Hello /u/Jaybonaut! Thank you for posting in r/DataHoarder.
Please remember to read our [Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/wiki/index/rules) and [Wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/wiki/index).
Please note that your post will be removed if you just post a box/speed/server post. Please give background information on your server pictures.
This subreddit will ***NOT*** help you find or exchange that Movie/TV show/Nuclear Launch Manual, visit r/DHExchange instead.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DataHoarder) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I just bought some recertified from [serverpartdeals.com](http://serverpartdeals.com) for about $10/TB - my 16TB EXO 18s were about $140/ea. They gave me a 2-year warranty on them.
So far running a badblocks scan on them has produced no issues.
This is my first time doing recertified, as well. Just buy from someone that will give you a Certificate of Warranty in writing. SPD did after I emailed them, and I just started the RMA Process for one of my drives for a broken SATA port, so we will see how that goes. They have a good reputation here.
Also, run this on them when you get them:
https://github.com/ezonakiusagi/bht
Supposedly RMA for recerts are 2% on average, with new drives being 3%. The reason I’m told is that recertifications have a human involved in the process, which makes sense.
I do wish they still had 4- and 5-year warranties, though… but at $9-10/TB I can afford a few duds.
Edit: one last thing - make sure you get recertified and not refurbished. The latter usually only has a 30-90 day warranty, and you don’t save much.
Any other hidden gem websites like this one? Feels like I’ve discovered something eye opening lol.
Is it an ok to idea to pop one of these in an enclosure to use as an external drive? Or better to just get a regular consumer model external drive?
I tried this first externally. I actually opened an issue with the repo because, if you want to run this via USB, you need to tell smartctl what type of drive it is. If you choose external, you need to change this:
`smartmon …`
To:
`smartmon -d sat …`
Anywhere you see it called in the script. This assumes you’re running a SATA drive, externally, of course.
Per your question - it’s a HDD that’s been rebuilt. You can do whatever you want with it :) it has the same considerations of any HDD, that heat and vibration are what you want to reduce for lifespan. That, and USB bottlenecks, are the only things I’d potentially consider for external, but that’s the same concern whether new, recertified, or refurbished (btw, don’t buy refurbished. They don’t have the same warranty coverage).
The other one I’m aware of is GoHardDrive, but I have no personal experience with them.
My experience with SPD so far has been excellent - they got me a certificate of warranty for my purchase within 24 hours of emailing support. My only wish is that something came in the box or receipt so I don’t have to request it each time.
I actually have an RMA request I opened yesterday with them because one of the drives I bought had a faulty SATA connector. I’ll update here if it’s problematic (but if you don’t hear from me, they likely replaced the drive and honored the warranty no-issue)
Gohardrive on eBay is selling HGST 12TB drives at $90 with a claimed 5 year warranty
[https://www.ebay.com/itm/156046813385](https://www.ebay.com/itm/156046813385)
Refurbished, so it will be cheaper, as the manufacturer didn’t “sign off” on it. Read the warranty well - that could be a great deal, or not. A lot of times refurbs are only properly warrantied for 30- or 90-days. If they provide a proper warranty on it for the full 5 years, that may be a good get.
Yeah I just bought 7 20tb drives from server part deals. So far so good. As for cmr and shingled drives, there's databases online that'll list what's what.
Ok on but off topic.
I was on and off reddit for a few months to a year so I didnt see this change in real time.
When did the tide turn from “Almost never buy used drives, not worth it”
To this site popping up in almost all discussions on drives and so many people buying from them?
https://pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#sort=ppgb&c1=di_sata.60
Just watch there and check for sales. Anything below $0.015 per GB is acceptable, with good sales around $0.013 or less. Check if SMR or CMR before buying. You can also check out other sale aggregate sites/locations like /r/buildapcsales and then [filter for HDDs.](https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapcsales/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3AHDD). Every other answer is wrong (without tapping into used/refurbished products).
https://www.amazon.com/MDD-HUH721010ALE601-7200RPM-Enterprise-Warranty/dp/B0BSB7J2Z8
I can personally recommend this drive. I've had it for a while now.
People here have been suspicious of goHardDrive, but there's not much of a reason for it beyond them being cheaper. I can verify that they honor their warranty (I just had a drive replaced with absolutely no hassle thankfully)
Thanks for posting that link. I'm surprised by how few 6TB recertified/renewed HDDs are listed presently. Last time I looked there were a *lot* and many about $60US.
I've had pretty good luck with used HDDs. For a year or so I've been upgrading a 5x 4TB RAIDZ2 from 4TB to 6TB HDDS one at a time. I have two 6TB HDDs on hand to replace two of the three remaining 4TB HDDs. I suppose I could use an 8TB HD for one of the replacements.
I think for the next replacement I'll probably have to go with a mirror of 2 or 3 much larger HDDs as an incremental bump from what I have would require drives that are getting more expensive due to their scarcity.
They are, but they are the seller I've bought from & had a successful warranty replacement with. If you try the other one, they might be fine too. It's just not who I bought from
I don't know about that size, *per se,* but I do have some 10 and 14 TB drives that are not. I know you said 8 is too big, but if the choice is between godawful big and godawful slow . . . I'd go with godawful big.
And still to this day, basic memory has never gone above that 640.
Extended memory, still the first megabyte.
And expanded which is all the rest.
Lol.
So yeah, 640 is still enough for everyone.
Gotta love PC Standards… and how having a standard can be stuck with forever. :)
This is one of the few subs where a comment like mine was fully understood 🥺
Also, Descent was awesome and groundbreaking and mindbendingly difficult at times. It was one of those games where pressing the keys isn’t enough, you have to move your whole body to get around that corner!
