Seagate Ironwolf 8Tb HDD

[TrevorH]

I bought 3 of these drives recently for my DS920+. 1 failed within a few hours and is due to be collected today for return. I now find that a second has also failed, within just 4 days. Have I been unlucky or are these drives overrated?
I purchased a 4th to fill all the bays, but am beginning to think that was a big mistake on my part, a 66% failure rate is hardly inspiring.
Can I mix makes as long as the drives have the same capacity? If so, what makes/models would you recommend?
I know that some here say you should buy the higher spec models, but I’m afraid price matters when you’re on a pension. Even between the Ironwolf and Pro models, there’s a £60 difference and £240 for the 4 is, to me at least, a lot of extra money to find. The only other alternative I can think of is to reduce my overall capacity to a couple of more expensive models, sacrificing my plan for media storage in the short term and expanding as time and money allows.
I‘d appreciate any help.
Thanks

 

[Rusty]

Have I been unlucky

wouldn't be the 1st time, but maybe there is also a problem with the NAS itself.

Can I mix makes as long as the drives have the same capacity?

Yes

If so, what makes/models would you recommend?

Best to consult the Synology support compatibility page. These are officilly tested Seagate 8TB drives for 920:

Compatibility List | Synology Inc.

Synology strives to improve product compatibility. Check out our compatibility list before purchasing the peripherals you need.

www.synology.com

I know that some here say you should buy the higher spec models

If this is a NAS problem this will not matter. Also, Ironwolf are in a way favorable drives by Synology as they have certain added elements inside Storage manager when it comes to that brand in particular.

 

[TrevorH]

wouldn't be the 1st time, but maybe there is also a problem with the NAS itself.


Yes


Best to consult the Synology support compatibility page. These are officilly tested Seagate 8TB drives for 920:

Compatibility List | Synology Inc.

Synology strives to improve product compatibility. Check out our compatibility list before purchasing the peripherals you need.

www.synology.com

If this is a NAS problem this will not matter. Also, Ironwolf are in a way favorable drives by Synology as they have certain added elements inside Storage manager when it comes to that brand in particular.

Many thanks for your reply
I checked the Synology compatibility tables and looked at various reviews which all seemed to rate these HDD very highly, that’s why I’m so disappointed I suppose.
How do I tell if it‘s the 920+ itself and not the HDD? The 2 failures have been in different bays and 1 (touch wood lol) is behaving itself. The second I only installed yesterday, but is reported as healthy.
I’d setup email notifications and by the time I got up at 3.00am there were over 100 emails reporting that an i/o error had occurred, possibly due to bad sectors. Shortly after it was reported that the health was critical and the drive needed replacing.

 

[jeyare]

A much more important question in the case of budget driven purchasing is:
do I really need such a large final storage capacity?

Sitting for a while with a glass of good wine at a table with paper and a pencil can make the final need much better. At best, a person will have pleasant thoughts.

Large free storage space attracts waste storage = I call it an internet content backup. Similarly with photos that no one cleans immediately. Not to mention the lack of habit of doing regular deduplication.

… and that has a huge impact on the final budget, which is such a critical selection rule for the budget driven people when shopping.

 

[TrevorH]

A much more important question in the case of budget driven purchasing is:
do I really need such a large final storage capacity?

Sitting for a while with a glass of good wine at a table with paper and a pencil can make the final need much better. At best, a person will have pleasant thoughts.

Large free storage space attracts waste storage = I call it an internet content backup. Similarly with photos that no one cleans immediately. Not to mention the lack of habit of doing regular deduplication.

… and that has a huge impact on the final budget, which is such a critical selection rule for the budget driven people when shopping.

