Drive Choices for My Media Server Expansion

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JimmyH

2886 posts

Uber Geek

#304264 18-Apr-2023 20:03

I'm running out of space on an Asustor NAS I use to hold much of the content for my Jellyfin media server. Fortunately, I have 5 drive bays free, so I can just drop in another drive and expand the array.

Currently I'm running WD Ultrastar HC550 18TB drives in a RAID array. I'm happy with them, and could just drop in another one. However, I also need to keep a gimlet eye on the budget (a pre-schooler and a mortgage do that to you). I can get another 18TB Ultrastar for $849. However, I can alternatively get an 18TB Seagate Exos for $768 (an $81 or 9.5% saving). Aside from a slightly lower cache it seems to have the same specs (and much better specs than a Red Pro or an Ironwolf drive, which both also sell for more).

I'm not really a hardware guy. Given the price difference, is there any reason to stick with the Ultrastars, or can I safely just expand the existing arrays with Exos drives instead?

Throughput isn't critical. Mostly 1-2 users at any given time, with a maximum of three. I just want to have confidence that mixing drives won't create problems.

fe31nz

1228 posts

Uber Geek

#3065271 19-Apr-2023 01:14

I have been using Exos drives for a while in my MythTV box and Windows box. Recently I also tried some WD enterprise class drives (10 Tbytes and 18 Tbytes). My impression is that they are all of similar speed and capability. But the WD ones have a problem for use in quiet places - they do a background maintenance head movement that produces quite loud clicks all the time, even when they are not actually being used. That makes them unsuitable for use in a quiet location (such as my bedroom where my MythTV box is), as the noise will drive you crazy if you are doing something quiet like reading a book. In use, the Seagate and WD drives are similarly noisy, so I shut them down on my MythTV box overnight when there is not much TV recording happening and rely on my two old WD Green 4 Tbyte drives that are very quiet. In a normal PC with multiple fans, the WD clicks are not noticeable unless you are deliberately trying to hear them - the fan noise washes them out.

My oldest Exos drives are only 4.3 years old, so not even out of warranty yet, and have not given any trouble at all. My oldest operational drive is an HGST Deskstar 3 TByte drive that has now clocked up 11.45 years of power on time and is still working fine, so if WD have kept the same engineering quality in their HGST drives since the takeover, I can hope for the same from my new WD drives. But it is far too early to tell yet, for either brand.

For my latest drive, I needed still more space and I bought an Exos 20 Tbyte drive and replaced the 10 TByte noisy WD drive on the MythTV box with it. That drive was moved to my Windows box to replace an old 2 TByte WD Black drive that was still working fine but was now too small. The reason I bought the 18 TByte WD drive was that there were no 18 TByte Exos drives available at the time, and I wanted as much storage as possible. When choosing the 20 TByte Exos drive, there were 20 TByte WD drives, but they were significantly more expensive (~$200 more if I remember correctly), and I really did not want that nasty click noise in my MythTV box - it is much worse when there are two of them producing a syncopated rhythm. Now, there are 22 TByte drives available and the WD prices seem to be comparable to the Exos ones - in fact, PB Tech have a special on a WD 20 Tbyte drive that is cheaper than they are selling 20 TByte Exos drives. So for drives to use on the MythTV box, I would be buying Exos drives as all the WD ones now have that click noise. For other purposes, I would likely simply be choosing on price, as they are of very similar performance. And the Exos drives are usually the cheaper ones. If your use for them is sensitive to the cache size, then it may be worth paying a bit more for the WD ones, but I do not use my spinning drives for that sort of performance any more - that is done on NVMe SSDs.

JimmyH

2886 posts

Uber Geek

#3091475 18-Jun-2023 14:50

Thanks for that. Yeah, the 20 TB units did look attractive. But I already have the array I'm expanding based on 18TB drives, so would not see the extra 2TB at all. Unless I junked the 18TB units and replaced them with 20TB units, which isn't sensible or affordable.

The Ultrastars, and the previous array based on 6TB Reds (before WD unethically submarined SMR drives into the brand) and Ironwolves, all seem pretty quiet. But I deal with any noise issues by having them networked and tucked away downstairs, away from the rooms where media is consumed.