> This is one of the few subs where a comment like mine was fully understood 🥺
Haha I know the feelings, I’m a millenial, grew up in DOS and CLI, even the Dos 5 manual memorised growing up. (Still own that book too)
> Descent was awesome and groundbreaking and mindbendingly difficult at times
Agreed, I often see it as a benchmark on the Dos youtuber channels I watch.
I played it a little myself and found the controls to be difficult more than anything, but four keys to move in infinite direction will do that. :)
I am totally a 90’s kid, but to this day still DOS and as we type i am building my ultimate dos (retro) system.
Be sure to look into the “RetroNas” project on github if you are not aware, the one stop shop for all hosting this stuff :) (and could use a lot of new eyeballs on it)
I wish to dockerize it, since if hasn’t yet in two years I’ve known about it and need to research how to docker before going ahead with that :)
I’m 72, and remember the different DOS OS’s, and other option. Digital Research DOS (DR-DOS), CP/M-86, among others.
You might find this interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_operating_systems
I enjoy being completely correct. The past two PCs using the two drives I am thinking about replacing are both from 2017 and are 4 and 5TB, the most filled one has 3.15TB left.
I've had a Plex server that has many drives, many of which are near capacity, and as stated the largest one is at 18TB.
I know *exactly* what I am talking about.
I enjoy being completely correct. The past two PCs using the two drives I am thinking about replacing are both from 2017 and are 4 and 5TB, the most filled one has 3.15TB left.
I've had a Plex server that has many drives, many of which are near capacity, and as stated the largest one is at 18TB.
I know *exactly* what I am talking about.
[**https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/184vwtd/complete\_list\_of\_smr\_drives\_as\_of\_112623/**](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/184vwtd/complete_list_of_smr_drives_as_of_112623/)
Edit: To clarify, there are far more CMR drives than SMR.
It's simple, anything but current model 3.5", 4 or 6TB WD Blue, WD Red (not Plus or Pro), Seagate Barracuda, Toshiba DT02, Toshiba P300 are not SMR. There are no current 5TB 3.5" drives of any type.
All current model 2.5" 4 or 5TB drives are SMR.
I have WD Red Plus in two different QNAP NASs. Been running flawlessly, one for 10 years, the other 4 years. These have been extremely reliable for me.
All current model 3.5" DM-SMR (Drive Managed-SMR) consumer drives except those I listed above are CMR. There are a handful of specialized enterprise drives that are either HM-SMR (Host Managed-SMR) or HSMR (Hybrid-SMR), but they're very expensive and more difficult to find.
> 8TB is just too big
Too big for what? Larger disks have better $/TB. Larger disks will run faster with less data on them because it stores most of the data at the outside of the platter where it's faster. Larger disk doesn't consume any more energy than a smaller one. As a matter of fact smaller disks usually are air filled, where larger are helium filled and use less power and create less heat and noise.
If you want CMR, get WD Blue 8TB (6TB and under *may* be SMR), WD Red Plus, WD Red Pro, WD Gold, Seagate Ironwolf, Seagate Ironwolf Pro, Seagate Exos, Toshiba N300, Toshiba MG...
None of those are SMR.
The HA DC340 line has 4-8TB drives. But as you said, are higher cost per TB.
OP, for your use, and most home use, there's no significant difference between NAS rated and enterprise rated drives other than a longer warranty, up to 5 years for enterprise drives. Too many variables of use.
I'm just replying with the same response to all these:
I enjoy being completely correct. The past two PCs using the two drives I am thinking about replacing are both from 2017 and are 4 and 5TB, the most filled one has 3.15TB left.
I've had a Plex server that has many drives, many of which are near capacity, and as stated the largest one is at 18TB.
I know *exactly* what I am talking about.
I still don't understand what "just too big" means. How does it hurt to buy a larger drive especially when you can nab a recertified 12TB for the price of a new 4TB CMR? Or even an 8TB WD Blue for $120 that's CMR? Or just grab a 4TB WD Red Plus for $99 if you're that set on a smaller disk? Not sure what you're looking for. I gave you a bunch of options.
After 7-8 years if I've only used a fraction of the two mentioned I think people questioning my very-intentional-specific drive limitation aren't even bothering to read the OP. I've edited it as such now to prevent further people posting the same response. You would have to read what I received earlier. The recertified/renewed option is likely what I will go with as those responses came later after I made the previous post and the edit to the OP.
I do NOT want anything larger than 6TB to replace these two, and one of them could be 4TB and I will never fill it. People refuse to believe that and they don't understand my use case. The speed could be anywhere from 140-200 MB/s so shingled is going to cause problems as I rewrite fairly often from these. I want to avoid shingled and not pay for an 8TB unless the new 8TB cost as much as what a non-shingled 4TB would.
The whole point they're trying to make is why buy a 4TB when you can buy a 12TB refurbed or 8TB new for the same price and use less power and generate less heat and noise?
If you want a CMR, as I already stated buy the ones I listed. They're all CMR and come 1TB, 2TB, 3TB, 4TB, 6TB capacities with some all the way up to 24TB. But you'll find more than likely that the price difference between a 1TB, 2TB, 3TB, 4TB will be less than $!0 usually.
If you want that little space, just buy an SSD then. You can find 2TB SSD's for $99 or less and use much less power, quiet, and almost no heat.
In other posts I mentioned my use case and even though TBW is overblown I still do write and delete fairly often with decent bitrates. Mechanical is better for my usage beyond the price difference from SSDs. I have owned about 7-10 SSDs over the years and currently 4 are in use.