Thanks for taking the time to provide your thoughts. At present, I have ~8Tb of music, films etc. and 750Gb of photos in my Lightroom catalog, most of which are large NEF files and I expect that to grow quite a bit. With docs and other bits and pieces I’m at around 9.5Tb, so thought I’d future proof as much as possible, hence the increase to, well, around 22Tb. I took the view that I’d end up having to buy larger drives sooner or later, so thought I’d bit the bullet and get as much capacity as I could now, rather than end up with a few smaller drives ending up gathering dust in a couple of years.

 

[Rusty]

there were over 100 emails reporting that an i/o error had occurred, possibly due to bad sectors

Well my money is on the drives tbh, and truth be told better to have they die now before you started using the NAS then later on (that will happen eventually but you know what I mean).

Personally in the past 12y and over 50 drives so far I have had 3 drives that failed. Only one drive in a batch of 4 new ones died in the 1st 24h. It was in 2013, a WD RED 3TB.

So start with drive replacement and force the new drives into the same bays to see what will happen in the next 48-72h.

 

[TrevorH]

I’ve emailed Scan UK where I bought them to see what they have to say. They’ve been great so far, dealing with the return, so I hope they’ll be able to sort things out amicably.
Thanks again to both of you for taking the trouble to help.

 

[fredbert]

Large free storage space attracts waste storage

When I started working we were allocated a huge 5MB each for building code and testing. As for the NAS, if it's being used for multiple people then you have to accommodate their behaviour: if you're backing up their devices then you have little control to influence how they keep data, and doubly so for family because you've probably lost their attention and respect.

Re. the 8 TB Ironwolf, I have five from Scan UK and a year later no problems.

 

[TrevorH]

When I started working we were allocated a huge 5MB each for building code and testing. As for the NAS, if it's being used for multiple people then you have to accommodate their behaviour: if you're backing up their devices then you have little control to influence how they keep data, and doubly so for family because you've probably lost their attention and respect.

Re. the 8 TB Ironwolf, I have five from Scan UK and a year later no problems.

Good to know that your HDD are functioning well, Clearly, I’ve just been unlucky I guess. Yes, I have to accommodate my wife’s behaviour, she has yet to discover the Del key

 

[jeyare]

some examples for the understanding:
I am based on the idea that when I lose data, I will be most angry for the loss of "memories" - photos, home videos, documents. Not for the internet content downloaded anytime.

Then follow yours:

At present, I have ~8Tb of music, films etc. and 750Gb of photos in my Lightroom catalog, most of which are large NEF files and I expect that to grow quite a bit.

Because you are bothered by the primary cost of disks, you are investing in storing content that is renewable from the Internet. Nobody will return your own content to you.

Different point of view:

Here is a huge difference in the required RAW capacity for 6 years = 400% = it means less cost to the disks.

BTW:

With docs and other bits and pieces I’m at around 9.5Tb

you can calculate here this part (doc, backups,...). Still better than the common attitude.

In the final, it's up to you whether you go to invest in internet content storage. Or into your memories.

The only other alternative I can think of is to reduce my overall capacity to a couple of more expensive models, sacrificing my plan for media storage in the short term and expanding as time and money allows.

Here is the way, how to invest less money to perfect enterprise HDDs and solid Storage environment. So don't forget for the backup cost (additional storage space ... ext. HDD, cloud, ...).

Cheers

-- post merged: 22. Oct 2021 --

When I started working we were allocated a huge 5MB each for building code and testing. As for the NAS, if it's being used for multiple people then you have to accommodate their behaviour: if you're backing up their devices then you have little control to influence how they keep data, and doubly so for family because you've probably lost their attention and respect.

Since I use FolderSizes (Sanpshot reports), last month I noticed that my younger son increased the capacity of the NAS backup of his photos from a smartphone by a considerable size, which did not escape my attention.
After removing approximately + 80% of the content, which included memes and similar waste, the repair was performed. He himself admitted that he would not need it.

When you are going on holiday, you also don't put a TV, a washing machine, a refrigerator in the car, .... You only store as much as you can fit. And in a car as big as you are willing to invest.

