Reliability issues on 6TB internal HDDs?

[Technique]

2 hours ago, adrynalyne said:

Is that a question or a comment?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

 

It was an - i've googled SMART and i'm showing that i have so that nobody can accuse me of not bothering to, and i really don't think the results i found tie in with what you just said so more directions please

[SnoopZ]

36 minutes ago, Technique said:

It was an - i've googled SMART and i'm showing that i have so that nobody can accuse me of not bothering to, and i really don't think the results i found tie in with what you just said so more directions please

A quick Google of HDD smart came up with this which should help you.

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.howtogeek.com/134735/how-to-see-if-your-hard-drive-is-dying/amp/

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

44 minutes ago, Technique said:

It was an - i've googled SMART and i'm showing that i have so that nobody can accuse me of not bothering to, and i really don't think the results i found tie in with what you just said so more directions please

Well, obviously, you don't know any more about it... Or you wouldn't ask it...

[adrynalyne]

1 minute ago, Mindovermaster said:

Well, obviously, you don't know any more about it... Or you wouldn't ask it...

Dude, take a walk if you want to bicker. It’s geting old now. 

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

7 minutes ago, adrynalyne said:

Dude, take a walk if you want to bicker. It’s geting old now. 

Well, if he never learns, why is he asking 100 questions?

[Technique]

2 minutes ago, Mindovermaster said:

Well, if he never learns, why is he asking 100 questions?

I think the question is if i bother you so much then why don't you simply move on?

 

Honestly, i wouldn't mind one bit if you did.

21 minutes ago, SnoopZ said:

A quick Google of HDD smart came up with this which should help you.

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.howtogeek.com/134735/how-to-see-if-your-hard-drive-is-dying/amp/

Haha when you put it like that (googling HDD smart) it just sounds so obvious now that it's laughable. Thanks anyway

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

1 minute ago, Technique said:

Honestly, i wouldn't mind one bit if you did.

See whacha did there...

[Technique]

2 minutes ago, Mindovermaster said:

See whacha did there...

yeah, i basically told you that i'm getting bored of you flitting between being helpful and just a nuisance complaining about how i am asking questions or that i'm not picking it up as fast as you'd like me to. If you can't decide whether you want to be helpful or just a nuisance then i'd rather you were just consistently a nuisance.

 

Or even better ... just moved on. Like i said, if my posts are that much of a chore to you then feel free to not even open my threads. Nobody has put a gun to your head telling you you have to.

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

15 minutes ago, Technique said:

yeah, i basically told you that i'm getting bored of you flitting between being helpful and just a nuisance complaining about how i am asking questions or that i'm not picking it up as fast as you'd like me to. If you can't decide whether you want to be helpful or just a nuisance then i'd rather you were just consistently a nuisance.

 

Or even better ... just moved on. Like i said, if my posts are that much of a chore to you then feel free to not even open my threads. Nobody has put a gun to your head telling you you have to.

Oh, @DevTech...

 

Also, I am not fighting with you...

So I get a little sarcastic, that's life, man..

 

Edit: Oh, and, I've helped you loads. see my first few posts. They weren't against you at all..

[Circaflex]

2 hours ago, Mindovermaster said:

Well, if he never learns, why is he asking 100 questions?

 

2 hours ago, Mindovermaster said:

Well, obviously, you don't know any more about it... Or you wouldn't ask it...

 

2 hours ago, Mindovermaster said:

Oh, @DevTech...

 

Also, I am not fighting with you...

So I get a little sarcastic, that's life, man..

 

Edit: Oh, and, I've helped you loads. see my first few posts. They weren't against you at all..

 

This is probably the best case of the pot calling the kettle black on this forum... from the random bickering you seem to bring to every answer being a tag of some other member, it gets old. The forums are here for users to ask questions, whether they are beginners or experts. I'd take a step back and look in the mirror, you started out somewhere and it definitely wasn't with all of the knowledge to start like everyone else.

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

1 minute ago, Circaflex said:

 

 

 

This is probably the best case of the pot calling the kettle black on this forum... from the random bickering you seem to bring to every answer being a tag of some other member, it gets old.

EVERY? You seem to exaggerate a lot...

[DevTech]

2 hours ago, Mindovermaster said:

Oh, @DevTech...

 

Also, I am not fighting with you...