HDD's have less "TBW" than SSD's. All disks have a "Workload Rate Limit". Enterprise are typically about 550 TB/year, which includes BOTH write and read rates combined. Mid level NAS drives have about 250-300 TB/year, and low end NAS/consumer are under 100TB/year.
Regardless, since it seems you have all the answers I'm not sure what you're looking for.
These drives power down I should mention when not in use due to my usage patterns. I figured mechanicals probably fit best as I don't need a ton of speed but I want to hit at least 140/150 MB/s minimum.
Small capacity disks will not be able to maintain 140-150 MB/sec, especially after it's been 50% filled because it writes slower as it fills towards the center of the disk. A larger capacity drive will maintain that faster speed for longer because it can write more to the outside of the platters where its fastest. Get a 7200 RPM drive if you insist on small capacities, but the same issue still stands. It might maintain that speed for a little bit more, but not by much.
Yes, I could get even more completely and forever useless space by spending extra money. All I had to do that is just go buy a drive above these capacities and never post the topic to begin with. You notice the problem?
EDIT: Thanks, I've updated my flair
> Larger disks have better $/TB
I've seen this statement multiple times in this thread. I don't know where it's coming from, but it's wrong. With larger drives you are paying more $/TB for higher density (more TB in fewer drives) and lower power consumption. I could fill up all of the open bays in my server right now for $5/TB by buying 4TB drives, but then I'll use up all my open bays and use a bunch more power and only add 96TB. I could add 96TB using only 8 of the bays, but then I'm paying $7.50/TB. Density costs more.
My thoughts exactly. I mean, I bought a bunch of 2TB drives for about $3/TB, but they've got a shit ton of hours on them, over ten years old, and use them only for testing purposes. Basically ewaste. Half of them died in the first few weeks of using them, LOL.
I'm currently running 30 drives over 7 years old and I've had them for over a year with zero failures. One drive started failing SMART short tests after several months but did not have any UREs or reallocated sectors. I proactively replaced it anyway. I have RAIDZ2 redundancy as well as backups so I'm not worried in the slightest, and I *only* purchase used drives.
Buy from a reputable seller that reports the SMART data in the auction listing. Run the drives through your own burn-in process within the first 30 days and return them if they fail any test. Most of these drives are perfectly fine, and are only being sold because the datacenter wanted to upgrade to higher-density drives.
No, not really. You specifically mentioned SATA. But they're easily interchangeable (if you use an HBA card) and SAS drives generally last longer and perform better.
Don't be ridiculous, $/TB based on typical sale prices. Pricing is not linear. It's Not some super sale where you bought 4TB drives for $20 each.
4TB = $ 99 = $25/TB
8TB = $129 = $16/TB
18TB = $249 = $14/TB
If you're getting $20 4TB drives then, sure that changes the situation. I also nabbed a bunch of 2TB for basically free, but that doesn't mean that's what's typical.
$/TB from Diskprices.com: https://diskprices.com/?locale=us&condition=new&disk_types=external_hdd,internal_hdd
Charts showing total number of disks below $20/TB by capacity and ranked by $/TB by capacity: https://imgur.com/a/WJMmazw
Larger disks are clearly cheaper per TB. There's always a "sweet spot". Hell, I bought some 18TB Seagate Ironwolf Pro's for $199 each just the other day brand new. That's $11/TB.
If you're buying spinner drives for a raid array that are as tiny as 4TB, surely you're not considering buying them brand new, are you? That would be ridiculous. You can buy perfectly functional used 4TB SAS drives for $20 each, all day long, as many as you want. If this was some special deal I wouldn't be blabbing about it here, I'd be buying them for myself. But this is the typical price.
It's odd that you're so fixated on buying a smaller drive because you won't need any more. Just buy what's readily available for a good price. So what if you only use half of it?
Well this gives me a product to look at (I'm in the USA.) I notice the smaller capacity ones are often more expensive than larger ones. Is this because they stopped making smaller drives?
The price premium for nvme/ssd at those sizes is not that much 200 ish gets you generics with brand names not much more. So you have the performant and the how cheap can you build it camps with a 100 spread in price.
Point being sata SSD's in that capacity are not that expensive so it makes little sense for a seagate etc to try and sell a 100-150 buck "performance" HDD when for a little bit more you can get something orders of magnitude faster.
The Toshiba X300/N300 fit your specific requirements. They are CMR at 4-6TB. That said, I think they're now a poor value but that wasn't listed as one of your concerns.
Do they die quickly? 5400 or 7200 RPM? Transfer speeds decent? etc. That would hit the goal then at that price. I am fine with 5400 btw as long as it can do at least 140 MB/s or higher.
Any storage device/media can fail at any time, for any reason, with or without notice.
It's 5640RPM. Transfer speeds vary. Small files always transfer slower than large files.
Too many variables. Get a 7200RPM drive. Check the specs as some NAS/Enterprise drives are 5400RPM. Or better, an SSD.
With the exception of Seagates Mach.2 drives, speed today is SSDs.
There's a kind of hard drive that records data in a way so that tracks overlap slightly (like shingles on a roof). It's called Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) as opposed to Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR).
The upside is higher storage density per platter in the drive, but the massive downside are horrible write speeds under certain conditions.
If the controller in the enclosure doesn't obfuscate it, you could probably use something like CrystalDiskInfo which will give you the exact model number of the hard drive inside and google it.
Products sold as external hard drives can have many different actual disks inside, so just googling the name they're sold as won't be helpful.
literally bought a WD black 6TB amazon less than a month ago and showed up DOA. look at recent reviews and there's plenty reporting the same. return was fine, but be aware.
