When to replace an aging HDD?

Currently reading
When to replace an aging HDD?

61
20
NAS
DS1019+, DS412+
Operating system
  1. macOS
Mobile operating system
  1. iOS
Some of my oldest NAS HDDs currently in use (Seagate ST3000VN000's, from before they got the IronWolf brand name) have been in continuous use for over 5 years. Thus far they've served very well, but given HDD failure rates tend to exhibit a u-shape, with failure rates starting to rise around 5 years, I'm considering replacing them pre-emptively them with some newer drives. At what point would you start replacing HDDs as a precautionary measure?
 
Any bed sectors reported on it? It's true that all drives fail, just a matter of time, but for me, I always have a hot or cold spare drive and replace it as soon as it fails or DSM is alerting that it will fail. This should be even more true with the upcoming DSM7 and what Syno has in store.

So all in all, I just wait until it fails. I have some drives in x11 models that are still running fine, then again had some WD RED die in the 1st 24h.
 
A while ago, I posted about one of my 3TB WD Red's that had failed in my NAS. If I remember correctly, DSM reported it as failed and it sounded pretty rough. It wouldn't complete the quick smart test in WD's data lifeguard software.

I was going to take it out and shoot it, for the cheek. However, I relented and put it in an e-sata caddy attached to my desktop. It's still going! I have orientated the drive horizontally though! It's as quiet as a mouse and the WD test completes normally and it shows up as healthy in that software.

Go figure? I really do think that placing a drive horizontally is better for the drive bearings!

The trouble with letting them fail is the stress on the remaining drives when the raid rebuilds. No worse than data scrubbing though, I suppose.
 
Thank you for the perspectives - I may replace some of the old Seagates to reduce the risk of correlated failures, maybe even re-use some of them after I start to have actual drive failures...

My drives are currently a mix of the 5y+ old Seagate 3TB drives, some 2-3y old 4GB HGSTs and some sub-1y Toshiba 4TB N300s.
 
Send them to me :geek: (y)
@Coop777 don't listen to @Telos send me a message ... I'll even pay the postage :LOL:

I have an old NAS that uses old disks for Time Machine, since it's only used for those 'oh f&%$' moments of recent deletes. It's less needed now with sync'ed files and versioning. Clones of OS disks do the main backup.

RAID ... backup, backup, backup!! Of course it does depend on whether this is a business risk where cost of early disk replacement is cheaper than outages from failure and cost of total failure.
 
For years I simply replaced drives with next bigger sweet price spot as my usage filled the array.
When the 4 drive array of 500g drives started to fill, I then cycled 1tb drives in. Then later, cycled 3tb ones in. In 20 years or so I think I only had one or two fails before replacement.
Back in 1988 I started doing disk to disk backups at work because disk to tape was taking too long. I adopted this at home soon after with windows servers.
 

Create an account or login to comment

You must be a member in order to leave a comment

Create account

Create an account on our community. It's easy!

Log in

Already have an account? Log in here.

Similar threads

The discs arrive tomorrow. For now I have moved all the files from the small volume and it is now ready to...
Replies
12
Views
1,041
  • Question
Good question! I don’t know. I just hope that if I need it then it does the least risk way of switching over.
Replies
5
Views
1,402
yes, will definitely use the move function, its way faster. I just hope it can move my VMs running too...
Replies
8
Views
1,286
The drive is a completly new drive. And it is surpose to replace the other drive. I put it in the nas...
Replies
14
Views
2,169
  • Locked
@esbenvb Please do not make duplicate posts on the same issue. Also, while you obfuscated the word it's...
Replies
2
Views
10,011
How did it go? I have a DS720+ with a WD white label drive installed and just purchased a WD Red Pro 18 TB...
Replies
6
Views
2,791

Welcome to SynoForum.com!

SynoForum.com is an unofficial Synology forum for NAS owners and enthusiasts.

Registration is free, easy and fast!

Back
Top