White label 4TB

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rubylaser

rubylaser

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Jan 4, 2013
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modder man said:
minos is the only one reasonably priced and he has 4. Looking for 10 drives.
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So, is 8 of the 5TB drives at $1160 for 40TB okay vs. 10 of the 4TB at $1250 for 40TB a reasonable tradoff? This saves you over $60 and nets you new drives with full warranty from an OEM instead of a sketchy reseller.

Code: 
(4) 5TB Toshiba PH3500U-1I72 $144.99 (Amazon)  = $580
(4) 5TB Toshiba X300 $151.93 (B&H Photo Video) = $608
                                                -----
                                                $1188
 
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modder man

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I will definitely avoid those pertiular 4tb drives. Is there any benefit or value in enterprise drives over consumer? I have had 4 drive failures in the last 3 months and i am done with failures. Want to do it right this go round.
 
rubylaser

rubylaser

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modder man said:
I will definitely avoid those pertiular 4tb drives. Is there any benefit or value in enterprise drives over consumer? I have had 4 drive failures in the last 3 months and i am done with failures. Want to do it right this go round.
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That sucks. I hope you didn't experience data loss. There is definitely a benefit in getting a higher end drive than bottom of the barrel. If this is for home use, I'd target the NAS editions of the drives or Toshibas like these (i.e. Western Digital Reds/Blacks/SE, HGST, Toshibas, etc.) Are these going into a hardware or software RAID, what sort of case are they mounted in, etc. is also very important.
 
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modder man

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This is home use. Will be in a freenas machine, at this point is physical on a HP N40L micro server but will likely be moved into a VM once I swap out my DL360 Esxi host. My DL360 cant fit any drives, but once I get that all worked out most if not all of my infrastructure will run on this one machine.

Unfortunately the first drive failure did cost me some data, and it was personal pictures of all things. One of the few things that cannot be recreated or replaced. I know better, I know all the proper practices just got hit with a bad case of being lazy and I paid for it.
 
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Dajinn

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There's a study published by google with conclusive evidence supporting that there typically isn't a warranted premium in terms of price of going with enterprise-grade or "NAS" driver over general consumer oriented drives. That being said, there's 2 stipulations with this. If you can get enterprise grade drives for the same as price if not cheaper than consumer grade drivers it's always a better investment since they typically have 5 year warranties versus the typical 2 and 3 we see today. The other one is that if you plan to use the drives in any parity based array you'll be better off going with an entetprise or "NAS" drive as they have technologies built in to prevent the drive from inaccurately falling out of an array during a rebuild if a non-recoverable read error is encountered and not processed in sufficient time.
 
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rubylaser

rubylaser

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Dajinn said:
There's a study published by google with conclusive evidence supporting that there typically isn't a warranted premium in terms of price of going with enterprise-grade or "NAS" driver over general consumer oriented drives. That being said, there's 2 stipulations with this. If you can get enterprise grade drives for the same as price if not cheaper than consumer grade drivers it's always a better investment since they typically have 5 year warranties versus the typical 2 and 3 we see today. The other one is that if you plan to use the drives in any parity based array you'll be better off going with an entetprise or "NAS" drive as they have technologies built in to prevent the drive from inaccurately falling out of an array during a rebuild if a non-recoverable read error is encountered and not processed in sufficient time.
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I totally agree. Warranty would be the the only real reason for @modder man to consider enterprise drives (When I'm talking about enterprise, I'm thinking WD SE/Datacenter, Constellation, Ultrastars, etc. with their five year warranties). None of the RAID features like TLER matter to a ZFS array, so I would just focus on buying drives with three year warranties that work well with ZFS without paying twice the price for enterprise drives (target WD Reds, Toshiba's, etc.)
 
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RyC

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I've only had one of these fail on me and they exchanged it (and offered to refund) no questions asked. I'm running 4 total now and performance is equivalent to the WD4000FYYZ which is what I think most of these white label drives from this seller are.
 
rubylaser

rubylaser

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Jeggs101 said:
I don't think enterprise WL drives carry manufacturer warranties.
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They do not. You typically get a one year warranty from the seller like GoHardDrive and pray that they will be around in a year. I would pay a few more bucks and buy a new drive with a 3 year warranty.
 
rubylaser

rubylaser

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RyC said:
I've only had one of these fail on me and they exchanged it (and offered to refund) no questions asked. I'm running 4 total now and performance is equivalent to the WD4000FYYZ which is what I think most of these white label drives from this seller are.
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How long have you owned these for?
 
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RyC

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rubylaser said:
How long have you owned these for?
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I actually have 5 total, I got the original 2 about a year and a half ago from eBay and then 3 more from here 2 months ago or so. There might have been something environmental that caused one of them to fail, a real WD drive in a different array failed at the exact same time.
 
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pricklypunter

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I would run away quickly from those re-manufactured rebrands with suspect firmware and dodgy smart reporting. I think you can do much better for yourself by buying a reputable NAS rated drive, with a warranty that will be honoured should things go wrong. If it doesn't die on you within 6 months, and you're not doing something odd to stress it, like power cycling it every hour, it should be happy for at least 4-5 years before showing any signs of distress, most if not all of that period should of course be covered by your warranty, and if not, look for a better drive. You are looking to save money here, but as much as you might save in the here and now by getting these, you will spend that and more at the other end of rollercoaster should things not go as planned.

I don't think it can be said enough...backups, backups, backups. Once bitten an all that :)

Speaking of WD drives failing, I had an 18 month old WD RE4 3TB back up drive suddenly burst into smart error song last weekend. This is the 3rd RE4 drive I have had fail on me in the last 2 years, all around the 18 month mark. I feel like this a setting a trend and I am now suspicious of them. I'm beginning to swap them out for HGST Ultrastars starting with this one. I didn't actually purchase the drives, I only recommended the owner do so. He got them from a reputable seller in the UK, another recommendation from yours truly, but upon checking the warranty on them, I found out they are not meant for that region. Unless the seller takes them back, I think his warranty went up the chimney with the smoke, leaving me coughing up soot, excuses and apologies. So there's this week's lesson for me, no matter who sells you the drive, check the serials with the manufacturer and make sure they are intended for your market and that the warranty will be honoured, if not return them to the seller and explain why :)
 
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