Thinking about a NAS build in my future, I 'm wondering what peoples opinions are about drive op...

[G+_Ben Reese]

Thinking about a NAS build in my future, I'm wondering what peoples opinions are about drive options. Is it better to use cheaper drives (WD Green or Blue) with more protection (2-drive redundancy) or more Red (more expensive) drives with less protection? Prices are pretty close (4x3TB Red ~ $440 and 5x3TB Blue ~ $450), so it's more a factor of which would last longer or be safer.

 

Follow up or related... Are the Green drives found in WD My Passport the same as the Green drives you'd buy bare? It's odd, but sometimes portable drives are cheaper than internal drives.

[G+_Travis Hershberger]

TLDNR: RAID 10 with Red drives.

 

To start with, never use RAID5 with the drives your considering here Ben Reese. zdnet.com - Why RAID 5 stops working in 2009 | ZDNet Yes, RAID 5 can be made ok, but you're purchasing enterprise class drives at that point. Which is why people will tell you that RAID 5 is more expensive than RAID 10.

 

Red drives (not Red Pro, that's a whole other type of drive, and are those enterprise class type), are the same hardware that the Green and Blue drives are based on. The only difference between the 3 is the firmware options included with them. The Red drives specifically have TLER enabled while the other consumer drives do not. I think they also have some custom power settings that keep temps lower, but in the grand scheme of things TLER is the only thing that really matters between the firmware differences.

 

The rule of thumb for 5 drives is RAID 6, but write performance will make you sad. Plus the Blues without TLER could randomly drop from the array when nothing is wrong with the drive.

http://www.smbitjournal.com/2012/11/choosing-a-raid-level-by-drive-count

http://theithollow.com/2012/03/21/understanding-raid-penalty/

[G+_Travis Hershberger]

As to the portables question, yes, they're generally the same drive inside. Some models integrate the usb port to the drive controller and do not have the normal SATA/power connection inside.

[G+_John Mink]

Definitely go RED (or whatever equivalent NAS Ready drives from other manufacturers). It's too easy for non-NAS drives to start dropping like flies once they hit a certain point, something almost no amount of redundancy will save you from.

[G+_Benjamin Webb]

If you go with Freenas you can use any drive type unlike other implementations but don't think you will save money as the 8 gig ECC ram minimum will cost you.

 

I run 6 3TB WD Red to keep my options open if I want to leave Freenas land. I run it in raidz2 (equivalent to raid6).

 

Don't forget to pick up a UPS whatever you pick. I lived dangerously with Freenas box for a bit and it took several hits but nothing ever failed but I was probably just lucky.

[G+_Travis Hershberger]

Benjamin Webb FreeNAS does not change anything about what drives you should use! Green, Blue, and Black drives are just as bad using ZFS as any other sort of array.

[G+_Benjamin Webb]

+Travis Hershberger

Travis,

 

Do your homework TLER can help prevent hardware raid controllers from dropping drives from the pool. Most of the consumer NAS boxes are using software raid like Synology.

 

forums.freenas.org - Western Digital Red (with TLER) vs Green (with wdidle set to disabled) drives

 

There are other reasons not to use the green drives such head parking etc but in a software raid ZFS environment I know from experience a green drive will work just fine although maybe wear out a bit quicker from head parking. There are also tools to flash away the head park issue if you are feeling brave.

 

With other NAS Boxes they may not handle them properly so I would check for the recommendations from whatever vendor your box is from.

 

Just want people to be aware it is a viable option as not everybody has cash to burn. To be honest, if you want the most reliable drive though go Hitachi.

[G+_Ben Reese]

Thanks for all the feedback. I like the thought of using FreeNAS, but this will be going into 10 year old hardware limited to 8 GB RAM. I'm still hoping to use XPenology, so it will be a completely software RAID, not explicitly 5, 6, or 10 using hardware.

 

I haven't read anything about the head parking issue, but it makes sense. I'm still leaning toward 3x 3TB red drives for 1 drive redundancy. I understand why RAID 10 would be enticing - it's just not in the budget.

 

And budget is why I was thinking Green/Blue drives. That and I've seen reviews of people pulling a green drive out of a Synology or QNAP box that has been running for 7+ years. Still a couple months before I have the $$$ to spend, but it's so hard to not shop now.

[G+_Travis Hershberger]

Benjamin Webb I have done my homework. Software RAID will still drop drives from an array without TLER. Hardware RAID has always been a baind-aid because Microsoft still hasn't figured it out.

