Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Testing two 18 TB white label SATA hard drives from datablocks.dev

ounapuu.ee

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 163 posts

Re: Testing two 18 TB white label SATA hard drives from datablocks.dev

#51

Post by Yokolos »

mannyv wrote: post #31
beala wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The official TrueNAS docs recommend against using USB drives [1]. My understanding is that between the USB controller, flaky connectors and cables, and usb-to-sata bridges of varying quality, there are just too many unknowns to guarantee a reliable experience. For example, I’ve heard that some usb-to-sata controllers will drop commands and not report SMART data. That said, there are of course many people on the inter…

Been using like 7 external usb drives with 40-50tb total for a few years with no issues. Not raid, just backing up drive to drive. No controller or drive issues. Mix of seagate and wd 8/12/16gb. I hate blanket recommendations like this by docs. To me, it just sounds like some guy had a problem a few times and now it's canon. It's like saying "avoid Seagate because their 3tb drives sucked." Well they did, but now they…

What may work anecdotally can't necessarily be used for official recommendations for a large range of users across an unknown range of hardware configurations. If it works for you, that's fine. That isn't sufficient to make a general statement that everybody will be fine using external USB drives, particularly for RAID, especially when people will then make you responsible if something goes wrong for not making sufficiently safe recommendations. You understand that, right?

Re: Testing two 18 TB white label SATA hard drives from datablocks.dev

#52

Post by VTimofeenko »

dheera wrote: post #33
leobg wrote: post #19

I was about to buy a NAS. I find the idea of using an old laptop instead interesting. Especially since it comes with UPS built in. The author is using a ThinkPad T430. Any experiences?

> I was about to buy a NAS. The UNAS Pro 8 just came out and I'm thinking about getting it, switching away from my aging Synology setup ... only thing I wish it had was a UPS server as my Synology currently serves that purpose to trigger other machines to shut down ...

I believe Synology's UPS monitoring is based on nut-server[1]. In my setup, I am running the server on a separate machine that reads UPS state over USB and Synology is just a client. Maybe UNAS could also just work as a client.

[1]: https://networkupstools.org/

Re: Testing two 18 TB white label SATA hard drives from datablocks.dev

#53

Post by 9dev »

Aurornis wrote: post #10
econ wrote: post #2

OT > Half of tech YouTube has been sponsored by companies like... It just struck me that the product reviews are a part of the social realm that is barely explored. Imagine a video website like TikTok or YouTube etc where all videos are organized under products. Priority to those who purchased the product and a category ranked by how many similar products you've purchased. The thing sort of exists currently in some h…

The reason you don’t see videos arranged by product is because everyone knows not to trust unknown creators telling you how great a product is. Viewers want to see opinions from specific people they’ve come to trust, not the first video that comes up for a product.

I don’t trust big channels especially, because I assume they have just sold themselves out to the biggest sponsor. Influencers only exist due to campaign deals, where companies try to sneak their ads into your mind by abusing your inclination to trust another human being. All of it is sickening.

In comparison, I’d rather read a general review magazine with a long history. At least they don’t try to trick me into believing they are working out of the goodness of their hearts, and they usually aren’t married to a single big sponsor.

Online reviews are broken beyond repair.

Re: Testing two 18 TB white label SATA hard drives from datablocks.dev

#54

Post by bluedino »

beala wrote: post #24
leobg wrote: post #19

I was about to buy a NAS. I find the idea of using an old laptop instead interesting. Especially since it comes with UPS built in. The author is using a ThinkPad T430. Any experiences?

The official TrueNAS docs recommend against using USB drives [1]. My understanding is that between the USB controller, flaky connectors and cables, and usb-to-sata bridges of varying quality, there are just too many unknowns to guarantee a reliable experience. For example, I’ve heard that some usb-to-sata controllers will drop commands and not report SMART data. That said, there are of course many people on the inter…

I've had the same thing from random disconnects etc from various USB hard drives and SSD's over the years.

Re: Testing two 18 TB white label SATA hard drives from datablocks.dev

#55

Post by noAnswer »

econ wrote: post #25
Aurornis wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason you don’t see videos arranged by product is because everyone knows not to trust unknown creators telling you how great a product is. Viewers want to see opinions from specific people they’ve come to trust, not the first video that comes up for a product.

