[SOLVED] Thinking of buying a 10TB HDD

[avg9956]

I'm planning to buy a hard disk drive that's >4TB for use in my desktop computer. There are Hard disk drives that are as large as 12TB and are classified as NAS drives. AFAIK there are no restrictions on using a NAS drive for a desktop computer. Also I read from somewhere that HDDs will physically cap out at a maximum of 18TB. I preferably want to ask someone who has experience using a 10TB drive and if they encounter any issues with it.

Has anyone have experience using a HDD that's 6TB or more?
Any recommended models to buy?

I'm fine with any>4TB drive but what matters to me most is longevity. I usually look at back blaze data if its available. From my experience: Seagate and Western Digital (WD) are the mainstream brands that tend to fail a lot compared to lesser known Japanese brands like Hitachi (HGST) or Toshiba or Samsung (if they even make >4TB HDDs). Rpm can come next but preferably 7200 rpm will do for me.

I'm looking to buy because
(1) Price of storage is cheap
(2) Price may skyrocket given the prevailing global conditions (pandemic), etc.
(3) Who knows, one day there might be a crypto currency that utilizes the storage space of your drive to be able to mine it and thus, jacks up the price.
(4) I'm thinking of migrating my data from my SSD to my HDD and make my SSD primarily a boot drive. This is because if my SSD fails, chances of data recovery is slim. Macrium Reflect will come into play but I have possibly some reserved questions pertaining to the whole setup later (maybe in a separate thread).

 

[sonofjesse]

I would look at the Seagate EXOS drives. When you longevity do you mean TBW per year workloads? Or do you just mean it can sit on a shelf for 30 years? All physical drives will fail.

Especially if you have high workloads I suggest getting an EXOS.

Also 4TB SSD's are on sale for 400. If you don't need over 4TB, that might be the way to go.

I dont' know if I would buy it just based on fear especially if you only need a 2TB drive.

Good luck.

 

[avg9956]

What I meant for longevity is failure rates

I have experienced a Seagate hard drive failure myself. I think it was a 2TB model (I forgot the exact model) but it died to me after only 2 years of use. When I googled that model I remember it was infamous for its high failure rate.

Before buying HDDs I always look at backblaze for data (If its available). Its almost always the case that either seagate or Western Digital have high failure rates on specific models of their HDDs which is what I would want to avoid repeating the same mistake.

 

[USAFRet]

Has anyone have experience using a HDD that's 6TB or more?

Seagate Exos or Toshiba Enterprise.

I have a 8TB Toshiba MG, no issues for a couple years.
I have a 16GB Tosh MG on its way in the mail.

 

[avg9956]

Thanks, I've really been looking to try a new brand other than Seagate and WD.
Toshiba is a Japanese brand, and I'm assuming they have some respectable quality.
I already also got myself a HDD Enclosure with USB connectivity so in case my HDD goes haywire , I can start backing up data.

In the meanwhile, I've read several disturbing reports of Samsung 970 Evos dying prematurely. Not yet even prepared for that scenario, so I'm gonna start transferring all my C data to drive D (HDD)

Anyhow best of hope, gonna take the dive in

 

[avg9956]

@USAFRet

Is it ok going for a Toshiba NAS drive instead of MG?
https://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-3-5-...P4HY/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8&th=1

I usually stick if its fulfilled by Amazon and not some third party seller.

 

[USAFRet]

I already also got myself a HDD Enclosure with USB connectivity so in case my HDD goes haywire , I can start backing up data.

Backups should be happening all the time anyway.
No matter what make/model/type drive your data is on.

Automated, tested, know how to recover.

 

[USAFRet]

@USAFRet

Is it ok going for a Toshiba NAS drive instead of MG?
https://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-3-5-...P4HY/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8&th=1

I usually stick if its fulfilled by Amazon and not some third party seller.

Sure.

What is it going in, and for what use?

 

[avg9956]

All of my personal files, video edit files, programs, etc.

I'm basically going to strip my C drive clean empty of any files as it is a Samsung 970 Evo and I don't know if it will suddenly die one day, so I'm going to make it primarily as a boot drive right now.

That also means gonna configure google chrome to start placing its downloads at the new HDD instead.

Here's the review for it
Would it be any slower than your standard HDD? Afaik as long as its 7200 RPM then it should more or less be the same speed as any other standard desktop-use HDD.

