this post was submitted on 11 May 2024
14 points (88.9% liked)

Buildapc

3790 readers
16 users here now

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Anyone got any recommendations or warnings about specific hdd / ssd / storage brands or models at the moment? Thinking about buying another drive instead of being smart and cleaning up my files. I've been pretty happy with Samsung but I've heard they had a clunker of a drive with high failure rates lately. HDD, SSD and I think I have an extra spare M2 nvme slot on my motherboard, so all recommendations are welcome. Price isn't a huge concern, but I don't feel the need to drop a thousand dollars on a single 22TB drive, anything 5TB and above will do fine for now.

top 10 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

Don’t squeeze them into your eyes. Don’t rub them on your skin and go to the sun. Don’t squeeze them on open wounds.

I think this is enough warnings about lemons for now.

As for storage advice, check Backblaze’s reports on drive failures!

https://backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q1-2024/

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (2 children)

For 2.5" SSD I'd suggest a Samsung Evo or crucial mx500. These will top out at like 4TB afaik.

For 3.5" spinner I'd suggest an enterprise class HDD. Specifically WD Gold or HGST. Look up the most recent backblaze drive failure report for some models known to last a while.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Seconded on the Crucial drive!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Yep, got a Samsung evo 870 in there, still going strong for like a decade. The HGST spinner I have is also pretty longlived. Weren't they bought out by WD though? I feel like I remember hearing that the quality has declined severely.

Having said that, I do also have a WD .... black? In there that has also lasted. I will check out gold though, and the mx500

backblaze drive failure report

Excellent, this is what I was hoping to find again but i couldn't remember the name. I also assumed it would be paywalled after all these years... if I could even get google to deliver the link.

Thanks a heap, you've been extremely helpful!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

3 of my 4 SSDs are Samsung, the 850 EVO SATA, the 960 pro pcie 3 and the 980 pcie 4. No complaints at all.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

If data reliability is high on your list, but speed is not, use a NAS running RAID 1 (mirrored drives), so one drive can fail without compromising the data.

I used to do RAID 5 on an 8 drive array, but had a failure of the NAS motherboard. And wouldn't you know it, they didn't make that model anymore. No easy way to get the data back out of the RAID. I finally paid to recover the data, but learned my lesson. It's MUCH cheaper to buy duplicate drives than it is to recover data later. If the RAID motherboard failed tomorrow, I would pop the working drive in my computer and it would just work.

Using drive mirroring pretty much eliminates the concern over premature drive failure. If it's in warranty, pop out the bad drive and send it in for repair/replacement. The NAS will still work. Buy another drive or wait with sweaty palms until the faulty drive is fixed. Rebuild the array.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I've always considered doing a raid array but the cheapness of remote servers these days makes it feel like overkill combined with being expensive and centralized. I just have an external enclosure and a mess of duplicate files across smaller outdated drives at the moment. It's not ideal, but that's ADHD for you.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I’ve been pretty happy with Samsung but I’ve heard they had a clunker of a drive with high failure rates lately

This might be the 980 Pro you're thinking of, in which case updating firmware should take care of that

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

That's probably it, thanks. Good to know it's just a firmware issue too

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I started with this approach, but then I found truenas. It runs the entire array in software, which is nice because most consumer equipment doesn't seem to support raid adequately.