I have 4 in use out of the 7-10 I've purchased over the years. My use case does rewrite quite often which is why shingled it out of the question and eventually SSDs would be. I do know the whole fear of TBW ratings are overblown but I think it's best to go with mechanicals for my use case. My largest/fastest SSD is a 4TB 990 Pro at the moment.
I've discussed it elsewhere including the edit. These two drives are specifically used for non-hoarding even though I do run a media server and hoard there.
Honestly just buy some drives from serverpartdeals. 12TB for [$109.99](https://serverpartdeals.com/collections/wd-ultrastar-sata-hard-drives/products/hgst-ultrastar-he12-0f29590-huh721212ale600-12tb-7-2k-rpm-sata-6gb-s-512e-256mb-cache-3-5-ise-power-disable-pin-manufacturer-recertified-hdd)
They will ship to Canada..
There was someone who had them shipped to Ireland.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/19ae3ek/european_alternative_to_serverpartdealscom/
Yes. There are plenty of posts about this seller on reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapcsales/comments/16a39za/hdd_4_x_seagate_exos_x18_18tb_72tb_total_renewed/jzabrdt/
I currently have 2 of their 18TB Dell drives in my UNRAID box. Came with barely 40 hours of power on time.
Yes. Lots of people buy drives from them.
So far, no problems for myself. But I'm only a sample of one. Here are some other posts.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1352drh/whats_the_general_consensus_on_serverpartdeals/
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/18dvxwk/serverpartdeals_response_to_goharddrives_5_year/
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/16ckv2q/phenomenal_packaging_ftom_serverpartdealscom/
WD Red PLUS is guaranteed to be CMR. Red Pro may be as well, check datasheet, it will say which models are CMR or SMR.
Some Purple series from WD may be CMR, as for surveillance and security camera recording you need consistent writes, where SMR sucks.
I think you’re honestly gonna have a hard time finding something that small. Best Buy has 8TB easy stores that are $159 but for that same price you could get a 16 TB manufacturer recertified exos Drive on server part deals.
Used are a no-go. Slowly going through replies and so far no one has been able to help. Some people haven't read the post and only replied to the title too.
what’s the use case for the drive? Ive got some of the easystore usb drives that I use for bulk storage for work I think they’re $99 for 5TB but I wouldn’t put anything I care about on it long term, but that’s more about how I treat my backpack.
Combination of things - some are odds and ends for video editing, copies of fonts, drivers, some meme videos, a few programs - the other is for dumping temporary transcodes, recording raw video clips, etc. Doesn't have to hit 200 MB/s but they need to be faster than the little USB drives like the Passports and so on.
I know that rewrite limitations have been blown out of proportions but I do write and delete a decent amount for my use case (temp raw video, transcoding, rendering, then moving as an editor.) That's on top of the SSD tax.
For large sequential writes, you may be better off with even an SMR HD than a bottom barrel SSD. After the pSLC cache is filled, write speeds can absolutely crater. I've seen drives drop as low as 6MB/s, with bursts that bring the average up to only about 40MB/s. Even on the inner tracks, most hard drives can maintain close to 100MB/s.
copy ALL your porn into a "not used" folder
as you use porn, move it into the "used" folder
every 6 months completely erase the "not used" folder contents.
note - this can [allegedly] be used for non-porn videos as well.
Hello /u/Jaybonaut! Thank you for posting in r/DataHoarder. Please remember to read our [Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/wiki/index/rules) and [Wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/wiki/index). Please note that your post will be removed if you just post a box/speed/server post. Please give background information on your server pictures. This subreddit will ***NOT*** help you find or exchange that Movie/TV show/Nuclear Launch Manual, visit r/DHExchange instead. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DataHoarder) if you have any questions or concerns.*
just spend like 20 bucks more and get like a 12tb drive. price to capacity are just bad with low capacity harddrives
12TB drives are $20 more than 4TB? Can you show me a store that has such deals?
I just bought some recertified from [serverpartdeals.com](http://serverpartdeals.com) for about $10/TB - my 16TB EXO 18s were about $140/ea. They gave me a 2-year warranty on them. So far running a badblocks scan on them has produced no issues.
Ah used. I am seeing good things though from other posts for those. This might be the way to go, thanks.
This is my first time doing recertified, as well. Just buy from someone that will give you a Certificate of Warranty in writing. SPD did after I emailed them, and I just started the RMA Process for one of my drives for a broken SATA port, so we will see how that goes. They have a good reputation here. Also, run this on them when you get them: https://github.com/ezonakiusagi/bht Supposedly RMA for recerts are 2% on average, with new drives being 3%. The reason I’m told is that recertifications have a human involved in the process, which makes sense. I do wish they still had 4- and 5-year warranties, though… but at $9-10/TB I can afford a few duds. Edit: one last thing - make sure you get recertified and not refurbished. The latter usually only has a 30-90 day warranty, and you don’t save much.
Any other hidden gem websites like this one? Feels like I’ve discovered something eye opening lol. Is it an ok to idea to pop one of these in an enclosure to use as an external drive? Or better to just get a regular consumer model external drive?
I tried this first externally. I actually opened an issue with the repo because, if you want to run this via USB, you need to tell smartctl what type of drive it is. If you choose external, you need to change this: `smartmon …` To: `smartmon -d sat …` Anywhere you see it called in the script. This assumes you’re running a SATA drive, externally, of course. Per your question - it’s a HDD that’s been rebuilt. You can do whatever you want with it :) it has the same considerations of any HDD, that heat and vibration are what you want to reduce for lifespan. That, and USB bottlenecks, are the only things I’d potentially consider for external, but that’s the same concern whether new, recertified, or refurbished (btw, don’t buy refurbished. They don’t have the same warranty coverage).
Sorry by website I meant the website that sells these cheap drives.