 

[USAFRet]

It should be just the same as any other non-crappy drive.

 

[BGodfrey]

Interesting chart there in post #3. You might want to go read the paragraphs immediately below the chart on the BackBlaze.com site. (https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-hard-drive-stats-for-2020/)

If you look on the Drive Days column you will see that some of their test drives have been running for a very long time (or a lot of drives for longish times) and some of their drives have been running for relatively few Drive Days. They consider that anything below 250,000 drive days does not actually present enough data for a reasonable comparison.

Now if you look at the AFR (annualized failure rate) column you will see that some drives have phenomenally good (0%) AFRs. But if you look at the Drive Days for those drives and you will see that they have simply not been running long enough to get a reasonable AFR. There is also a drive with an extremely high AFR, but it only has 5280 Drive Days in the test. You can't really believe those numbers. You need to treat them as outliers and ignore them.

If you look at the only WDC drive on their chart, the Drive Days are 229,861 and the AFR is 0.16%. Remember that 229,861 is below the 250,000 that they consider to be a minimum trustworthy sample time, but it's getting close. It seems likely that the WDC drive will eventually turn in a pretty good AFR, though likely higher than 0.16%.

If you sort the AFR column you will see that the most reliable drive with over 250,000 Drive Days is a Seagate at 0.23% AFR.

So your statement that Seagate and WDC produce unreliable drives is not really backed up by these particular statistics. They produce huge numbers of drives and so even with very high reliability there will still be a lot of failures. Everyone remembers the failures. (I've owned hundreds of drives in my life and I can probably describe each of the three failures I have experienced in great detail, but I can tell you nothing about most of the others.)

The only Toshiba that they have adequate data on has an AFR of 0.91%. That's about 4x the failure rate of the Seagate with the 0.23% AFR. So if you rely only on this chart you will actually avoid Toshiba.

There are Hitachis with very respectable AFRs between 0.27% and 0.31%. There are also a couple with much higher AFRs.

I actually stumbled onto this thread while looking for a replacement for my ten year old Western Digital Velociraptor 600Gb, 10,000 RPM drive. Diagnostics do not show any problems at all. 38494 powered on hours; 6506 power cycles; not a single bit of lost data. But after this much time I worry that it really has to be nearing the end of its life.

I know this makes the decision harder, not easier, but I think each of these manufacturers produces products with different characteristics for different markets. I don't think you can rule out one entire brand because of what you've heard about their reliability. I think you can rule out this or that particular drive based on tested reliability and reputation.

Speaking of reputation, some others here have mentioned the Seagate Exos drives. I see that they do have some 10,000 RPM drives and I will be adding those to my list to study up on. They wouldn't meet the OP's requirement of >4Tb, though. I think their biggest I've found is 2.4Tb. Of course you could get two of them and configure them RAID 0 for a very fast 4.8Tb setup...

 

[BGodfrey]

I also have to wonder about the long term value of using an SSD for a boot drive only. I understand that you are doing this right now because you are certain the SSD is going to fail and you don't want to lose anything. But if you trust it that little, you should really just get it out of your system. A new SSD of moderate size (400 Gb should be plenty) won't set you back much. Especially once you amortize it over the life of the drive which should last for years. If you are running Windows 10 you can pull your C: drive from an old machine and stick it into a new one and it should configure itself correctly. Saves you a lot of setup and loading and re-licensing and such.

I think you are smart to look for reliability statistics before purchasing. I use an SSD for my C: drive (including programs and system stuff, but not write-intensive or frequently accessed stuff like my data or downloads or working directories.) The one I selected was an Intel because it was the only one at the time (2013, I think, or maybe 2015?) that had higher reliability than most hard drives. It is, of course, obsolete by now, though the SMART data suggests that it has almost 70% life left. So far it seems to be living up to the statistics, though mine is only a sample of one.

 

[USAFRet]

So far it seems to be living up to the statistics, though mine is only a sample of one.

Of my household fleet of 12 (or more) SSD over the last few years, I've had exactly one fail.
960 GB Sandisk, just past the 3 year warranty. Replaced for free anyway.
Data 100% recovered from my backup.

Now....1 in 12, over 9years....one would say "OMG! SSD's suck!! 10% fail rate!!"
Nonsense.