So I get a little sarcastic, that's life, man..

 

Edit: Oh, and, I've helped you loads. see my first few posts. They weren't against you at all..

 

11 minutes ago, Circaflex said:

 

 

 

This is probably the best case of the pot calling the kettle black on this forum... from the random bickering you seem to bring to every answer being a tag of some other member, it gets old. The forums are here for users to ask questions, whether they are beginners or experts. I'd take a step back and look in the mirror, you started out somewhere and it definitely wasn't with all of the knowledge to start like everyone else.

There are times when @Mindovermasteris almost mind bogglingly rude often just hitting like a surprise tsunami out of the blue...

 

And he's often argumentative.

 

But... he really pays attention. And reads stuff. And learns. 

 

His ability to help others had grown by leaps and bounds and he is here at Neowin tirelessly responding at all times often when there are lulls in the presence of other members...

 

So in totality he is a huge asset to Neowin and getting better all the time and hopefully the rough edges will wear down over time until a jewel is exposed underneath.

 

As a general comment on rudeness, I have two thoughts:

 

1. Try to show some compassion to people that appear rude since we have no idea what they are dealing with in their personal lives. I've seen cases of people still trying to help while dealing with cancer or family members that are sick or unbearable tragedies and losses...

 

2. Which leads me to the main takeaway: IT IS ALL JUST DIGITAL TEXT ON A SCREEN. Time was taken to provide information. No matter had badly it is presented, it is FREE and your eyeballs can SCAN THE TEXT for the useful parts and discard the style and not useful parts.

 

 

[DevTech]

3 hours ago, Technique said:

I think the question is if i bother you so much then why don't you simply move on?

 

Honestly, i wouldn't mind one bit if you did.

Haha when you put it like that (googling HDD smart) it just sounds so obvious now that it's laughable. Thanks anyway

1. Just accept info that is useful and ignore stuff that isn't. It is a big time waster to comment on people's style. Suggesting that people don't post because you don't like their attitude is like suggesting the press is "enemy of the people" because you don't like their questions.

 

1st Amendment!

 

2. SMART is not very smart! It probably is not useful for you to invest much attention on it since it can confuse very experienced people. If you find the concept interesting, read the Backblaze.com blog articles on correlation between SMART data and drive longevity. Thay have developed some rough "rules of thumb" for what items are possible meaningful.

 

[DevTech]

On 1/19/2019 at 3:47 PM, Technique said:

I'm looking at buying a 6TB internal HDD as i currently have 1x 1TB & 1x 2TB drives taking up 2 slots in my PC and i'm thinking i could double that in capacity and half the occupied bays.

 

After doing some reading on them the past week or so i get the impression that they can be a bit flaky in terms of reliability? 3TB (not that i'm interested in one) & 6TB aren't the best in terms of reliability but 4TB is kind of like the sweet spot.

 

But i prefer to chat with real people rather than swallowing articles, so what's the opinion from you guys?

 

From what i've read i would ideally prefer the WD Black 6TB but it's just the price that bothers me.

 

Alternatively Seagate IronWolf, Seagate BarraCuda and Seagate SkyHawk are cheaper, although i'm not sure if there's any major difference between the three other than £20. Sticking with WD is the Blue drive, though this is 5400rpm so i'd rather not.

1. You should buy the WD Black for general purpose use in your computer. It is built to higher standards and cost more because it incorporates more expensive components and has a 5 year warranty.

 

2. If you proceed with a NAS down the road, you could consider NAS type drives at that time. Check here in the forums at that time. For me if I wanted to have a NAS (which would be pointless due to lots of computers on my home LAN with empty drive slots), I would use a WD Black or a WD Red or perhaps an IronWolf.

 

3. People's personal reliability experience with brands is a useless source of information without detailed description of exact model numbers, usage scenarios and longevity times and even with that unlikely to be statistically valid.

 

4. The ONLY known source of reliable reliability data is Backblaze.com so please pour through their extensive data in preference to random googles and random anecdotes here.

 

5. I can help explain their results if needed and they don't use WD Blacks due to the cost of the drive so I'd love to see that tested...