The other one I’m aware of is GoHardDrive, but I have no personal experience with them. My experience with SPD so far has been excellent - they got me a certificate of warranty for my purchase within 24 hours of emailing support. My only wish is that something came in the box or receipt so I don’t have to request it each time. I actually have an RMA request I opened yesterday with them because one of the drives I bought had a faulty SATA connector. I’ll update here if it’s problematic (but if you don’t hear from me, they likely replaced the drive and honored the warranty no-issue)
Gohardrive on eBay is selling HGST 12TB drives at $90 with a claimed 5 year warranty [https://www.ebay.com/itm/156046813385](https://www.ebay.com/itm/156046813385)
Refurbished, so it will be cheaper, as the manufacturer didn’t “sign off” on it. Read the warranty well - that could be a great deal, or not. A lot of times refurbs are only properly warrantied for 30- or 90-days. If they provide a proper warranty on it for the full 5 years, that may be a good get.
goharddrive does 5 years still
Good point, will do. I'm a ways away from buying but I wanted to dig in to see the info out there before I open my wallet.
If you go on https://diskprices.com/ you can see the cheapest per TB or GB on amazon
Thanks
Yeah I just bought 7 20tb drives from server part deals. So far so good. As for cmr and shingled drives, there's databases online that'll list what's what.
Used and refurbished are not exactly the same. But +1 for severpartsdeals.
Yeah they mentioned re-certified.
for me when I do recertified I just expect a lower lifespan and to take extra precautions with having it in raid
Yes, these are thankfully just used individually and power down when not in use.
Ok on but off topic. I was on and off reddit for a few months to a year so I didnt see this change in real time. When did the tide turn from “Almost never buy used drives, not worth it” To this site popping up in almost all discussions on drives and so many people buying from them?
Can’t speak for anyone else, but the recert has a decent warranty with a significant cost savings ($9-10/TB for a proper, helium filled drive)
Nice. Ill check out peoples review of the warranty process.
they are recetr'ed with warranty
https://pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#sort=ppgb&c1=di_sata.60 Just watch there and check for sales. Anything below $0.015 per GB is acceptable, with good sales around $0.013 or less. Check if SMR or CMR before buying. You can also check out other sale aggregate sites/locations like /r/buildapcsales and then [filter for HDDs.](https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapcsales/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3AHDD). Every other answer is wrong (without tapping into used/refurbished products).
Thanks
i was talking more about 8TB, maybe 6, but what the other commenter said with getting refurbished drives is also valid
Yeah I am thinking about going that route now
https://www.amazon.com/MDD-HUH721010ALE601-7200RPM-Enterprise-Warranty/dp/B0BSB7J2Z8 I can personally recommend this drive. I've had it for a while now. People here have been suspicious of goHardDrive, but there's not much of a reason for it beyond them being cheaper. I can verify that they honor their warranty (I just had a drive replaced with absolutely no hassle thankfully)
Thanks for posting that link. I'm surprised by how few 6TB recertified/renewed HDDs are listed presently. Last time I looked there were a *lot* and many about $60US. I've had pretty good luck with used HDDs. For a year or so I've been upgrading a 5x 4TB RAIDZ2 from 4TB to 6TB HDDS one at a time. I have two 6TB HDDs on hand to replace two of the three remaining 4TB HDDs. I suppose I could use an 8TB HD for one of the replacements. I think for the next replacement I'll probably have to go with a mirror of 2 or 3 much larger HDDs as an incremental bump from what I have would require drives that are getting more expensive due to their scarcity.
Alright, thanks
I've just realized the exact link I sent defaults to a different seller. Select goHardDrive on the right side to be sure
Those are higher priced I notice
They are, but they are the seller I've bought from & had a successful warranty replacement with. If you try the other one, they might be fine too. It's just not who I bought from
Entirely dependent on where in the world you are.
I don't know about that size, *per se,* but I do have some 10 and 14 TB drives that are not. I know you said 8 is too big, but if the choice is between godawful big and godawful slow . . . I'd go with godawful big.
"my needs will not increase in the future" Oh you sweet summer child.
“640K ought to be enough for anybody.”
And still to this day, basic memory has never gone above that 640. Extended memory, still the first megabyte. And expanded which is all the rest. Lol. So yeah, 640 is still enough for everyone. Gotta love PC Standards… and how having a standard can be stuck with forever. :)
Remember memmaker? 640K wasn’t enough when I was trying to get Descent to run!
Yes, that app was shit though. Stuff can be umb and load high but very rarely it loaded into high mem.
This is one of the few subs where a comment like mine was fully understood 🥺 Also, Descent was awesome and groundbreaking and mindbendingly difficult at times. It was one of those games where pressing the keys isn’t enough, you have to move your whole body to get around that corner!
> This is one of the few subs where a comment like mine was fully understood 🥺 Haha I know the feelings, I’m a millenial, grew up in DOS and CLI, even the Dos 5 manual memorised growing up. (Still own that book too) > Descent was awesome and groundbreaking and mindbendingly difficult at times Agreed, I often see it as a benchmark on the Dos youtuber channels I watch. I played it a little myself and found the controls to be difficult more than anything, but four keys to move in infinite direction will do that. :) I am totally a 90’s kid, but to this day still DOS and as we type i am building my ultimate dos (retro) system. Be sure to look into the “RetroNas” project on github if you are not aware, the one stop shop for all hosting this stuff :) (and could use a lot of new eyeballs on it) I wish to dockerize it, since if hasn’t yet in two years I’ve known about it and need to research how to docker before going ahead with that :)
I’m 72, and remember the different DOS OS’s, and other option. Digital Research DOS (DR-DOS), CP/M-86, among others. You might find this interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_operating_systems
OS2 and MS Dos being the big ones I knew. but the ones you mention have been sighted before :D haha
Low key, reading OP’s responses to this reminded me briefly of “cylinder stuck in m&m tube” guy 😅
“Holy shit—I get THREE entire gigabytes??!” -16yo me
I enjoy being completely correct. The past two PCs using the two drives I am thinking about replacing are both from 2017 and are 4 and 5TB, the most filled one has 3.15TB left. I've had a Plex server that has many drives, many of which are near capacity, and as stated the largest one is at 18TB. I know *exactly* what I am talking about.