The Exos units are out of stock and have been for a while. But I will have to make a call on something soon, free space is getting low, low, low (about 8-9TB left across both pools) 😱

K8Toledo

1014 posts

Uber Geek

#3091492 18-Jun-2023 15:37

JimmyH:

I'm running out of space on an Asustor NAS I use to hold much of the content for my Jellyfin media server. Fortunately, I have 5 drive bays free, so I can just drop in another drive and expand the array.

Currently I'm running WD Ultrastar HC550 18TB drives in a RAID array. I'm happy with them, and could just drop in another one. However, I also need to keep a gimlet eye on the budget (a pre-schooler and a mortgage do that to you). I can get another 18TB Ultrastar for $849. However, I can alternatively get an 18TB Seagate Exos for $768 (an $81 or 9.5% saving). Aside from a slightly lower cache it seems to have the same specs (and much better specs than a Red Pro or an Ironwolf drive, which both also sell for more).

I'm not really a hardware guy. Given the price difference, is there any reason to stick with the Ultrastars, or can I safely just expand the existing arrays with Exos drives instead?

Throughput isn't critical. Mostly 1-2 users at any given time, with a maximum of three. I just want to have confidence that mixing drives won't create problems.

How many clients does your NAS serve? Do you really need RAID?

If you're copying GB's of data all day long I'd understand, but for a home media server would access times not count more than sequential speeds? Plus you lose half storage space...

Tbh I thought RAID went out of fashion years ago when high density platters started hitting 150Mbps...

As for drives.....I have around 100 2.5" & 3.5" on the shelf here of various brands but 3.5" Toshiba seem to be the least problematic and fastest.

Agree with you on WD SMR batches they should be more transparent.

Jase2985

13459 posts

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#3091495 18-Jun-2023 15:51

without raid one drive failing takes out the whole volume. unless you have a backup somewhere you are screwed and while raid is not a backup, it at least gives you some redundancy and time to repair the array before you lose any data. its also only half the storage space when its 2 drives the more drives you have the lower the % of space you lose.

I have Ironwolf Pro 16TB's in my NAS, along with a few WD Ultrastar 8TB's that im replacing when i need more space.

There are somewhat regular deals on amazon on the Ironwolfs of various sizes, but the last lot of 20TB drives seemed to have a higher DOA failure rate, the rest seemed to be ok though.

JimmyH

2886 posts

Uber Geek

#3091501 18-Jun-2023 16:07

K8Toledo:

How many clients does your NAS serve? Do you really need RAID?

If you're copying GB's of data all day long I'd understand, but for a home media server would access times not count more than sequential speeds? Plus you lose half storage space...

Tbh I thought RAID went out of fashion years ago when high density platters started hitting 150Mbps...

Yes, I do want RAID.

In my case it's not primarily about speed. It's about fault tolerance. Drives fail from time to time. I have everything critical backed up (RAID is not a backup!). But I don't fancy restoring 90TB+ from mish-mash of DVD-Rs (for the old stuff), BD-Rs, and external drives. It would take months. And then I would have to order it all properly, and re-scrape the Jellyfin metadata and manually re-fix matches etc. Yes, it's possible, but I want to avoid it for obvious reasons. With RAID I just remove the failed drive, pop in a new one and the system rebuilds. No downtime, no hassle.

Also, I don't lose half the storage. For a 10 drive pool in RAID6 I lose 2 drives (20%), only one if I went with RAID5.

And yes, I understand platters are slower than SSDs. Nope. And a striped array is capable of hitting way more than 150Mbps. Note that it matters at the moment because I don't really need more than that. But when I finally can afford a 2.5 gigabit, or even a 10 gigabit, switch for my study and NIC for my PC it will be nice. The new NAS can already handle these connections.

nzkc

1571 posts

Uber Geek

#3091504 18-Jun-2023 16:15

K8Toledo:

Tbh I thought RAID went out of fashion years ago when high density platters started hitting 150Mbps...

RAID isnt about throughput. Its about redundancy (like it says right there in the name). That said; you can use it to provide higher throughput and IOPS than a given single drive.