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Forum Discussion
Which drives to get for new ReadyNas?
So I need a new NAS. This is going to be expensive...
TL:DR at bottom of post
A bit of background info first. I have an NVX Business edition that I've had for a little over 2 years. I got it with 2 1tb drives because that was the only bundle available at the time, and immediately replaced them with 4 1,5tb Seagate drives off the HCL. This unit has been behaving a little strange from day 1, with the unit periodically deciding to hang during startup, before even showing any lights beyond the blue power button. Hard shutdown would then be required to fix that, and the next power-on works fine. This happens maybe once every month or so, and has done so since I got the unit.
I called Netgear support once to get some help with it but was basically ignored, with the only advice being to pull all the drives, put the original drives back in, doing a factory reset and seeing if that would help, which would take me weeks to test. Being unable to use the unit or access my data for weeks on end is not acceptable, so that idea went out the window. I'm guessing the unit is outside warranty now, so that means new unit to fix the problem, but it's rare enough that I've decided to just live with it.
However, recently I learned that the unit is having more problems. For a few weeks now, when I copy files to the unit it will sometimes hang for several minutes, with nothing being accessible. Not even the web admin pages respond. Usually I need to reboot the unit to fix it, or wait upwards of 5 minutes. I originally thought the problem was with my pc, but I just noticed that the drive activity light goes berserk whenever the unit hangs. SMART status says the drives are fine, firmware upgrade did nothing either, so I'm guessing it's the motherboard that's having problems.
At this point I cannot trust the unit anymore. I've been burned by data loss often enough that I won't trust anything that works less than flawlessly. I am working on backing up all my data off the NVX to an NV+ that I've had for many years without problems. So now I need a new NAS to replace the unstable NVX.
Despite my bad experience with Netgear support, I still like them enough that I will stick with them for at least one more purchase. Stability issues aside, the NVX was great. I've decided to get another NV+ though, simply because it's cheaper and, in my experience at least, more reliable. performance doesn't matter too much since these units will eventually become offsite backup for a custom built NAS with a ton of drives. I might be persuaded to get an ultra 4 just to check it out, but I don't really see the point.
So here is my problem. I need to upgrade to 2tb drives for both the new unit and the old NV+, and I am stuggling with choosing which drives to go for. The HCL shows 6 drives to choose from. The cheapest three are not viable, with the following reasoning:
Seagate Barracuda LP - ST32000542AS: not available anymore.
WD Caviar Green - WD20EARS: can't guarantee that I will get the right revision.
Seagate Barracuda LP - ST2000DL003: massive problems with firmware, avoiding like the plague.
That leaves me with 3 choices, the Hitachi Deskstar, the Seagate Barracuda XT or the Hitachi Ultrastar. I'm leaning towards the Ultrastar, because it's the only actual enterprise raid disk of the three and should be much more reliable, but it's really expensive. The other ones are rated for "desktop RAID", but that's just RAID 0 or 1, if I've understood correctly.
So what should I go for? I can afford to get any of them, but because I need to upgrade my old NV+ and the new NAS i'm getting at the same time, that makes 8 drives. With the prices on the Ultrastar being so high, it's hard to justify. Do I really need enterprise RAID disks, or will the desktop RAID disks be enough?
TL:DR
Which of these 3 drives should I go for with an NV+?
Hitachi Ultrastar A7K2000 2 TB
Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 2 TB
Seagate Barracuda XT 2 TB
TL:DR at bottom of post
A bit of background info first. I have an NVX Business edition that I've had for a little over 2 years. I got it with 2 1tb drives because that was the only bundle available at the time, and immediately replaced them with 4 1,5tb Seagate drives off the HCL. This unit has been behaving a little strange from day 1, with the unit periodically deciding to hang during startup, before even showing any lights beyond the blue power button. Hard shutdown would then be required to fix that, and the next power-on works fine. This happens maybe once every month or so, and has done so since I got the unit.
I called Netgear support once to get some help with it but was basically ignored, with the only advice being to pull all the drives, put the original drives back in, doing a factory reset and seeing if that would help, which would take me weeks to test. Being unable to use the unit or access my data for weeks on end is not acceptable, so that idea went out the window. I'm guessing the unit is outside warranty now, so that means new unit to fix the problem, but it's rare enough that I've decided to just live with it.
