Simple question about large capacity HDs

[Muse]

I saved a 2TB Western Digital Elements external HD over the last couple days (Windows reported it RAW, but chkdsk /r restored it). I have lost at least 2 of those at due to failure. Maybe I'm asking too much of them. Been using these for HDTV DVR work, i.e. up to 6 hours at a time, constant writing or reading or both using the DVR etc. app supplied with a MYHD MDP-120 HDTV PCI card and daughter card. This kind of action may be more than can be expected from large capacity external HDs, I don't know. I've seen a few customer reviews suggesting that might be the case, that they are for backup purposes, not strenuous use.

The reason I've been doing this is because I haven't gotten around to upgrading the components in my main desktop system. It has a lousy SATA controller chip from over 10 years ago, I don't think the mobo will run anything better than Windows XP.

Well, I'd like to replace the mobo with a much more modern one that supports USB 3, large capacity HDs (internally!), and at least 3 PCI slots if possible.

So, here's my question: I bought a couple of external HDs over the last couple of days (yet to receive, they're shipping from B&H in NYC):

Seagate STDT500010 5TB Backup Plus Desktop Drive (It's in an external case, includes adapter, cable) $119 shipped
Seagate STEB500010 5TB Expansion Desktop Drive (also in a case, etc.) $109 shipped

If I buy a new mobo, RAM for my desktop, can I expect to be able to remove the HDs from the cases of those 5TB drive enclosures and install the drives internally in the desktop? Yes, I know that would void the warranty. Maybe I would do that after the warranties expire, or maybe just do it before that. I read that buying these HDs without the enclosures, etc. can actually cost $30 more!

 

[Elixer]

Yeah, shouldn't be a issue, I do that on lots of builds.
The only hiccup is, if the controller does something odd or has encryption, then you just hook it up to internal SATA ports, and reformat it.

Never did make sense why the externals are cheaper lots of times.

 

[Valantar]

Never did make sense why the externals are cheaper lots of times.

Volume, plain and simple. They sell far more external drives than internal ones, even the huge, ungainly beasts that are desktop external drives.


As for using external drives internally, I can second having done that without any problem. I've also gone the opposite route, swapping (high-capacity) external drives into my PC and filling the case with a previously-internal smaller capacity drive that I no longer needed. Both have worked flawlessly.


Also, I have to comment on your choice of external drives for that kind of workload. HDDs get hot, and generally are not made for continous use (unless you buy an Enterprise, NAS or surveillance drive). Cheaping out and going for the bargain-basement Elements line rather than the (slightly better ventilated) MyBook series (or any equivalent from other manufacturers) might be the cause of your woes. There is some reason for some lines of external drives being more expensive than others, both in terms of cooling, which drives are used, controller capabilities, and so on. I'm not advocating blindly buying the most expensive drives, but a good rule of thumb is that the cheapest ones are only reliable for sporadic backup usage.

 

[Elixer]

Volume, plain and simple. They sell far more external drives than internal ones, even the huge, ungainly beasts that are desktop external drives.

Now, if they were different drives, I can see the volume argument, but, most of the time they are the exact same drives, just routed to a different assembly line.
They are adding a case + controller + USB cable + power cable is adding more to the bottom line.

 

[Muse]

Volume, plain and simple. They sell far more external drives than internal ones, even the huge, ungainly beasts that are desktop external drives.


As for using external drives internally, I can second having done that without any problem. I've also gone the opposite route, swapping (high-capacity) external drives into my PC and filling the case with a previously-internal smaller capacity drive that I no longer needed. Both have worked flawlessly.


Also, I have to comment on your choice of external drives for that kind of workload. HDDs get hot, and generally are not made for continous use (unless you buy an Enterprise, NAS or surveillance drive). Cheaping out and going for the bargain-basement Elements line rather than the (slightly better ventilated) MyBook series (or any equivalent from other manufacturers) might be the cause of your woes. There is some reason for some lines of external drives being more expensive than others, both in terms of cooling, which drives are used, controller capabilities, and so on. I'm not advocating blindly buying the most expensive drives, but a good rule of thumb is that the cheapest ones are only reliable for sporadic backup usage.

This is news to me... thanks! Can you maybe point me to 5TB (or smaller, if necessary) HDs that will better serve for continuous use, particularly in long HDTV recording/playback scenario? I can return those drives I indicate in the OP and get exchanges from the seller. This is figuring installing them internally in my soon-to-be refurbished system with new mobo, CPU, RAM, SATA controller (presumably built into the mobo).

BTW, I do have a MyBook 3TB external that was provided me by WD to replace a 3TB Elements external that had gone bad in 2014. I guess that meantime I should use it for my HDTV DVR recordings. I've been using it light duty for occasional data storage/access off this laptop.

 

[Valantar]

For your use case, I'd buy some WD Red/Red Pro NAS drives (or a similar line from another manufacturer, I'm simply writing what I'm familiar with myself), from what I know they're the best suited for that kind of workload, both in terms of performance and longevity. As you already seem to have external cases from your previous drives, I'd reuse those for now - even with poor ventilation the drives should see no harm from a few months in less-than-friendly conditions. Then, put them into your new PC.

WD's storage line is pretty easy to make sense of:
Blue: regular value drives.
Green (discontinued?): low power.
Black: high performance desktop usage.
Red (Pro): NAS drives for media storage, recording, multiple simultaneous accesses, 24/7 operation (Pro is higher performance, mostly)
Purple: for video surveillance - continuous, 24/7 writes (and they _suck_ at anything else, from what I've seen)

I think that's all of them.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I shucked some 5TB Seagate Desktop External drives for my 4-bay NAS unit. So far so good. Though, I've heard bad reports about those 5TB Seagate drives. Who knows.