They don't have to tell you anything. Just unbox and show what they got. I just purchased a bicycle chain cleaning device. It was absurdly cheap. The plastic was extruded poorly, it was hard to assemble, it was not entirely obvious how to use it. However! It did the job and it barely got dirty. I expected it to be full of rusty oil both inside and outside but it accumulated just a tiny smudge on the inlet. If anyone…

1. You could be that anyone.

2. The world is filled to the brim with videos about "fantastic products".

Re: Testing two 18 TB white label SATA hard drives from datablocks.dev

#56

Post by bluedino »

hexagonwin wrote: post #44

What exactly are these "white label drives"? Aren't these just normal seagate exos drives with SMART information wiped and labels removed? i.e. just a worse used drive.

Weren't shucked drives (removed from enclosures) referred to as White label drives at one point?

Re: Testing two 18 TB white label SATA hard drives from datablocks.dev

#57

Post by cm2187 »

Aurornis wrote: post #8
speedgoose wrote: post #4

I admire the courage to store data on refurbished Seagate hard drives. I prefer SSD storage with some backups using cloud cold storage, because I’m not the one replacing the failing hard drives.

I would also prefer having a large number of high capacity SSDs so I could replace my spinning hard drives. But even the cheapest high capacity SSD deals are still a lot more expensive than hard drive array. I’ll continue replacing failing hard drives for a few more years. For me that has meant zero replacements over a decade, though I planned for a 5% annual failure rate and have a spare drive in the case ready to g…

You can find cheap used enterprise SSDs on ebay. But the problem is that even the most power efficient enterprise SSD (SATA) idle at like 1w. And given the smaller capacities, you need many more to match a hard drive. In the end HDD might actually consume less power than an all flash array + controllers if you need a large capacity.

Re: Testing two 18 TB white label SATA hard drives from datablocks.dev

#58

Post by cm2187 »

speedgoose wrote: post #4

I admire the courage to store data on refurbished Seagate hard drives. I prefer SSD storage with some backups using cloud cold storage, because I’m not the one replacing the failing hard drives.

Might be a bit adventurous for primary storage (though with enough backup and redundancy, why not). But seems perfect for me for backup / cold storage.

Re: Testing two 18 TB white label SATA hard drives from datablocks.dev

#59

Post by Spooky23 »

jabart wrote: post #16
malfist wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a big difference between used as in I just bought this hard drive and have used it for a week in my home server, and used as in refurbished drive after years of hard labor in someone else's server farm

Enterprise drives are way different than anything consumer based. I wouldn't trust a consumer drive used for 2 years, but a true enteprise drive has like millions of hours left of it's life. Quote from Toshiba's paper on this. [1] Hard disk drives for enterprise server and storage usage (Enterprise Performance and Enterprise Capacity Drives) have MTTF of up to 2 million hours, at 5 years warranty, 24/7 operation. Ope…

There isn’t a significant difference between “enterprise” and “consumer” in terms of fundamental characteristics. They have different firmware and warranties, usually disks are tested more methodically.

Max operating range is ~60C for spinning disks and ~70C for SSD. Optimal is <40-45C. The larger agents facilties afaik tend to run as hot as they can.

Re: Testing two 18 TB white label SATA hard drives from datablocks.dev

#60

Post by phil21 »

leobg wrote: post #19

I was about to buy a NAS. I find the idea of using an old laptop instead interesting. Especially since it comes with UPS built in. The author is using a ThinkPad T430. Any experiences?

I ran an old Thinkpad as a home router and small home server/NAS device for quite a long time, usually swapping out my old work upgrades every 3 years or so.

They all had onboard gige so it worked fine - native vlan for the inbound Comcast connection, tagged vlans out to a switch for the various LAN connections.

They were from the era of DVD drives so I was able to put an extra HDD in the DVD slot to expand storage with. One model even had a eSATA port.

They worked great. Built-in UPS and they come with a reliable crash cart built-in!

Post reply on HN