However, recently I learned that the unit is having more problems. For a few weeks now, when I copy files to the unit it will sometimes hang for several minutes, with nothing being accessible. Not even the web admin pages respond. Usually I need to reboot the unit to fix it, or wait upwards of 5 minutes. I originally thought the problem was with my pc, but I just noticed that the drive activity light goes berserk whenever the unit hangs. SMART status says the drives are fine, firmware upgrade did nothing either, so I'm guessing it's the motherboard that's having problems.
At this point I cannot trust the unit anymore. I've been burned by data loss often enough that I won't trust anything that works less than flawlessly. I am working on backing up all my data off the NVX to an NV+ that I've had for many years without problems. So now I need a new NAS to replace the unstable NVX.
Despite my bad experience with Netgear support, I still like them enough that I will stick with them for at least one more purchase. Stability issues aside, the NVX was great. I've decided to get another NV+ though, simply because it's cheaper and, in my experience at least, more reliable. performance doesn't matter too much since these units will eventually become offsite backup for a custom built NAS with a ton of drives. I might be persuaded to get an ultra 4 just to check it out, but I don't really see the point.
So here is my problem. I need to upgrade to 2tb drives for both the new unit and the old NV+, and I am stuggling with choosing which drives to go for. The HCL shows 6 drives to choose from. The cheapest three are not viable, with the following reasoning:
Seagate Barracuda LP - ST32000542AS: not available anymore.
WD Caviar Green - WD20EARS: can't guarantee that I will get the right revision.
Seagate Barracuda LP - ST2000DL003: massive problems with firmware, avoiding like the plague.
That leaves me with 3 choices, the Hitachi Deskstar, the Seagate Barracuda XT or the Hitachi Ultrastar. I'm leaning towards the Ultrastar, because it's the only actual enterprise raid disk of the three and should be much more reliable, but it's really expensive. The other ones are rated for "desktop RAID", but that's just RAID 0 or 1, if I've understood correctly.
So what should I go for? I can afford to get any of them, but because I need to upgrade my old NV+ and the new NAS i'm getting at the same time, that makes 8 drives. With the prices on the Ultrastar being so high, it's hard to justify. Do I really need enterprise RAID disks, or will the desktop RAID disks be enough?
TL:DR
Which of these 3 drives should I go for with an NV+?
Hitachi Ultrastar A7K2000 2 TB
Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 2 TB
Seagate Barracuda XT 2 TB
36 Replies
- Kimius - first, welcome to the forum.
As to the NVX BE - it has a five year warranty, and since you have only had it for two years, it is still in warranty. (The NVX Pioneer has a three year warrant and would still be under warranty as well).
A couple of suggestions.
1. Keep backing up your data. That is a good idea anyway. If your NV+ has the capacity to maintain a complete backup of your data, once you have all your shares backed up, convert the backup job to rsync. It is the greatest thing since sliced bread to maintain a backup. It basically synchronizes the files between the two units, so only the changes to files and new files are copied over. Files deleted on the source are deleted on the target when the backup job runs. (I have two NVX units, a BE and a Pioneer, the Pioneer is the oldest, just now one year old, both with 2x3TB Hitachi HDS5C3030ALA630 and 2x1TB Seagate ST31000528AS drives) and it only takes a few minutes to perform the backup of each share.
2. Once you have the backup complete, shut down the NVX (you can run off the NV+ if need be) and test each drive individually by connecting it to an SATA port on your PC and running SeaTools for Windows. You can run the short test first, but the long generic will probably need to be run. It will take several hours to run the test, and if the drive fails, in the report it will give you a code that will need to be used to RMA a drive.
3. If all the drives pass with flying colors, try a direct connection. I had a problem with my NVX Pioneer when I first set it up. Copying files to the NVX from my desktop (wired) were blinding fast compared to my NV+, but when I tried to copy a file back it was dog slow. I didn't notice it on normal small files, but when I tried to copy a video file back, it was <1KB/s!. I worked with tech support and they were about to issue me an RMA to use to push a return to the vendor. I posted on this forum and a direct connect was suggested. (They had to tell me how to do it). With a direct connection, I had absolutely no file transfer problem. It turned out a gigabit switch by another manufacturer was at fault. I dropped back to my old FS105 switch until my new Netgear GS108 switch arrived and have not had a problem since. If you have the problem with a direct connection, then you know it is the unit.