Of the 13 HDD's currently running in my household fleet....one of them has also died in the last few years.
WD Green, 5 weeks off the store shelf.
"OMG! WD Sux!!"


Except for a very few outliers, Backblaze numbers don't mean a whole lot, unless you're looking at fleetwide numbers.
0.9% fail vs 0.5% fail...meaningless for your single instance of a drive.
Now...if you're buying them in batches of 1,000...then that may make a difference.

 

[avg9956]

So your statement that Seagate and WDC produce unreliable drives is not really backed up by these particular statistics.

Well from my standpoint/opinion:
1. Seagate and WDC are the mainstream brands and I agree that as you said, they produce the most number of drives and have a significant share of the market. Its more likely to find their brands than other ones such as Toshiba/Hitachi (unless maybe if you live in Japan). If only backblaze managed to get more Toshiba and Hitachi drives to test and increase their drive testing days, then we can get a better overall picture of how their drives fare against the mainstream brands.

I think you can rule out this or that particular drive based on tested reliability and reputation.

2. I did state so in post #3. Particular ~ specific.

either seagate or Western Digital have high failure rates on specific models of their HDDs

That's what I observed as well. I didn't generalize that "All Seagate or WDC HDDs are BAD! Avoid them like the plague! eeek" kind of thing. However being aware that they DO have specific models that have high failure rates, makes me be more cautious about choosing which models to buy from those brands. I narrow it down to to the model number.

Sorry if it didn't come to you that my statement is an opinion and not factual if I didn't make it clear.

I personally had a seagate ST2000 drive that failed as I have previously stated in post #3. I forgot the exact model number because it happened years ago, but when I looked at data from back blaze I remember it having a high AFR. Since that was the first time I personally experienced a hard disk drive failure, it stuck like glue to me. Seagate apparently had a specific model of drives that had high failure rates and by the time I discovered that from a back blaze post, it was too late. My drive was already making clicking sounds. That's my experience.

You can have your 2 cents on that, but that wouldn't stray me from consulting back blaze data at all if I so choose nor can anyone take away what I've learned from it.

Who else can afford to do extensive hard drive testing and publishes data other than back blaze? let me know.
Data is data. Better to have some data rather than no data.
Average consumer doesn't have the budget to personally test a large number of drives to determine which one is the most reliable
I certainly don't too. Maybe you can if you're from a rich enterprise.


Given reality that people or organizations are limited by finances to test a large number of drives or the scarcity of resources needed to produce said drive models by the manufacturer, it will also affect how many units can be observed and tested for reliability. Testers may never be able to achieve the required amount of drives to make their statistic significant simply due to resource limitations.

And from that on if there's not enough sample size for statistical significance, its each user's own call how they interpret data or if they should choose to ignore it simply because there's a lack of sample size to make it statistically significant.

As for the SSD

I understand that you are doing this right now because you are certain the SSD is going to fail and you don't want to lose anything. But if you trust it that little, you should really just get it out of your system.

I should throw it out of my system? Don't make sense to me.
The main reason why one would go for SSDs is faster speeds. I've already made it just as my boot drive, if it dies then I don't lose anything. If I throw it out of my system, you'd want me to use a HDD to boot slower?

Just because I don't trust to store data on my SSD doesn't mean I shouldn't use a SSD in the first place. It can still be used primarily for only cutting boot times and reboots.
Which is what other people do as well (not just me) and primarily make SSD their boot drives.
If and when the SSD fails, I can just extract all my data on the HDD. Its not like when the SSD dies, you can't access your HDD.

But most of all, just read USAF's signature. Backup backup backup.
Our opinions, the choices we make on which drives we choose on this might differ, but in the end of the day, I still don't suffer any data loss because I do my backups religiously.

I don't even rely on cloud storage. Media fire actually deleted free accounts just last year (December 2020). They only had a few weeks of notice. That translates to a lot of old mirror links in the internet = gone.

 

[USAFRet]

Which is what other people do as well (not just me) and primarily make SSD their boot drives.

And some people (like myself) have gone to SSD only.
Multiple drives in my systems, all SSD.
Automated backups preserves data in case of a disaster. Be it physical drive fail, virus, whatever...

The dozens of TB in the NAS is, of course, still spinning drives.

 

[avg9956]

And some people (like myself) have gone to SSD only.
Multiple drives in my systems, all SSD.

