner drives alot cheaper for storage solutions. If I could snag some large sized SSD's to swap over to for my needs, I'd do it. But larger SSD's still aren't cheap enough, so I stayed with the spinners. You can always snag spinner drives really cheap and still are reliable for the cost.

Been using several sets of spinners:

2x WD Red 3tb in raid-0 for storage
2x WD Raptors 300gb in raid-0 for back-up/storage
2x Seagate Ironwolf 6tb in raid-0 for games


Brands I stayed with because of reliability are WD & Seagate. I tried Toshiba Red 2tb because they were on sale some time ago. One failed within 4 months, the 2nd failed 1 month later. At the time Toshiba didn't have any 2tb drives to replace with, so they sent me a gift card as refund. Stay away from Toshiba drives.

Western Digital does good with RMA's. A few failed and WD replaced them with refurbs with zero issues. Never had a Seagate drive fail on me, so dunno how good their RMA service is.
 
I'm using a 1TB WD Purple as a storage drive. It's a bit slow to mount so for that reason I'm scrutinizing it closely. Four years old, 5400 RPM, Gnome-disk-utility Smart Data & Self Tests reporting "OK" but reporting "pre-fail" and "old age" type attributes.

My data needs aren't huge > 1TB, but I'll take more disk space if the price is right. ;)

Thoughts or suggestions?
What is the drive used for and how often is it used, I had a 1TB western digital black for a music, movies and pictures and it was plenty fast enough to where I really didn't need an ssd even though I switched for 2 NVMe drives and a samsung Sata 3 ssd the spinner was fine for the purpose.

Edit, I see the newer 1TB 64mb cache drives for $50, that is a small fraction of what I paid for my 32mb cache drive when it was the latest and greatest!!!!
 
Tim are you wanting to stay with spinner drives or upgrading to SSD's? I only ask because I was thinking of moving over to SSD's from spinners, but I still find the spinner drives alot cheaper for storage solutions. If I could snag some large sized SSD's to swap over to for my needs, I'd do it. But larger SSD's still aren't cheap enough, so I stayed with the spinners. You can always snag spinner drives really cheap and still are reliable for the cost.

Been using several sets of spinners:

2x WD Red 3tb in raid-0 for storage
2x WD Raptors 300gb in raid-0 for back-up/storage
2x Seagate Ironwolf 6tb in raid-0 for games


Brands I stayed with because of reliability are WD & Seagate. I tried Toshiba Red 2tb because they were on sale some time ago. One failed within 4 months, the 2nd failed 1 month later. At the time Toshiba didn't have any 2tb drives to replace with, so they sent me a gift card as refund. Stay away from Toshiba drives.

Western Digital does good with RMA's. A few failed and WD replaced them with refurbs with zero issues. Never had a Seagate drive fail on me, so dunno how good their RMA service is.
I would like to upgrade that storage drive to an SSD, am a little wary, as two SSDs (OCZ Vertex, Crucial) died way prematurely. I've only had one spinner that I recall kick the bucket, but it had some help from a drinking buddy of mine. :shrug: I do use SSDs for the OS to reside on, frequent backups to internal storage.

Actually this Team Group T-FORCE VULCAN Z 2.5" 2TB looks to be affordable at $125. Has a 3 year warranty, FWIW :unsure:
 
From what I remember OCZ drives weren't top tier, but Crucial drives are tanks. I used to see tons of OCZ refurbs on ebay. Haven't checked lately on those.

I've got a pair of Crucial P5's nvme in raid-0 for OS and other stuff. Super fast.

That Team Group drive looks good.
 
From what I remember OCZ drives weren't top tier, but Crucial drives are tanks. I used to see tons of OCZ refurbs on ebay. Haven't checked lately on those.

I've got a pair of Crucial P5's nvme in raid-0 for OS and other stuff. Super fast.

That Team Group drive looks good.
For the OS I'm using a 1TB Crucial BX500, a 2TB Crucial BX500 is $131....so that will do the job.

I do have an unused nvme slot, being that I need to open the case up for cleaning I should put something in it.
 
Last I remember with intel, if you populate an Nvme slot, you lose a single or 2 sata ports. Best check with the manual. I know with my Asrock Z270 & 7700K, I would use the top Nvme slot above pcie #1, I would lose sata ports 1&2. Bottom Nvme port will disable sata 3&4.
 
Last I remember with intel, if you populate an Nvme slot, you lose a single or 2 sata ports. Best check with the manual. I know with my Asrock Z270 & 7700K, I would use the top Nvme slot above pcie #1, I would lose sata ports 1&2. Bottom Nvme port will disable sata 3&4.

Should be OK, got 6 SATA ports and currently just using 2.
 

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@ihrsetrdr

The "Type" is just saying what type of indicator that value is. It is not saying the drive is failing. The numbers tell you the health of the drive.

No read errors, no reallocated sectors, no seek errors, no CRC/errors. The drive looks fine from the SMART data.
 
Non issue issues aside, I'd think any modern 7200 rpm 64MB cache drive will be fine . I love me some Western Digital... just get the model that best fits your use scenario. Black for performance. Blue/green for generic storage (though greens are a bit slower)
 
Non issue issues aside, I'd think any modern 7200 rpm 64MB cache drive will be fine . I love me some Western Digital... just get the model that best fits your use scenario. Black for performance. Blue/green for generic storage (though greens are a bit slower)
Red is a good option too as they are made to run 24/7. I think I've had the 8x WD Reds in my server running 24/7 for nearly a decade without any problems.
 
Pulling the trigger on the most bang-for-the-buck: Seagate IronWolf 6TB NAS Hard Drive 7200 RPM

The 1TB Western Digital can go in the external drive enclosure and replace the really old WD 250GB drive.

Oops, just noticed it ships from China, back to shopping! :shrug:

O.K., picked up a WD Blue 2TB Desktop Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM for $54, not bad for the price.

Edit again! I'm so wishy-washy! Cancelled the WD Blue and grabbed the Seagate IronWolf 6TB drive after all.
 
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