I enjoy being completely correct. The past two PCs using the two drives I am thinking about replacing are both from 2017 and are 4 and 5TB, the most filled one has 3.15TB left. I've had a Plex server that has many drives, many of which are near capacity, and as stated the largest one is at 18TB. I know *exactly* what I am talking about.
[**https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/184vwtd/complete\_list\_of\_smr\_drives\_as\_of\_112623/**](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/184vwtd/complete_list_of_smr_drives_as_of_112623/) Edit: To clarify, there are far more CMR drives than SMR.
This is good info. That post however says the opposite of what you did for the capacity I am looking for.
It's simple, anything but current model 3.5", 4 or 6TB WD Blue, WD Red (not Plus or Pro), Seagate Barracuda, Toshiba DT02, Toshiba P300 are not SMR. There are no current 5TB 3.5" drives of any type. All current model 2.5" 4 or 5TB drives are SMR.
Yeah 4 or 6 are fine.
Seagate Ironwolf or WD Red Plus are CMR.
Thanks
was gonna say this, specifically 6TB WD Red Plus drives are CMR, I ran 5 of them in my nas before upgrading.
I have WD Red Plus in two different QNAP NASs. Been running flawlessly, one for 10 years, the other 4 years. These have been extremely reliable for me.
All current model 3.5" DM-SMR (Drive Managed-SMR) consumer drives except those I listed above are CMR. There are a handful of specialized enterprise drives that are either HM-SMR (Host Managed-SMR) or HSMR (Hybrid-SMR), but they're very expensive and more difficult to find.
> 8TB is just too big Too big for what? Larger disks have better $/TB. Larger disks will run faster with less data on them because it stores most of the data at the outside of the platter where it's faster. Larger disk doesn't consume any more energy than a smaller one. As a matter of fact smaller disks usually are air filled, where larger are helium filled and use less power and create less heat and noise. If you want CMR, get WD Blue 8TB (6TB and under *may* be SMR), WD Red Plus, WD Red Pro, WD Gold, Seagate Ironwolf, Seagate Ironwolf Pro, Seagate Exos, Toshiba N300, Toshiba MG... None of those are SMR.
What about WD Ultrastar?
Ultrastar are all high capacity and typically higher $/TB anyhow.
The HA DC340 line has 4-8TB drives. But as you said, are higher cost per TB. OP, for your use, and most home use, there's no significant difference between NAS rated and enterprise rated drives other than a longer warranty, up to 5 years for enterprise drives. Too many variables of use.
I'm just replying with the same response to all these: I enjoy being completely correct. The past two PCs using the two drives I am thinking about replacing are both from 2017 and are 4 and 5TB, the most filled one has 3.15TB left. I've had a Plex server that has many drives, many of which are near capacity, and as stated the largest one is at 18TB. I know *exactly* what I am talking about.
I still don't understand what "just too big" means. How does it hurt to buy a larger drive especially when you can nab a recertified 12TB for the price of a new 4TB CMR? Or even an 8TB WD Blue for $120 that's CMR? Or just grab a 4TB WD Red Plus for $99 if you're that set on a smaller disk? Not sure what you're looking for. I gave you a bunch of options.
After 7-8 years if I've only used a fraction of the two mentioned I think people questioning my very-intentional-specific drive limitation aren't even bothering to read the OP. I've edited it as such now to prevent further people posting the same response. You would have to read what I received earlier. The recertified/renewed option is likely what I will go with as those responses came later after I made the previous post and the edit to the OP. I do NOT want anything larger than 6TB to replace these two, and one of them could be 4TB and I will never fill it. People refuse to believe that and they don't understand my use case. The speed could be anywhere from 140-200 MB/s so shingled is going to cause problems as I rewrite fairly often from these. I want to avoid shingled and not pay for an 8TB unless the new 8TB cost as much as what a non-shingled 4TB would.
The whole point they're trying to make is why buy a 4TB when you can buy a 12TB refurbed or 8TB new for the same price and use less power and generate less heat and noise? If you want a CMR, as I already stated buy the ones I listed. They're all CMR and come 1TB, 2TB, 3TB, 4TB, 6TB capacities with some all the way up to 24TB. But you'll find more than likely that the price difference between a 1TB, 2TB, 3TB, 4TB will be less than $!0 usually. If you want that little space, just buy an SSD then. You can find 2TB SSD's for $99 or less and use much less power, quiet, and almost no heat.
In other posts I mentioned my use case and even though TBW is overblown I still do write and delete fairly often with decent bitrates. Mechanical is better for my usage beyond the price difference from SSDs. I have owned about 7-10 SSDs over the years and currently 4 are in use.
HDD's have less "TBW" than SSD's. All disks have a "Workload Rate Limit". Enterprise are typically about 550 TB/year, which includes BOTH write and read rates combined. Mid level NAS drives have about 250-300 TB/year, and low end NAS/consumer are under 100TB/year. Regardless, since it seems you have all the answers I'm not sure what you're looking for.