Unless SSD manufacturers find a way to lower down thermals and also cram as much storage capacity in SSDs without overheating it, I'd still be sticking to HDD for storage purposes.

Multiple SSDs in system means more heat output. Especially newer SSDs where their controllers continue to increase the speed of their read/writes, approaching PCI-E Gen 4 speeds and beyond (PCI-E 5.0 will come out next year). Higher speeds means higher heat. No other way to go about that.

This also means getting a motherboard that can manage thermals as well.

 

[USAFRet]

This is the temps of my 7x SSD.
6x SATA III, 1x NVMe (Intel).

This is in the middle of copying 155GB, 7,500 files, from the Intel (red) to the Sandisk (blue).

 

[avg9956]

This is my Samsung 970 Evo (NVMe M.2) temps in just 15 minutes of gaming. It uses the Phoenix Controller. According to HWINFO64

Its current drive temp is 51C
Its Controller temp is 57C

Meanwhile my HDD is around 30C

https://imgur.com/bgYlwrl

View: https://i.imgur.com/bgYlwrl.jpg


The game I'm playing is installed on the D drive, while my C drive is the Samsung 970Evo.

I can't find anymore info about the controller, other than the fact that Samsung states it in their website that they use the Phoenix controller for the Samsung 970 Evo.

Sometimes, manufacturers tend to be so secretive about what controllers they use and then it takes testers like AnandTech to peer out the actual components used and test their performance.

At this rate if I continue to keep stacking more Samsung 970 Evos and do away with HDDs, I highly doubt my PC will be able to manage thermals.
It was the only SSD available locally in my area, given the current pandemic situation.

It seems 5 out of 7 of your SSDs are Samsung.
I guess Samsung SSDs are common in the market.

And yes I expect to hear an argument" Operating temps of SSD is 0-70C" but then again, prolonged heat is also damage which is why I'm inclined to replace my SSD when it fails and make it my boot drive instead. How many years I can get out of that, will vary - but bottom line I'm not trusting my data to a SSD that I know will fail because of the consequences of heat.

Edit: I also do realize this is not exactly an apples to apples comparison
Your SSD is SATA and mines is NVMe M.2 SSD
Which have different speeds
I don't have a SATA SSD lying around me right now to test it out
But I do know its temps would be lower because they have less speed compared to NVMe M.2 SSDs

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, a batch of Samsungs. 840/850/860.
The 2x 250BG 840's date back to Nov-Dec 2014. 24/7 use since then.

The Sandisk is a warranty replacement. The original died because...dunno.
It died. Nowhere near the TBW limit. 3 years, 33 days old.

33 days past the warranty, Sandisk replaced it anyway. I knew it was over, they knew it was over.

Free replacement, all data recovered from the backup.

 

[avg9956]

I tested something to drop the temperatures
I opened the case + Directed an electric fan
Temps dropped significantly while Gaming

https://imgur.com/VFysZeV

View: https://i.imgur.com/VFysZeV.jpg


Of course this isn't sustainable. I can't afford to run my PC in open case + Electric fan pointed forever. Dust will hop in.

I am planning to buy a 80mm x 80mm case fan and gonna try to find a way to sneak it in my chassis.

Hard drive cage is blocking the air flow of my intake fans, resulting in poor intake.
So I'm going to add the 80mm fan right after it and find some clever way to stick it, and then hook up its 3pin connector to the motherboard.

Passive NVMe M.2 heatsinks are rendered useless with poor or no air flow.
You need good airflow to keep pushing the air out and cycling in new/fresh, cool air to the fins of the NVMe M.2 heatsink.

The Case I'm using is NZXT H440, Its an older model that has drive cages in front of the intake fans area. for HDD mounting
I do like that it has a fan controller hub though, that way you can keep connecting more fans.

 

[USAFRet]

I tested something to drop the temperatures
I opened the case + Directed an electric fan
Temps dropped significantly while Gaming

That would seem to be the issue.

Yes, good airflow is key.

 

[avg9956]

https://imgur.com/5jf2Zlm

View: https://i.imgur.com/5jf2Zlm.jpg


Any idea how to sneak in a fan here?
I'll reroute the cables to the back as needed

https://imgur.com/5zOwtsc

View: https://i.imgur.com/5zOwtsc.jpg