Seagate 8TB NAS drives - feedback?

[MiniKnight]

These are only $250 ea. They don't look like they're Helium but are they any good?

The Iron Wolfs are $320 as are the WD Red 8TB. So that's much cheaper. The 10TB drives are like $100+ for another 2TB so that's not worth it to me.

 

[Jon Massey]

StorageReview review here: Seagate NAS HDD 8TB Review | StorageReview.com - Storage Reviews

 

[MiniKnight]

@Jon Massey thanks for the link. It isn't very relevant for me. I don't expect much performance wise from spinning disks. I'm more interested in bigger arrays and failure issues if any.

 

[Jeff Robertson]

I picked up five of them at that price so I'll let you know how the install goes, they will be used in a raid 6 array on a qnap. I've been testing them all morning and haven't heard any strange noises so far so I'm crossing my fingers.

 

[Eliav]

I picked up 6 for a raid 6 as well. Slowly migrating my data (currently on 10x 4TB WD Reds) over to it and haven't experienced any issues.

 

[Jeff Robertson]

Have you upgraded the firmware? All of my drives came with SC60 which has an obnoxious hum when idle (they were quieter under load than idle!). If you upgrade them to SC61 they will become MUCH quieter, it's well worth it. I just shut my nas down, upgraded all of them and then turned it back on, my ears were very happy with me.

 

[Eliav]

Have you upgraded the firmware?

Interesting, I have not. All drives are on SC60 firmware. I'll give the FW upgrade a shot but I haven't noticed any noise from my side. Then again, my SC847 isn't silent...

 

[Jeff Robertson]

Interesting, I have not. All drives are on SC60 firmware. I'll give the FW upgrade a shot but I haven't noticed any noise from my side. Then again, my SC847 isn't silent...

The hum only occurs when the drives are at idle, my nas is located in my living room so it was completely untenable. With the new firmware they are silent, if you have a problem finding the firmware let me know and I'll send you a link to it. Good luck!

 

[Eliav]

Where did you find the firmware? I've registered the drives on seagate.com yet when I enter the SN on the support page, I get no firmware found.

 

[Jeff Robertson]

On a netgear forum, it's not a publicly posted file it seems. You can request it directly from one of their reps or take a look at the message I sent...

 

[ruffy91]

Can you please send me the file too?

 

[Jeff Robertson]

You bet, I'll just post it here in case anyone else needs it as well:

Seagate 8TB NAS drive firmware.rar

 

[Jeff Robertson]

It looks like the drives are currently on sale on amazon:

Amazon.com: (Old Model) Seagate 8TB NAS HDD SATA 6Gb/s NCQ 256 MB Cache Bare Drive ST8000VN0002: Computers & Accessories

 

[Aluminum]

FWIW you can get 8TB reds for $500/pair with the mybook duo 16TB, they are HGST-based helium models. (so no worries about SMR etc)

You CAN warranty each drive separately (2yr instead of 3yr though) just keep the original mybook serial number.

 

[Jeff Robertson]

FWIW you can get 8TB reds for $500/pair with the mybook duo 16TB, they are HGST-based helium models. (so no worries about SMR etc)

You CAN warranty each drive separately (2yr instead of 3yr though) just keep the original mybook serial number.

Good to know, generally you give up the warranty if you pull drives out of their enclosures so it's nice to see WD standing behind their warranty!

 

[Jeff Robertson]

You bet, I'll just post it here in case anyone else needs it as well:

Seagate 8TB NAS drive firmware.rar

I should mention I had a bit of a rough time finding a USB stick that would work. I kept getting strange boot glitches but eventually used an old 8GB stick I had lying around and it worked. I'm not sure why it's so picky but just keep trying different sticks until one works.

 

[cookiesowns]

I have the 8TB SAS Enterprise capacity running in a 24x ZFS array and it runs good. I also have 8x5TB Enterprise NAS and they seem decent in the synology we had.

Overall I think if you don't go over 8-16 bays, regular "NAS" drives should be sufficient.

 

[yu130960]

Is there a source for WD shucked drive warranty issue? Are you just pulling the drives and keying them in separately and they show warranty?

I can't seem to figure out how to quote a post....