The biggest gain in the capacity of home NAS are movies downloaded from the web.

re backup:
- there is just a single policy - every valuable content is stored in our NASes
- only computer OS drives for the regular backup ... then you can control the backup capacity easy.

A completely different situation is when you are a "movie" creator (YT, ...). But it's no longer about paying £ 100 more or not.

 

[TrevorH]

some examples for the understanding:
I am based on the idea that when I lose data, I will be most angry for the loss of "memories" - photos, home videos, documents. Not for the internet content downloaded anytime.

Then follow yours:

At present, I have ~8Tb of music, films etc. and 750Gb of photos in my Lightroom catalog, most of which are large NEF files and I expect that to grow quite a bit.

View attachment 4660

Because you are bothered by the primary cost of disks, you are investing in storing content that is renewable from the Internet. Nobody will return your own content to you.

Different point of view:

View attachment 4662

Here is a huge difference in the required RAW capacity for 6 years = 400% = it means less cost to the disks.

BTW:

you can calculate here this part (doc, backups,...). Still better than the common attitude.

In the final, it's up to you whether you go to invest in internet content storage. Or into your memories.


Here is the way, how to invest less money to perfect enterprise HDDs and solid Storage environment. So don't forget for the backup cost (additional storage space ... ext. HDD, cloud, ...).

Cheers

You’re quite right about irreplaceable data like photos and I have them backed up to 3 external USB drives. The media files were more as the main media library for streaming to my Samsung TV. We got so fed up channel hopping all the time that we decided the TV license was a waste of money so we watch no live TV whatsoever. I diligently ripped all my Blu-ray and dvd disks and CD to establish a decent quantity of stuff we could watch as and when. They’re all backed up, but to an assortment of external usb drives. Most would qualify for the Antiques Roadshow (if it still airs) and I wanted to be prepared in case any of them suddenly passed away!
I’m in the process of looking into cloud storage too for our most precious memories and thinking of taking advantage of our Amazon Prime unlimited photo storage. Very early days yet as I need to do some more research. Until now, this was not a practical solution as our broadband was slooow, so much so that even lower res YouTube videos would constantly be buffering and downloads were measured in hours and days. Now we have fixed wireless internet and wow, what a difference.
I did wonder if I could attach a USB drive as an external device, but again need to research how practical that would be, just for our media files.
Thanks again!

 

[fredbert]

You can use a USB drive to store media files but if you're using them with DSM's Indexing Service be prepared to have it re-index whenever/should ever the USB drive become unavailable (i.e. lags mounting on boot-up so the packages that use the files are looking for them and not finding them). Generally not much of an issue* but Video Station will assume all media has been deleted then go an re-fetch metadata again, losing any manual corrections you've done (and you will have), unless you diligently export .vsmeta files regularly.

I use USB drives as destinations for Hyper Backup, between NAS. I did use a USB drive for media and learnt the above lesson so others don't have to.

I looked up when a UK TV licence is required, blimey .

Do I need a TV licence?

If you watch 'live' TV, you need a TV licence; there's no avoiding it. But if you watch catch-up without using BBC iPlayer, you could ditch it & save £100s.

www.moneysavingexpert.com

*or to put another way, I didn't notice any issues except with Video Station but my music is much smaller so on the NAS internal storage, and photos have to be. Plex was more robust as it can be set to wait before deleting items from it's database when the files can't be found, and if they come back online they will become available again as if nothing had happened. We use Plex mostly and have Video Station as a fallback.

 

[TrevorH]

That’s useful, thanks for sharing your experience.
I need to look at video station to see how it does what. I have (well I think so) a pretty robust folder structure from my use of JRiver Media Center, although i can see that I will probably need to change file names to meet the convention it uses. I’m not really bothered by the eye candy or even synopses tbh as long as I can browse my folders easily to make choices.
Yes, the TV licence requirements are really draconian, but they have to prove we watch anything live and I can put hand on heart nd say we don’t. For us, there’s b***er all we want to watch!