 

[+BudMan MVC]

How do I know when to cycle older drives is a good question, I don't have any set rules.  As my storage needs expand and i get more/larger disks the older ones if still show fine via smart data.. Take a look at stablebit scanner I mentioned for a good way to monitor your disks (if running windows)

 

https://stablebit.com/Scanner

 

I have a pile of older 250GB disks on my shelf, many of them still function - but are just so small to not be worth using.. I have others that failed or showing real signs of failing soon that I destroy them and take out the magnets   They are really strong!!  Great for holding stuff up on the fridge

 

While raid can help mitigate loss of data from a single drive failure - it is not backup.  Problem with your typical raids is you need drives of the same size and speed and even make depending on your raid controller, etc.  The same people that make the scanner make some pooling software that is FANTASTIC for creating pools made up of disks of different sizes, speeds and even connection type..  And is non destructive for data already on a disk - I think maybe you had asked about doing?  If you used that software it would allow you to place disks in a pool of disks and maintain their data on them.

 

The other great part of that software is you can select directories or files specifically even and set them to have more than one copy in the pool.. So for example you put all your home movies in a directory, have it set to be on every disk in the pool be it 2, 3 or 7 disks in the pool.  So this while not a actual back does allow for loss of disk without loss of data.  When tied with the scanner software, if room allows on the pool if one of your disks start to show signs of failure the software can evacuate the going bad disk and move files to other disks in the pool..

 

Other slick thing is you can take out any of these disks out of the pool, say the machine they are in dies.  And anything that will read NTFS will be able to access the files.. It really is slick software.. https://stablebit.com/DrivePool

 

So for example in my old nas that has 4 bays, when I needed more storage I just replaced the older 640GB disks with new 2TB drives... Just migrated the files off that disk to other disks in the pool, removed it put new 2TB drive in and then let the software rebalance the storage across all the disks in the pool.  This allows for really easy expansion/replacement.  Reason for 2TB drives at the time was they were best bang for the buck $/GB and allowed for the amount of space I was looking to get..

 

Remember when I told you running a plex would be your new hobby   This is part of it.. Having to learn and "spend" money to provide storage and cpu power to have a better and bigger library... As I said then it can get expensive both in time and actual $..  For someone that worries about how much juice their fire/roku stick is eating up and turns it off..  Not sure best hobby for you - you might want to stick to just using the optical disk when you want to watch a movie

 

 

[hjf288]

I shucked a pair of 8TB WD drives from MyBooks, seem to work fine - shorter warranty but apparently white label reds inside.

[Technique]

8 hours ago, BudMan said:

HFor someone that worries about how much juice their fire/roku stick is eating up and turns it off..

 

 

Ahh is that why i turn it off?

I distinctly remember saying i don't even know why i do it, i don't know my reason.

But it seems you've made found one.

 

Anyway thanks for the response it's actually quite helpful. At the current rate, i estimate that all the movies i want on blu-ray should take me about 5 months to get, maybe 6.

 

I tested out Scarface last night, DVD vs Blu-Ray on Plex. The difference was noticeable enough for me to continue doing what i'm doing - acquiring blu-rays of movies i want in better quality. When it was DVD vs blu-ray on a PS4 (with upscaling) the difference wasn't so noticeable but via Plex it is. Have watched a few movies through Plex now and i can really see why you do it.

 

In the near future i'll be testing out viewing from a different location entirely as my sister wants to watch a movie i've got.

[+BudMan MVC]

Yeah you did say you don't know why you did it..  But then you also stated

Quote

 

i'm not a fan of this "it's only xyz per day" attitude. xyz per day is abc per week, def per month and ghi per year ... it all adds up.
 

 

 

Then also went on to say you left a few min early and were down 5k for the year.. So sure sounds like to me you don't like it using power..

 

Either way - be forewarned, this hobby can add up in time and actual cost   Time can be a killer for sure as well... I spent hours fixing up tags on my collection of Dave's Picks in my Grateful Dead collection... I am now over 150 albums of just GD hehehe...

 

 

Wow that is a lot of dead

 

And still working on the Road Trip CDs...

[DevTech]

4 hours ago, Technique said:

When it was DVD vs blu-ray on a PS4 (with upscaling) the difference wasn't so noticeable but via Plex it is.

PLEX is upscaling the DVD but the developers of PLEX and the various libraries of software they use DON'T HAVE ACCESS to the sophisticated upscaling algorithms owned by SONY.

 

That is why you see a larger difference.

