G+_Jason Perry Posted March 11, 2016 Share Posted March 11, 2016 Horrible question or two to think about How long should you expect your NAS to last? How long should you expect a drive in your NAS to last for? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Travis Hershberger Posted March 11, 2016 Share Posted March 11, 2016 How long should a NAS last? Same amount of time a computer does (it's really the same thing with a specialized software stack.) How long will drives last? Drives fail, their reliability is just bad. Plan for failure. Also, Backblaze is the only company releasing numbers publicly that I know of: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-q4-2015/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Reese Posted March 11, 2016 Share Posted March 11, 2016 I kinda expect HDDs to last about 2 years, but I've always used WD Blue or Green drives. Their Red drives might last longer. Would be nice to have a drive rotation system setup where once a month a drive is swapped out and SpinRited. Would want RAID 6 (2 drives for redundancy) in that case. Also, I'm not sure if SpinRite will handle 3 TB drives which I think give the best $/GB right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Keith Mallett Posted March 11, 2016 Share Posted March 11, 2016 Until you fill it up and need more space than it can offer!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jason Perry Posted March 11, 2016 Author Share Posted March 11, 2016 Travis Hershberger, thanks for the link. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Travis Hershberger Posted March 11, 2016 Share Posted March 11, 2016 Ben Reese Yeah, Steve Gibson had started work on a new SpinRite to handle large drives and speed things up, but got sidetracked with SQRL :-( I actually expect a drive to fail either before 1 year, or after 5-6 years. At least that's the general pattern. Are those Blue and Green drives being used in RAID arrays? That could explain the shorter lifespan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Steve Martin Posted March 11, 2016 Share Posted March 11, 2016 Take a look at Mean Time Between Failure of the hardware your NAS is using. The HDDs will fail first as they have moving parts. I've seen some with 50,000 hours of MTBF. That's about five and a half years. However, remember that's the average or "mean" time. Some last longer. Some can last quite a lot longer, and some quite a lot less. Also remember that a NAS usually has disks built to last longer, at some cost to performance. Computer manufacturers usually expect you to replace the PC more frequently, so they put in cheaper drives. I have a WD NAS we've been using for about eight years now and except for one time where I had to do a disk repair on it, it has been going strong. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jason Perry Posted March 11, 2016 Author Share Posted March 11, 2016 Travis Hershberger, if it fails within the year is that not covered by warranty? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jason Perry Posted March 11, 2016 Author Share Posted March 11, 2016 So a 5 year cycle on an entire setup should be a safe average with the understanding that it's an average. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jason Perry Posted March 11, 2016 Author Share Posted March 11, 2016 And WD Red, Seagate NAS, or other? They seem to be within $10 of one another. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Eddie Foy Posted March 11, 2016 Share Posted March 11, 2016 NAS or HDs? Once one HD fails, the other are not far behind. (if they all were installed at the same time @ setup.) Had a Synology RS815+ die withing 6 months. Got replaced on RMA/Warranty. Travis Hershberger being that Gibson stopped working on spinrite to take 2+ years and counting for squirrel, I'm not holding my breath for a new viable spinrite version before 2021. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jason Perry Posted March 11, 2016 Author Share Posted March 11, 2016 Eddie Foy, for either. The consensus above seams that the mean lifespan of a drive is 5 to 6 years. I am sure there is at least a 2 year spread on that number. As for the NAS, I have always took my equipment to the bitter end. I don't know what to expect a NAS where pretty much everything is soldered in place. I always over build my computers then hang on to them till I can't fix them any longer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Reese Posted March 11, 2016 Share Posted March 11, 2016 I've got a 1 TB drive that has been running good for 5 years or so, but had a 2 TB start dieing around 2 years. WD warranty support was great though and they replaced it with a 3 TB. That was 2½ years ago. Travis Hershberger? - unfortunately I don't have a NAS setup yet. I'm really hoping to build a new desktop later this year and use my 10 yo PC to build a NAS. I've been researching XPenology a bit and it looks pretty awesome! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Eddie Foy Posted March 11, 2016 Share Posted March 11, 2016 Temp & dust are a factor too. RED and enterprise 'RED'. For home use try not to go down the the 'just a few bucks more' rabbit hole. Quality and verified/tested back ups of critical data are paramount. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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