My 71 TiB ZFS NAS After 10 Years and Zero Drive Failures
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My 71 TiB ZFS NAS After 10 Years and Zero Drive Failures
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Re: My 71 TiB ZFS NAS After 10 Years and Zero Drive Failures
#2There have been drives where power cycling was hazardous. So, whilst I agree to the model, it shouldn't be assumed this is always good, all the time, for all people. Some SSD need to be powered periodically. The duty cycle for a NAS probably meets that burden.
Probably good, definitely cheaper power costs. Those extra grease on the axle drives were a blip in time.
I wonder if backblaze do a drive on-off lifetime stats model? I think they are in the always on problem space.
Re: My 71 TiB ZFS NAS After 10 Years and Zero Drive Failures
#3There have been drives where power cycling was hazardous. So, whilst I agree to the model, it shouldn't be assumed this is always good, all the time, for all people. Some SSD need to be powered periodically. The duty cycle for a NAS probably meets that burden. Probably good, definitely cheaper power costs. Those extra grease on the axle drives were a blip in time. I wonder if backblaze do a drive on-off lifetime stat…
> There have been drives where power cycling was hazardous.
I know about this story from 30+ years ago. It may have been true then. It may be even true now.
Yet, in my case, I don't power cycle these drives often. At most a few times a month. I can't say or prove it's a huge risk. I only believe it's not. I have accepted this risk for over 15+ years.
Update: remember that hard drives have an option to spin down when idle. So hard drives can handle many spinups a day.
Re: My 71 TiB ZFS NAS After 10 Years and Zero Drive Failures
#4> The 4 TB HGST drives have roughly 6000 hours on them after ten years.
So they mostly sit idle? Mine are about ~4 years old with ~35,000 hours.
Re: My 71 TiB ZFS NAS After 10 Years and Zero Drive Failures
#5> The 4 TB HGST drives have roughly 6000 hours on them after ten years. So they mostly sit idle? Mine are about ~4 years old with ~35,000 hours.
To quote myself from a few lines below that fragment:
> My NAS is turned off by default. I only turn it on (remotely) when I need to use it.
Re: My 71 TiB ZFS NAS After 10 Years and Zero Drive Failures
#6What does one do with all this storage?
Re: My 71 TiB ZFS NAS After 10 Years and Zero Drive Failures
#7This sounds to me like it's just a matter of luck and not really a model to be imitated.
Re: My 71 TiB ZFS NAS After 10 Years and Zero Drive Failures
#8I’ve heard the exact opposite advice (keep the drives running to reduce wear from power cycling).
Not sure what to believe, but I like having my ZFS NAS running so it can regularly run scrubs and check the data. FWIW, I’ve run my 4 drive system for 10 years with 2 drive failures in that time, but they were not enterprise grade drives (WD Green).
Re: My 71 TiB ZFS NAS After 10 Years and Zero Drive Failures
#9the 'secret' is not that you turn them off. it's simply luck.
I have 4TB HGST drives running 24/7 for over a decade. ok, not 24 but 8, and also 0 failures. But I'm also lucky, like you. Some of the people I know have several RMAs with the same drives so there's that.
My main question is: What is it that takes 71TB but can be turned off most of the time? Is this the server you store backups?
Re: My 71 TiB ZFS NAS After 10 Years and Zero Drive Failures
#10What does one do with all this storage?
This is a drop in the bucket for photographers, videographers, and general backups of RAW / high resolution videos from mobile devices. 80TB [usable] was "just enough" for my household in 2016.