Installing FreeNAS on my QNAP TS-459 • Hacker News Board

Re: Installing FreeNAS on my QNAP TS-459

#51

Post by zepearl » Tue, Jun 16, 2020, 9:18 PM UTC

ValentineC wrote: post #44

zepearl wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to always buy Hitachi as well, but when I decided a few weeks ago to replace all my old 4TB HDDs with 8TB HDDs I found out that they're quite expensive (did they use to be that expensive?). Well, in any case now I bought 8 Toshiba N300 8TB (4 HDDs for a server and another 4 for a NAS, both used by a RaidZ1) and so far they worked (and they're not loud and don't vibrate like hell when the disk is spinning, unli…

Not to second-guess your purchase, but was there a reason you didn't diversify across the brands to prevent a situation where they might all fail at once?

To be 100% honest: I didn't even think about this kind of strategy (never did even in the past).

Thinking about it now, it might make sense.

On the other hand, nowadays there isn't a lot of choice (only 3 manufacturers? WD, Toshiba and Seagate? If yes, then it's quite sad...) and honestly for me it hasn't been easy to choose even just a single model (reading all user reviews, comparing prices, searching specs for e.g. operating temperature, mtbf, finding infos about SMR, etc...) => I felt exhausted after deciding for Toshiba/N300 and I didn't have any other good 2nd candidate... .

Let's see in another ~4 years, maybe I'll adopt this strategy. At least I ordered 2 groups of 4 HDDs from 2 different shops, so I should have at least a minimal amount of "mix" in it. And the ones used in the NAS host the backup of the ones used by the server, so I just hope that I don't have a 2+2 HDD failure in the two raidZ1 :P

Thanks for the enlightenment :)

Re: Installing FreeNAS on my QNAP TS-459

#52

Post by zepearl » Tue, Jun 16, 2020, 9:38 PM UTC

linsomniac wrote: post #47

ValentineC wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to second-guess your purchase, but was there a reason you didn't diversify across the brands to prevent a situation where they might all fail at once?

I'm reminded of those HP drives that would brick themselves after a certain number of operating hours. People had every drive in their RAID array fail at once.

Ooook, ok, I got it - not a great idea to buy HDDs of the same brand => I'll try to remember this :)

But: in such a case, having a normal raid5/raidZ1 or even a raid6/raidZ2, etc..., you might still get scrd by just having 2/3/4 such HP-drives in such a raid (that might be composed of 8/9/10 drives), right?

Re: Installing FreeNAS on my QNAP TS-459

#53

Post by ValentineC » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 1:54 PM UTC

zepearl wrote: post #52

linsomniac wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reminded of those HP drives that would brick themselves after a certain number of operating hours. People had every drive in their RAID array fail at once.

Ooook, ok, I got it - not a great idea to buy HDDs of the same brand => I'll try to remember this :) But: in such a case, having a normal raid5/raidZ1 or even a raid6/raidZ2, etc..., you might still get scr d by just having 2/3/4 such HP-drives in such a raid (that might be composed of 8/9/10 drives), right?

> you might still get scrd by just having 2/3/4 such HP-drives in such a raid (that might be composed of 8/9/10 drives), right?

That's true. Ah well, you know what people say: RAID is for high-availability, not a replacement for proper backups.

Re: Installing FreeNAS on my QNAP TS-459

#54

Post by zepearl » Sat, Jun 20, 2020, 12:03 AM UTC

ValentineC wrote: post #53

zepearl wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ooook, ok, I got it - not a great idea to buy HDDs of the same brand => I'll try to remember this :) But: in such a case, having a normal raid5/raidZ1 or even a raid6/raidZ2, etc..., you might still get scr d by just having 2/3/4 such HP-drives in such a raid (that might be composed of 8/9/10 drives), right?

> you might still get scrd by just having 2/3/4 such HP-drives in such a raid (that might be composed of 8/9/10 drives), right? That's true. Ah well, you know what people say: RAID is for high-availability, not a replacement for proper backups.

That's true :D