Question Which of these 12TB internal HDDs is best for a desktop machine?

[stlsailor]

On my desktop PC (Intel Core i7 10-700K) I am looking to replace a 6T HDD which is woefully short on space. It is used for a Lightroom catalog and for photos.

When I built it 4 years or so ago I chose a 6T WD Black drive.

Now I am trying to decide with which drive to replace it (probably 12TB or so depending on prices). I'd read earlier to use a WD Black or a Seagate BarraCuda but not a a mid- or upper-tier (IronWolf, IronWolf Pro, Exos) because they had firmware that was designed for NAS or enterprise use (prioritizing placing the data rather than aggressively trying to fix a problem). And I've read recently that the Exos has sensors to adjust watts/TB (can they slow it down?) as well as being better at damping vibration.

Is that still the case today? I have read of people recommending these drives for desktop use of late. Between the Black, IronWolf, IronWolf Pro, and Exos, are there any that I should avoid, or that I should definitely consider in the 10-16TB range?

Thanks.

Dale

 

[USAFRet]

As long as you have a good automated backup routine....any or all of those drives are fine.

 

[faalin]

I run Western Digital Red Pro drives, Ive had 6TB drives for over 6 years and two years ago replaced them with 18TB drives. Pro drives run at 7200RPM while the standard reds run at 5400RPM.

I have 4 Seagate 8TB Ironwolf drives in my Ubiquiti NVR system for over 3 years now

 

[TeamRed2024]

My 12TB Seagate Barracuda Pro is still running great after 7 years.

 

[USAFRet]

I have 4x 4TB IronWolf in a secondary pod attached to my NAS.
AN 8TB Tosh Enterprise in another secondary pod.

My actual PC is SSD only.

 

[TeamRed2024]

My actual PC is SSD only.

I thought about doing that too... but it just didn't make a lot of sense. No point in tossing a perfectly good working HDD and selling it wouldn't net me anything either. So I'm not quite rid of HDDs just yet. If it ever dies though I won't be getting another. Large capacity SSDs are getting cheaper.

 

[USAFRet]

I thought about doing that too... but it just didn't make a lot of sense. No point in tossing a perfectly good working HDD and selling it wouldn't net me anything either. So I'm not quite rid of HDDs just yet. If it ever dies though I won't be getting another. Large capacity SSDs are getting cheaper.

No reason to toss the drive. Just repurpose it.

All my house systems have been SSD only for years.
Except for the ~100TB spinners in or attached to the NAS.

 

[stlsailor]

Based on the replies so far it seems to be unanimous that there is no reason not to use any of those drives in a desktop PC. That seems to say that the firmware differences don't matter. At that point it would simply be how much the extra expected longevity would justify the extra cost, I would think.

I agree with all of you on SSDs. The cost of getting a 12TB SSD would still be high, even if one could get one. And I've not seen what tangible benefit NAS offers over having them on my desktop machine. But I have thought of moving a smaller HDD to an SSD and continuing that process as SSD prices decline.

As to the initial response question, I do in general have a good backup routine. I use cloud backup (Crashplan). I also use SyncBack Pro to mirror to an external drive, which I periodically swap with one offsite. I do have a couple of areas yet to address. Somehow my clone process of the C:\ SSD got lost somehow and I need to get that back in place. And, of course, mirroring is not technically backup, which I haven't yet addressed.

 

[Misgar]

rather than aggressively trying to fix a problem

Are you thinking of the TLER feature in Enterprise drive firmware?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_recovery_control

as well as being better at damping vibration

This feature comes into its own with arrays of more than eight closely-coupled drives (mechanically speaking). Drives intended for large arrays sometimes come with RV (Rotational Vibration) sensors. It's part of what makes these drives more expensive than Consumer level drives.

It is used for a Lightroom catalog and for photos.