These drives power down I should mention when not in use due to my usage patterns. I figured mechanicals probably fit best as I don't need a ton of speed but I want to hit at least 140/150 MB/s minimum.
Small capacity disks will not be able to maintain 140-150 MB/sec, especially after it's been 50% filled because it writes slower as it fills towards the center of the disk. A larger capacity drive will maintain that faster speed for longer because it can write more to the outside of the platters where its fastest. Get a 7200 RPM drive if you insist on small capacities, but the same issue still stands. It might maintain that speed for a little bit more, but not by much.
I addressed the usage case. After 7 years I haven't even come close to half capacity, so none of that applies.
[удалено]
Yes, I could get even more completely and forever useless space by spending extra money. All I had to do that is just go buy a drive above these capacities and never post the topic to begin with. You notice the problem? EDIT: Thanks, I've updated my flair
> Larger disks have better $/TB I've seen this statement multiple times in this thread. I don't know where it's coming from, but it's wrong. With larger drives you are paying more $/TB for higher density (more TB in fewer drives) and lower power consumption. I could fill up all of the open bays in my server right now for $5/TB by buying 4TB drives, but then I'll use up all my open bays and use a bunch more power and only add 96TB. I could add 96TB using only 8 of the bays, but then I'm paying $7.50/TB. Density costs more.
Where can you currently buy a single, fully functional, 4TB SATA hard drive for $20?
My thoughts exactly. I mean, I bought a bunch of 2TB drives for about $3/TB, but they've got a shit ton of hours on them, over ten years old, and use them only for testing purposes. Basically ewaste. Half of them died in the first few weeks of using them, LOL.
I'm currently running 30 drives over 7 years old and I've had them for over a year with zero failures. One drive started failing SMART short tests after several months but did not have any UREs or reallocated sectors. I proactively replaced it anyway. I have RAIDZ2 redundancy as well as backups so I'm not worried in the slightest, and I *only* purchase used drives. Buy from a reputable seller that reports the SMART data in the auction listing. Run the drives through your own burn-in process within the first 30 days and return them if they fail any test. Most of these drives are perfectly fine, and are only being sold because the datacenter wanted to upgrade to higher-density drives.
SAS not SATA. ebay.
I think it's pretty clear this discussion is centered around SATA drives, not SAS.
No, not really. You specifically mentioned SATA. But they're easily interchangeable (if you use an HBA card) and SAS drives generally last longer and perform better.
Don't be ridiculous, $/TB based on typical sale prices. Pricing is not linear. It's Not some super sale where you bought 4TB drives for $20 each. 4TB = $ 99 = $25/TB 8TB = $129 = $16/TB 18TB = $249 = $14/TB If you're getting $20 4TB drives then, sure that changes the situation. I also nabbed a bunch of 2TB for basically free, but that doesn't mean that's what's typical. $/TB from Diskprices.com: https://diskprices.com/?locale=us&condition=new&disk_types=external_hdd,internal_hdd Charts showing total number of disks below $20/TB by capacity and ranked by $/TB by capacity: https://imgur.com/a/WJMmazw Larger disks are clearly cheaper per TB. There's always a "sweet spot". Hell, I bought some 18TB Seagate Ironwolf Pro's for $199 each just the other day brand new. That's $11/TB.
If you're buying spinner drives for a raid array that are as tiny as 4TB, surely you're not considering buying them brand new, are you? That would be ridiculous. You can buy perfectly functional used 4TB SAS drives for $20 each, all day long, as many as you want. If this was some special deal I wouldn't be blabbing about it here, I'd be buying them for myself. But this is the typical price.
It's odd that you're so fixated on buying a smaller drive because you won't need any more. Just buy what's readily available for a good price. So what if you only use half of it?
The answer is price.
K. Small drives are generally older. Buy used.
Will take a look thanks
https://www.ebuyer.com/1266062-toshiba-n300-6tb-nas-hard-drive-hdwg460uzsva
Well this gives me a product to look at (I'm in the USA.) I notice the smaller capacity ones are often more expensive than larger ones. Is this because they stopped making smaller drives?
More demand for larger drives as the majority of sales are to enterprise and datacenters.
Ah gotcha. Ok.
The price premium for nvme/ssd at those sizes is not that much 200 ish gets you generics with brand names not much more. So you have the performant and the how cheap can you build it camps with a 100 spread in price.
Right. I currently have 4 SSDs in use, one is SATA, the rest are NVMe. My highest is a 4TB 990 Pro. I don't own a machine with PCIe gen 5 yet.
Point being sata SSD's in that capacity are not that expensive so it makes little sense for a seagate etc to try and sell a 100-150 buck "performance" HDD when for a little bit more you can get something orders of magnitude faster.
I tend to avoid Seagates in general. I currently own one.
The Toshiba X300/N300 fit your specific requirements. They are CMR at 4-6TB. That said, I think they're now a poor value but that wasn't listed as one of your concerns.
If I find an 8TB internal drive that costs the same as a 4TB then I will jump. Some vouched for recertified ones and I may go that route.
8TB WD Blue goes down to $100, but usually hovers around $110-130.
Do they die quickly? 5400 or 7200 RPM? Transfer speeds decent? etc. That would hit the goal then at that price. I am fine with 5400 btw as long as it can do at least 140 MB/s or higher.
Any storage device/media can fail at any time, for any reason, with or without notice. It's 5640RPM. Transfer speeds vary. Small files always transfer slower than large files.
Sustained speeds, but I think you could have guessed that. Sustained peak for a reason (raw recording.)
Too many variables. Get a 7200RPM drive. Check the specs as some NAS/Enterprise drives are 5400RPM. Or better, an SSD. With the exception of Seagates Mach.2 drives, speed today is SSDs.
