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Forum Discussion
shingled magnetic recording (SMR) hard drive fiasco - inquiring on recommendations
It's been a while since I jumped on the forum but what brings me here is my NAS volume utilization is hovering around 65%. I believe it's good until 80% and then starts to bark at you about storage ...
SamirD wrote:
Servethehome just did a nice article on the SMR drives in a RAID:
https://www.servethehome.com/wd-red-smr-vs-cmr-tested-avoid-red-smr/
Yeah, I caught their youtube video on it: https://youtu.be/8hdJTwaTl8I Though they tested only with ZFS, I think their results apply to btrfs (and FWIW, to ext).
If you do want to use these drives (personally I wouldn't), then you need to be careful to not store files on the NAS while it is rebuilding or resyncing. That combination is what creates the huge performance hit in write speeds.
SamirD wrote:
They also have a table of SMR drives:
That table actually comes from WD, and is available in many other places. Seagate also has put SMR into many of their desktop (and USB) drives. One implication is that you should be very careful about using desktop drives in a RAID array (and also very careful on USB drive shucking).
I remember when drives where more expensive and were made as robust as possible so there was no 'consumer' drive variant. The reason these problems even exist is because the demand has been trying to put a consumer drive in what is otherwise an enterprise role (storage array).
Even the wd red nas drives that every datahoarder falls all over is nothing when compared to the reliability of a true enterprise drive that has design specifications calling for twice the MTBF and even carrying almost twice the warranty. Yes, it costs nearly twice as much, but then you get what you pay for--consumer drives for cheaper in an enterprise application will have higher failure rates and other issues and that's the cost tradeoff.
There was another article done by servethehome on the whole 'shucking' idea that the consumer drive inside was essentially one of the touted 'red' nas drives:
https://www.servethehome.com/wd-wd100emaz-easystore-10tb-external-backup-drive-review/
And while many similarities between the drives were found, people's real-world experiences in the comments showed the true nature of these drives:
While it's never a good idea to decieve your customers, it's also never a good idea as a consumer to try to decieve a company. I'm sure WD has warranteed many shucked drives that otherwise wouldn't have failed in their original intended use. The street goes both ways.
SamirD wrote:
Even the wd red nas drives that every datahoarder falls all over is nothing when compared to the reliability of a true enterprise drive that has design specifications calling for twice the MTBF and even carrying almost twice the warranty.
I have no issues with people buying enterprise class drives, but I do want to point out that many people don't believe they are worth the extra cost if you are simply looking for more reliability.
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/enterprise-drive-reliability/ is an old post arguing that they are not. However, as the market and technology evolve, that could easily change.
SamirD wrote:
it's also never a good idea as a consumer to try to deceive a company. I'm sure WD has warranteed many shucked drives that otherwise wouldn't have failed in their original intended use.
My understanding is that WD can identify the shucked drive by it's serial number (it also is usually labeled differently). So getting it replaced under warranty would require putting it back into the USB shell in a way that doesn't betray the shucking.
That said, I agree with your principle here.
The Blackblaze experiment has really chanced from their initial 'consumer only' model. If you look at the evolution of their storage pods, they keep adding more and more enterprise quality components to improve reliability. In the end they will realize what enterprise users already know--if you want enterprise quality, use enterprise components.
Of course, many silly consumers have taken their data to indicate that enterprise quality is just a marketing trick vs a true specifications difference. But do this long enough and the truth becomes pretty evident. There's a reason why enterprise 300GB sas drives that are $10 are still reliable while 300GB sata drives from the same era are dead or doa. In fact, I have no idea why nas units haven't started incorporating sas controllers as they could use the much more reliable sas drives. There are no 'consumer' sas drives--it's all enterprise.
Someone on reddit pointed out that the serial number on the bare drive and the serial number on the enclosure are the exact same. Because of this, you can actually send back the bare drive to WD and they replace it with a new one in an enclosure that you then can remove again. Others have also had their warranty claims denied so the usual ymmv caveats and conditions when trying to build arrays on the cheap.
SamirD wrote:In fact, I have no idea why nas units haven't started incorporating sas controllers as they could use the much more reliable sas drives. There are no 'consumer' sas drives--it's all enterprise.
The lack of a full set of SMART parameters for SAS is one big reason, I'm sure. While enterprises typically run the drives 24/7 and replace them at the end of the warranty period, regardless of current performance, typical NAS users don't. So full SMART is needed for proper life evaluation.
My main NAS is a converted RD5200, so suports SAS (though the drives in it are from my old destop RN512 and EDA500, so are SATA), and I have an external SAS chassis also connected to it that does contain SAS drives. I do run it 24/7, but still wish I had a better set of SMART parameters. The performance of the external SAS chassis is equal to the volumes in the main chassis, very unlike external via eSATA port multiplication, so that's another reason to like SAS. I just wish there wasn't the SMART trade-off.
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