Bearing in mind a typical Lightroom catalogue contains thousands of small thumbnails, it might be faster if stored on an SSD. You could still keep your photographs on a hard disk, but not the drive containing Windows and Lightroom.
https://www.pugetsystems.com/soluti...oom-classic/hardware-recommendations/#storage

I'd check out any potential purchases at Backblaze, to see if they've had large numbers of failures. I was looking at cheap refurbished 12TB Seagate ST12000NM0007 on Amazon, but Backblaze had 37 failures out of 1,125 drives in Q1 2024, with an AFR of 12.98%. Not a good sign of reliability.
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q1-2024/

I'd read earlier to use a WD Black or a Seagate BarraCuda

I've been using WD Purple drives for several years to store photos. Ostensibly they're intended for use in Surveillance (video recording) systems, but they're CMR/PMR not SMR and can sometimes be picked up brand new for less than the price of a Black or similar drives. They're prioritized for writing, not reading, but I measured 250MB/s transfer rate at the outer edge on my 8TB PURZ drives.
https://helpdeskgeek.com/help-desk/cmr-vs-smr-hard-drives-whats-different-and-which-is-better/

Although you might not notice much difference between CMR and SMR drives for your photo collection, provided the files are only written back to disk on rare occasions, SMR is bad news for files which change frequently, as might happen in with Lightroom thumbnails. I would certainly NOT use SMR for video editing.
https://nascompares.com/answer/list-of-wd-cmr-and-smr-hard-drives-hdd/

Back in May 2020, a scandal erupted amongst the FreeNAS community, when it was discovered that WD had been sneaking SMR into some of their Red NAS drives, with no mention of it in their datasheets. As it turned out, Seagate and Toshiba hadn't been 100% honest either. Eventually WD released the Red Pro range (CMR only) to differentiate from the bog standard Red range which might still contain SMR. SMR crams 10 to 20% more data on to a platter. You pays yer money and takes yer choice.

SMR drives are bad news in ZFS arrays, especially when a disk fails. The re-silvering process can take days with SMR drives, instead of hours with CMR drives. Since you're not using ZFS, this is of less concern, but explains why some people are reluctant to buy SMR.
https://www.servethehome.com/wd-red-smr-vs-cmr-tested-avoid-red-smr/

Although most of my 4TB, 6TB and 8TB disks in external USB3 drives are probably SMR, I only fit CMR drives in desktop builds. Check before buying and avoid SMR.

 

[stlsailor]

Are you thinking of the TLER feature in Enterprise drive firmware?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_recovery_control

Yes, even though the article I read a few years ago didn't give it a name, reading the link makes me think that's exactly what it is. I was not aware that it could be turned on or off. That fact would seem to eliminate the negative since the firmware apparently can be tuned?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_recovery_control

Bearing in mind a typical Lightroom catalogue contains thousands of small thumbnails, it might be faster if stored on an SSD. You could still keep your photographs on a hard disk, but not the drive containing Windows and Lightroom.
https://www.pugetsystems.com/soluti...oom-classic/hardware-recommendations/#storage

I followed Puget Systems back when I was building my machine, but it hadn't occurred to me to look at them in regard to replacing a hard drive. Thanks for the link. I like the idea of storing the catalog on an SSD. I have a 2TB NVMe SSD for the OS, and I've got an empty NVMe slot on the mobo. I have considered putting another NVMe into it. It sounds as though that would be a perfect place to put the catalog.

I'd check out any potential purchases at Backblaze, to see if they've had large numbers of failures. I was looking at cheap refurbished 12TB Seagate ST12000NM0007 on Amazon, but Backblaze had 37 failures out of 1,125 drives in Q1 2024, with an AFR of 12.98%. Not a good sign of reliability.
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q1-2024/

Good idea. I looked at them a few days ago, but I decided it would be more useful to look at that once I'd been able to discern whether NAS or Enterprise drives were appropriate for the desktop.

I've been using WD Purple drives for several years to store photos. Ostensibly they're intended for use in Surveillance (video recording) systems, but they're CMR/PMR not SMR and can sometimes be picked up brand new for less than the price of a Black or similar drives. They're prioritized for writing, not reading, but I measured 250MB/s transfer rate at the outer edge on my 8TB PURZ drives.
https://helpdeskgeek.com/help-desk/cmr-vs-smr-hard-drives-whats-different-and-which-is-better/

Hmmm. I'd given them no thought. I'd definitely decided I want CMR, something of which I was not even aware when I did my build 4 years ago. But it really didn't occur to me to consider a WD Purple. But why not?

Although you might not notice much difference between CMR and SMR drives for your photo collection, provided the files are only written back to disk on rare occasions, SMR is bad news for files which change frequently, as might happen in with Lightroom thumbnails. I would certainly NOT use SMR for video editing.
https://nascompares.com/answer/list-of-wd-cmr-and-smr-hard-drives-hdd/

Back in May 2020, a scandal erupted amongst the FreeNAS community, when it was discovered that WD had been sneaking SMR into some of their Red NAS drives, with no mention of it in their datasheets. As it turned out, Seagate and Toshiba hadn't been 100% honest either. Eventually WD released the Red Pro range (CMR only) to differentiate from the bog standard Red range which might still contain SMR. SMR crams 10 to 20% more data on to a platter. You pays yer money and takes yer choice.