 

smbitjournal.com - Hardware and Software RAID

 

Please show me a reference stating otherwise!

[G+_Travis Hershberger]

Ben Reese It may be tempting to use 3 drives, but you'd be better off with just 2 until you can afford another 2.

 

smbitjournal.com - Choosing a RAID Level by Drive Count

 

Using a software RAID of some sort would make so you could expand at your own pace, and even move the array to a new system should you ever upgrade. I've done it!

[G+_Benjamin Webb]

Spent $1100 building mine so understandable reusing old hardware. Back when I was poor I used to use a program called greyhole.

 

greyhole.net - Greyhole

 

It is pretty complicated to set up but you can choose which folders you want duplicates of at a share level.

 

I used it with a bunch of WD Green drives with a bunch of mismatched sizes I scavenged over the years I think at one point I had (2 1TB Drives, 2 2TB drives and 1 3TB) but still want to make sure if a drive went down I sill had my data.

 

I had one drive failure and it was fine. I think it is actually safer than raid 5 as in my experience it handled power outages better but it was not exactly quick and there will be a lag before it duplicates files so can lose data if a failure happens then.

[G+_Ben Reese]

Interesting. I'm trying to think of how that would work without losing data - I'm still not sure 6 TB will be enough. I'm almost ashamed to say my current setup has:

3 TB drive ~5 Years old and 20 GB free

1 TB drive ~8 Years old and 12 GB free

2x 250 GB laptop drives - Both almost full

250 GB EVO 850 SSD for OS.

 

Now that I type it out, it's incredibly shameful ?

[G+_Benjamin Webb]

Ben Reese If you flag the share as duplicate it is kind of a redneck raid 1. How it works is there is a hidden folder on each drive I think it is .gh then you abstract it by creating a samba share (windows file share) Your greyhole configuration combines the space of all the drives and decides how many copies you want of each each file in the share and makes sure that each drive only gets 1 copy max as well as load balances the available space.

 

If you duplicate the file it will eat through the space twice as fast. You do not get parity but you do get to decide if some folders contain less important data you can lose. I made a temp samba share for that purpose of when I was working on large video files.

 

Your files should only be edited within the samba as samba triggers propagation of edits etc. You can view the copies of your data in the hidden .gh folder but they will be distributed and will not show all the files in each folder.

 

Took me a bit to wrap my head around as well. Think of it as a realtime backup program that is smart enough to distribute things properly as long as you edit the data from a windows files share.

[G+_Benjamin Webb]

Emma Shy Running Freenas without ECC is not recommended as a bad ram module would corrupt entire array with ZFS.

 

That said been fixing computers for 20 years and only seen bad ram 4 times.

 

Suggest BTRFS but remember it only supports mirroring or mdadm if need higher level raid if going non ECC. I found greyhole to be the most accomodating when it came to adding random sized drives.

 

All of these are fairly manual operations to set up but each has their pro and cons. I always test fail a drive as well so I know how to detect it and how to rebuild it.

[G+_Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ]

GREAT information in these comments. You KITAS are really stepping up your game! Kudos!

 

For me... It's WD RED or nothing. You ABSOLUTELY can get by using non-NAS drives, but you will almost ALWAYS run into a firmware incompatibility at some point in operation. Also... heat... HEAT is the #1 enemy of a NAS. The RED drives run, CRAZY cooler.

[G+_Benjamin Webb]

Here is a recent podcast that add more fuel to the ever burning storage fire lol.

 

 

From my crazy WD Green JBOD grayhole monstrosity to my current ZFS setup with WD REDs I have seen some fairly fierce arguments coming from each camp.

 

At work I have 3 NVME SAMSUNG 950 PROs in raid 5 with REFS for VM setup for rapid testing. I also have 3 4TB WD RED PROS in raid 5 with REFS for VM Archive (takes 3 days to silver a drive).

 

This video may be my confirmation bias as I tend to favor ZFS and you have to keep in mind POGO is a sponsor of this podcast but much of what he said made sense. I still disagree what what he says of the reliability of consumer drives though. He makes fun of Backblaze which is only place I've seen run enough drives to weed out statistical anomalies and gave their numbers to the public.

 

I have always believed enterprise drives are for speed and their heat and vibration makes them less reliable. On the SSD front the opposite is true as enterprise drives can take way more writes.

 

I also believe that people should keep their eyes open to which ever technology solves their problem the best and meets their budget.