 

I stopped looking into possible sources of PC software that could do ADVANCED UPSCALING since nobody [1]  at all in that somewhat long discussion could even understand the basics of upscaling I was trying to explain, leaving any chance of describing advanced techniques in Sisyphus territory...

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus

 

Footnote:

 

[1] in the interest of total accuracy, there was one person who understood upscaling and was looking for a solution to classic DVDs that have never been remastered to Blu-Ray but he never came back...

[Technique]

My 2TB drive is now nearly full so i'm going to have to buy a new drive some time soon.

 

I was reading conflicting feedback on various drives. Some people saying the WD Red is no good in a PC for day-to-day use and only should be used for NAS, others say it's fine in a PC.

 

Some say get the Seagate Barracuda for PC use, others say it's trash.

 

Then (and what made me come here just now) i read that Windows can have trouble seeing drives over 2TB. Well considering i'll be looking at a 6TB that could be a bit of a problem. I'm running Windows 7 64 bit, will it 'see' my 6TB drive as 6TB?

[DevTech]

30 minutes ago, Technique said:

My 2TB drive is now nearly full so i'm going to have to buy a new drive some time soon.

 

I was reading conflicting feedback on various drives. Some people saying the WD Red is no good in a PC for day-to-day use and only should be used for NAS, others say it's fine in a PC.

 

Some say get the Seagate Barracuda for PC use, others say it's trash.

 

Then (and what made me come here just now) i read that Windows can have trouble seeing drives over 2TB. Well considering i'll be looking at a 6TB that could be a bit of a problem. I'm running Windows 7 64 bit, will it 'see' my 6TB drive as 6TB?

Windows will have ZERO problems with large drive.

 

Somehow you were reading some bad stuff or really old stuff but eliminate that source from your bookmarks!

 

WD Red absolutely fine in a PC, I have a bunch of them here and there in my various PCs and zero problems.

 

If you study the Backblaze.com data, Hitachi drives are probably the most reliable although it's unclear if the purchase of Hitachi drives by WD had any effect...

 

As a test, I have been using a Seagate IronWolf and it performs far faster than the specs would suggest so you might add that to your candidate list.

 

 

 

[DevTech]

Given your cautious nature, you might want to buy TWO drives at the same time so that you start your media adventure with backup built right in.

 

Also, as drives get larger and larger, the PAIN of losing a drive gets more agonizing. Even forgetting about losing important data, the cost in personal time of re-creating things like hundreds of movie rips makes the cost of the drive seem like nothing and the tiny solace if it is under warranty is no solace at all really when it actually happens...

 

As @BudMansays, ALL DRIVES eventually fail...

 

A drive is most fragile when it is running and giving some consideration to the physical location is worthwhile. Vibrations from machinery like washing machines, a bus or truck passing on the street, construction with heavy tools, digging secret tunnels, Brexit, etc are all possible sources of disruption.

 

A few months back I slipped on something and put my hand out to prevent falling and the thing I put my weight on happened to be a running computer! Thus started the death of a hard drive...

 

 

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

52 minutes ago, Technique said:

My 2TB drive is now nearly full so i'm going to have to buy a new drive some time soon.

 

I was reading conflicting feedback on various drives. Some people saying the WD Red is no good in a PC for day-to-day use and only should be used for NAS, others say it's fine in a PC.

 

Some say get the Seagate Barracuda for PC use, others say it's trash.

 

Then (and what made me come here just now) i read that Windows can have trouble seeing drives over 2TB. Well considering i'll be looking at a 6TB that could be a bit of a problem. I'm running Windows 7 64 bit, will it 'see' my 6TB drive as 6TB?

Like Budman always said, ALL HDDs die... Why is always best to have 3 backup sources, and you will NEVER loose anything. Unless the apocalypse comes...

[DevTech]

1 minute ago, Mindovermaster said:

Like Budman always said, ALL HDDs die... Why is always best to have 3 backup sources, and you will NEVER loose anything. Unless the apocalypse comes...

He lives in England so the Brexit Apocalypse is coming in exactly 37 days. Zombies will roam the streets shortly thereafter...

 

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

1 minute ago, DevTech said:

He lives in England so the Brexit Apocalypse is coming in exactly 37 days. Zombies will roam the streets shortly thereafter...

 

I'll write that down...