SMR drives are bad news in ZFS arrays, especially when a disk fails. The re-silvering process can take days with SMR drives, instead of hours with CMR drives. Since you're not using ZFS, this is of less concern, but explains why some people are reluctant to buy SMR.
https://www.servethehome.com/wd-red-smr-vs-cmr-tested-avoid-red-smr/

Although most of my 4TB, 6TB and 8TB disks in external USB3 drives are probably SMR, I only fit CMR drives in desktop builds. Check before buying and avoid SMR.

What I think I'm reading is that Purple, Red Pro, and Black are all CMR and any of these would be suitable for photo storage on a desktop. If I'm misunderstanding, please correct me. I did a bit of searching to try to clarify the differences. Here's what I found. Would you agree with this?

• Purple is, as you said, prioritized for writing from multiple surveillance camera streams. But given you found a good data transfer rate and have been happy with them, they seem to be on the table.
• Red Pro are tuned to operate more quietly and generate less heat at the cost of read/write performance (no specifics given however).
• Enterprise are tuned for the fastest possible read/write performance and built for longevity.
• Other articles I've read seem to say there's not really that much speed difference between them.

Where I am, if I've understood you properly, is this.

1. Get an NVMe for the catalog and other files for which I'd like to have quicker access. I've been thinking of another SSD anyway, just hadn't thought of putting the Lightroom catalog there.
2. Get a good CMR drive for more photo storage capacity. Purple, Red Pro, or Black would all work fine. Price and longevity would be determining factors.
3. In choosing which model, check against the Backblaze report.

Any of that I may have gotten wrong or missed?

Many thanks for the very useful information.

 

[Misgar]

That fact would seem to eliminate the negative since the firmware apparently can be tuned

It might be more accurate to say you can issue commands to enable or disable TLER if it's built into the firmware, depending on your requirements. There are numerous on line articles that may help. If I wanted to tweak TLER on one of my TrueNAS servers, I'd issue a smartctl command script in the OS.
https://forums.truenas.com/t/checking-for-tler-erc-etc-support-on-a-drive/1497

whether NAS or Enterprise drives were appropriate for the desktop

Pretty much any drive can be used in a desktop, even laptop drives, but some disks might be considered overkill or simply too expensive, e.g. WD Gold. I happily consider ex-server SAS drives in some of my machines, if they're fitted with a cheap SAS controllerPCIe card for my external LTO tape drive.

I like the idea of storing the catalog on an SSD

You could run a test with the Lightroom catalogue on hard disk and again on SSD. A lot depends on how many tens of thousands of images you've got in a single catalogue. There might be no discernible difference. Regardless, a second NVMe drive is a good place for Adobe's scratch files. Even a SATA SSD will be better than a hard disk.

What I think I'm reading is that Purple, Red Pro, and Black are all CMR

To be 100% sure, I recommend double checking online before purchasing. There are lists which state whether a drive is CMR or SMR.

Any of that I may have gotten wrong or missed?

No, I think you've got things covered.

 

[stlsailor]

It might be more accurate to say you can issue commands to enable or disable TLER if it's built into the firmware, depending on your requirements. There are numerous on line articles that may help. If I wanted to tweak TLER on one of my TrueNAS servers, I'd issue a smartctl command script in the OS.
https://forums.truenas.com/t/checking-for-tler-erc-etc-support-on-a-drive/1497


Pretty much any drive can be used in a desktop, even laptop drives, but some disks might be considered overkill or simply too expensive, e.g. WD Gold. I happily consider ex-server SAS drives in some of my machines, if they're fitted with a cheap SAS controllerPCIe card for my external LTO tape drive.


You could run a test with the Lightroom catalogue on hard disk and again on SSD. A lot depends on how many tens of thousands of images you've got in a single catalogue. There might be no discernible difference. Regardless, a second NVMe drive is a good place for Adobe's scratch files. Even a SATA SSD will be better than a hard disk.


To be 100% sure, I recommend double checking online before purchasing. There are lists which state whether a drive is CMR or SMR.


No, I think you've got things covered.

Thanks for that reply and your help. Much appreciated.