As to support, sometimes they do drop the ball, you just have to keep bugging them at times. If you determine it is the unit and not a flaky drive, open an on line case with them and when you get a case number, edit your first post and add the case # to the end of the header. That will help catch the eye of any Jedi passing by as well as other experienced members who can chime in with suggestions. - I would like to do a test of the drives, but that is made more complicated by my NV+ having less space than my NVX BE and my collection of data being bigger than either unit can handle. As it stands I've had to keep some shares exclusive to the NV+, some exclusive to the NVX BE, with only the most important being synced between both. This is why I need new drives.
Once I find a way to get a backup of all my stuff off the NVX BE I will try to test the drives, but that might take a while to work out.
As for RSYNC, I'm assuming that would be the built-in backup task scheduler? I am already running that for my important stuff, and will use that for all my shares once I have the disk space. - Read back through your initial post and found I did not respond to "desktop RAID". While I don't know exactly where you picked that phrase up, but, the ReadyNAS is a desktop RAID unit as opposed to a commercial rackmount RAID unit. I do know that WD has stated that they do not recommend the consumer grade drives, especially the "green" drives for use in a RAID application. Part of this is the electronics on the drive try to control when the drive spins down, whereas in the NAS application, the NAS tries to control that and you have a conflict.
Seagate's approach and I believe Hitachi's as well is different and uses the lower RPM of the drive to save energy.
Yes, I was referring to the backup task scheduler in Frontview.
If you are looking at a second NV+, you might then install 3TB drives in the NVX which would give you a volume twice as large as it would be with 1.5TB drives, and then both NV+ units could be used as a backup for separate shares with the 1.5TB drives. My two NVX units are configured currently with 2x3TB and 2x1TB drives for a net volume of 4.5TB (single redundancy) with the Pioneer being the backup target of the BE. The NV+ is a secondary backup of the critical (non-video) data. I had the unit and the drives are the ones removed during the upgrade of the NVX units.
You can also use large drives connected to a PC and copy files over to that drive via the network. This is a time consuming process and one I use to periodically backup my files before I went to the backup scheduler using rsync. - The reason for the term "desktop RAID" is from the marketing blurb for the Deskstar and the Barracuda XT. Essentially those drives are rated and approved by the manufacturer for "desktop RAID" scenarios, which means RAID 0 or 1. Using those drives for RAID 5 would be outside the "approved use" limitations, which seems to mean that they will refuse to fix or replace them if the drives were used in RAID 5 or anything similar. The Ultrastar on the other hand is rated for "Enterprise RAID" use, which does include RAID 5.
At least, that's what I've understood from reading up on the marketing material.
As to getting 3TB drives for the NVX and having two NV+ with 1.5TB drives as backup for the NVX, that could work. Problem there is that I would then need to buy 3TB drives, which cost more per GB. Not to mention I would also need another set of 1.5TB drives. And a replacement NVX. I can certainly afford it, but it's getting close to my limits of reasonable spending.
I guess I should have clarified my first post a bit. I know that all the drives on the HCL will work with the NV+. I just don't know how reliable they are. According to the manufacturers, the cheap low power drives are not reliable, which has me worried. I have not had any problems with this yet, but still. At the end of the day I just want a set of drives that I can trust that will not break simply from being in a RAID 5 for more than a few weeks, or drop from the RAID from an unexpected delay in processing some random task. Does that make sense? - First, if a drive fails, in my experience, they don't ask what service they were in. I have never used Enterprise class drives in any of my ReadyNAS units, and have had to replace two Seagates (a ST3500630AS four years ago after a month in service and ST1000528AS last fall, again after a month in service). I replaced the 630AS with the same model to bring my two drive array back up to redundancy and those two drives then ran for over 24,000 hours until replaced with larger drives because of space limitations. I replaced the ST31000528AS with a spare purchased when I bought the drives. I have a second drive that needs to go back now for replacement by Seagate. This is two of this model, but I do have 10, 8 in use and two spares.