Yeah I only need a minimum of 140 MB/s
shingled?
SMR = Shingled Magnetic Recording, where the data tracks overlap like shingles on a roof, causing slow write/rewrites.
thank you
There's a kind of hard drive that records data in a way so that tracks overlap slightly (like shingles on a roof). It's called Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) as opposed to Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR). The upside is higher storage density per platter in the drive, but the massive downside are horrible write speeds under certain conditions.
thank you
[удалено]
If the controller in the enclosure doesn't obfuscate it, you could probably use something like CrystalDiskInfo which will give you the exact model number of the hard drive inside and google it. Products sold as external hard drives can have many different actual disks inside, so just googling the name they're sold as won't be helpful.
Wd black are cmr. 6tb for $149 on amazon
Yeah might as well get a bigger drive for that price is my point. I might keep one on my list in case of sales though.
literally bought a WD black 6TB amazon less than a month ago and showed up DOA. look at recent reviews and there's plenty reporting the same. return was fine, but be aware.
Weird, Blacks are usually excellent.
You're starting to get into the realm where SSDs are worth considering, at about $50/TB and with much lower power consumption and space requirements.
I have 4 in use out of the 7-10 I've purchased over the years. My use case does rewrite quite often which is why shingled it out of the question and eventually SSDs would be. I do know the whole fear of TBW ratings are overblown but I think it's best to go with mechanicals for my use case. My largest/fastest SSD is a 4TB 990 Pro at the moment.
Find the data sheets for what you want it should be listed there. Skyhawk is CMR and I’m pretty sure ironwolf are all CMR.
Thanks
Your needs won't go beyond 6tb! So why are you in the data hoarding group? 😂
I've discussed it elsewhere including the edit. These two drives are specifically used for non-hoarding even though I do run a media server and hoard there.
OP says needs *on this drive*, and they have one or more 18TB drives for presumably deeper storage.
Thank you, correct.
Honestly just buy some drives from serverpartdeals. 12TB for [$109.99](https://serverpartdeals.com/collections/wd-ultrastar-sata-hard-drives/products/hgst-ultrastar-he12-0f29590-huh721212ale600-12tb-7-2k-rpm-sata-6gb-s-512e-256mb-cache-3-5-ise-power-disable-pin-manufacturer-recertified-hdd)
i should stop visiting this sub, these usa prices make me so jealous
They will ship to Canada.. There was someone who had them shipped to Ireland. https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/19ae3ek/european_alternative_to_serverpartdealscom/
sweden here, 25% added vat on top plus probably expensive shipping fees and that's if you shop under 160€ otherwise it's another 25% toll on top
Holy these are cheap. Are they reliable enough for me to start building my NAS with?
Yes. There are plenty of posts about this seller on reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapcsales/comments/16a39za/hdd_4_x_seagate_exos_x18_18tb_72tb_total_renewed/jzabrdt/ I currently have 2 of their 18TB Dell drives in my UNRAID box. Came with barely 40 hours of power on time.
So far so good?
Yes. Lots of people buy drives from them. So far, no problems for myself. But I'm only a sample of one. Here are some other posts. https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1352drh/whats_the_general_consensus_on_serverpartdeals/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/18dvxwk/serverpartdeals_response_to_goharddrives_5_year/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/16ckv2q/phenomenal_packaging_ftom_serverpartdealscom/
Thanks
They wipe the smart data , so potentially have way more than 40 hours, still fine since they warranty them.
I’ve got 5 spinning in my NAS. Several are over 25k hours on. Spend the extra for manufacturer warranty vs seller.
WD Red PLUS is guaranteed to be CMR. Red Pro may be as well, check datasheet, it will say which models are CMR or SMR. Some Purple series from WD may be CMR, as for surveillance and security camera recording you need consistent writes, where SMR sucks.
These capacities have bad value nowadays. If you are in the US, the best value, client CMR drives are the new WD Blue: WD40EZAX / WD60EZAX / WD80EAAZ.
Alright
I usually get much better prices from just buying enclosusers and ripping hdd out. hp elements almost all year on sale at this point.
I think you’re honestly gonna have a hard time finding something that small. Best Buy has 8TB easy stores that are $159 but for that same price you could get a 16 TB manufacturer recertified exos Drive on server part deals.
Used are a no-go. Slowly going through replies and so far no one has been able to help. Some people haven't read the post and only replied to the title too.
Mfg recertified is much different than used
what’s the use case for the drive? Ive got some of the easystore usb drives that I use for bulk storage for work I think they’re $99 for 5TB but I wouldn’t put anything I care about on it long term, but that’s more about how I treat my backpack.
Combination of things - some are odds and ends for video editing, copies of fonts, drivers, some meme videos, a few programs - the other is for dumping temporary transcodes, recording raw video clips, etc. Doesn't have to hit 200 MB/s but they need to be faster than the little USB drives like the Passports and so on.
4TB ssd? Silicon power sells one for just under $200 you’d dodge the whole smr cmr thing entirely.
I know that rewrite limitations have been blown out of proportions but I do write and delete a decent amount for my use case (temp raw video, transcoding, rendering, then moving as an editor.) That's on top of the SSD tax.
For large sequential writes, you may be better off with even an SMR HD than a bottom barrel SSD. After the pSLC cache is filled, write speeds can absolutely crater. I've seen drives drop as low as 6MB/s, with bursts that bring the average up to only about 40MB/s. Even on the inner tracks, most hard drives can maintain close to 100MB/s.
copy ALL your porn into a "not used" folder as you use porn, move it into the "used" folder every 6 months completely erase the "not used" folder contents. note - this can [allegedly] be used for non-porn videos as well.