The consumer class drives are more prone to failure, but use in Raid5 use will not cause a failure. I use X-Raid in my NV+ and X-Raid2 in the two NVX units. When I started with the NV+ it was a two drive raid, so was the equivalent of Raid1, and lost a drive. The 1TB drive was lost in a four drive array (equivalent of Raid5). On the Seagates, you run SeaTools and when it fails the long generic the report gives you a code that is used when you apply for the RMA. You then get a download that details packaging requirements, return instructions and a mailing label. When they get the drive you get an e-mail that it has been received, another e-mail when they are shipping the replacement. In both of my cases, it was less than 10 days from the time I sent off the failed drive until I had the replacement drive. The replacement is generally a refurbished drive.
It is recommended that for rack mount ReadyNAS units only enterprise class drives be used, but for desktop ReadyNAS units both consumer and enterprise class drives are on the HCL.
Once you get the NVX fully backed up, connect the drives and run both short and long tests in SeaTools and see what the results are. Kimius wrote: For a few weeks now, when I copy files to the unit it will sometimes hang for several minutes, with nothing being accessible. Not even the web admin pages respond. Usually I need to reboot the unit to fix it, or wait upwards of 5 minutes.
This sounds like sectors are being reallocated by one or more of the drives. You may be able to verify this by checking your log files.Kimius wrote: Hitachi Ultrastar A7K2000 2 TB
Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 2 TB
Seagate Barracuda XT 2 TB
My choice would be the Ultrastar and if I couldn't afford it then the Deskstar.
-StefanPapaBear wrote: The consumer class drives are more prone to failure, but use in Raid5 use will not cause a failure.
That's all I needed to know. Seems I will need to get some enterprise drives then.WhoCares? wrote: This sounds like sectors are being reallocated by one or more of the drives. You may be able to verify this by checking your log files.
The log files show no increase in reallocated sectors. That's one of the first things I check.Kimius wrote: PapaBear wrote: The consumer class drives are more prone to failure, but use in Raid5 use will not cause a failure.
That's all I needed to know. Seems I will need to get some enterprise drives then.
Please note that I said "more prone", not prone. The enterprise class drives have also been known to fail, in fact if I recall correct there was one member wondering if his ReadyNAS was failing because he had suffered two failures out of four enterprise class drives, and was under the impression that they don't fail. Please understand, all drives are subject to failure. In fact, this acceptance of the fact that all drives will fail is why we have RAID with single and even double redundancy (an option in ReadyNAS units with 6 or more bays).
I for one am not convinced that enterprise class drives are cost effective in a home environment. In my example, I could have purchased 16 Seagate 1TB consumer drives for less than the cost of 8 enterprise class drives necessary to populate my two NVX units. I chose to purchase 10 instead, giving me two spares. Now, that I have started to upgrade the size of my disks, all those extra drives would be going to waste. Yes, I have suffered two drive failures, but I also purchased two spares. The refurbished drives I have received to replace the two failed drives will be put to other uses - maybe as a data drive in a PC.
I was able to buy 5 Hitachi HDS5C3030ALA630 drives for a total of $660. The first one came from Amazon for $140 and then Newegg had a sale so the final 4 cost me $520. If I were to have purchased 4 x 7K3000 the HUA7230303ALA640 it would have cost me $1400 ($350 each). (Note: Newegg lists the HDS5C3030ALA630 by its OEM PN 0S03230, but the photo of the top of the drive shows the model no. HDS5C3030ALA630 and that is the drive I received. For some reason both Amazon and Newegg are now listing the newer Hitachi drives by their OEM P/N as Hitachi uses an opaque anti-static bag with a printed label with the OEM PN and serial numbers listed. The OEM PN does not appear on the disk label).
You might also want to reboot the NVX and trigger the disk test from the boot menu when you reboot. This will take several hours to run.- Any Idea when the compatibility list will be updated with the 3TB drives for the 4200 units.
- The 4200 only supports 3TB drives on channels 1-4 due to a hardware limitation.
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