 

[Muse]

I'm thinking call B&H later this morning (they aren't open yet) and ask if I can refuse the shipments of the two 5TB Seagate external HDs and have them exchange for a couple of WD Red internals, 3TB or 4TB, I'll have to decide. I actually bought my Synology DS214play NAS and two WD 3TB Red 5400 RPM drives from them in 2014. I suppose a couple more of those same HDs would make sense for internal storage in my soon-to-be rebuilt desktop, or else the equivalent 4TB models. Maybe I'll setup a RAID1 system in the desktop.

To me, reliability is worth paying extra for in a HD. I never had failures before I started buying WD Elements external HDs, then an epidemic of them. In my experience, HD failures are just about the most vexing computer problems. I did have one Maxtor that had bad sectors showing up early on in the late 1990s and RMAed it before it failed.

Would WD Black be a better idea than Red for internal storage in a desktop for my usage?

If not worth the premium for my usage I'll probably just get Red 5400RPM.

I have 3 Seagate Backup Plus 3TB externals. I got them basically for backup purposes, and I suppose they are well-enough suited for that. However, I started using one of them for HDTV DVR duties when my WD Elements drives went bad. So far it hasn't failed, but I did have something squirrely happen 5 days ago. I have some recordings on it that I'll likely watch (some of them) but will for now switch to the 3TB WD MyBook for HDTV recording/playback at least until I get other HDs (i.e. probably the WD Reds).

I walked into B&H's Manhattan super store in August and they knew me! Came up in their system, I didn't remember my dealings with them, although I knew I'd checked them out online. What a store, multilevel, tremendous, huge stock! I liked the service considerably... helpful and friendly. Made Best Buy look pretty bad.

 

[Oyeve]

I would confirm if those drives don't have built in sata external adapters. I ordered a bunch if drives like you did a few years ago because I got a good deal on them only to find out after I opened the cases that the external usb3 connections were built into the drive controller. In other words, they could not be connected to any internal sata connections on the mobo.

 

[Muse]

I would confirm if those drives don't have built in sata external adapters. I ordered a bunch if drives like you did a few years ago because I got a good deal on them only to find out after I opened the cases that the external usb3 connections were built into the drive controller. In other words, they could not be connected to any internal sata connections on the mobo.

So, the drive connections to the controller in the case was proprietary and not connectable to an SATA controller inside a computer case? Nasty. Well, my current plan is to buy internal drives, probably WD Red 5400RPM, probably 3TB, at least two of them. I haven't called the seller (B&H) yet, will within an hour and try to arrange an exchange, hopefully where I don't have to hassle shipping charges. I don't know if they sent the drives signature-required. That would expedite the return process. Or maybe I can drop off the drives in unopened boxes at my local UPS store, not difficult.

I was waiting to call B&H so I could (1) wake up! and (2) check this thread for ideas/info. Hard to guage my needs. I have a WD Elements external HD that's not functional, have a second desktop that I figure I should rebuild as well, and placing high capacity drive(s) in that case seems a good idea. I can retire a bunch of IDE HDs, figure I have around 6 of those in use right now, none bigger than 200GB. Potentially, I could use several 2,3,4,? TB capacity drives going forward, but figure they will only get cheaper so should be in a hurry to buy them. 2 at least right now seems plenty sensible, however.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Your workload isn't anything special. You're just running into a simple fact - hard drives are a wear item.

Replace 'em and carry on with your day.

 

[Valantar]

Would WD Black be a better idea than Red for internal storage in a desktop for my usage?

That depends on your usage.

WD Blacks are built for high-performance single-client usage. I.e. use in a desktop PC, for gaming, content creation, stuff like that. Should be good for fast RAIDs as well.

WD Reds are built for NAS usage. I.e. multi-client continuous usage (like several people streaming video off them at the same time, while being recorded or backed up to). They're also rated for 24/7 operation, unlike the blacks. Slower for individual tasks, but their firmware is far better tuned for NAS workloads. Obviously suitable for RAID, as a NAS without a RAID setup is kind of silly.

So I guess the question would be this: will the drives (when used for recording) be run continuously, and will they be accessed by multiple users at a time?

 

[Oyeve]

I have 8 year old servers still running WD reds in raid 5. Not one has died.

 

[Valantar]

I have 8 year old servers still running WD reds in raid 5. Not one has died.

Did they have a red line 8 years ago? I did not know that. Still, good to hear they're going strong!

 

[Oyeve]

Did they have a red line 8 years ago? I did not know that. Still, good to hear they're going strong!

They were labeled as enterprise but were red labeled.

 

[mv2devnull]

Did they have a red line 8 years ago? I did not know that. Still, good to hear they're going strong!

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6157/...eview-are-nasoptimized-hdds-worth-the-premium
seems to say that the Red arrived summer 2012.

WD RE-line is older, server-grade.

 

[Muse]

So I guess the question would be this: will the drives (when used for recording) be run continuously, and will they be accessed by multiple users at a time?

Multiple users? Not currently. Continuously, well, not days on end. On average maybe 5 hours at a time. I guess it isn't heavy usage. I'm thinking WD Red 5400RPM drives are probably OK for that and I bought two 3TB models today, am RMAing the 5TB drives described in the OP, just rerouting the unopened boxes back to the company in New York.

I suppose I could run a couple of these in RAID1, but not sure it's a good idea. I very seldom watch a TV program more than once. I tuck some stuff away for possible future viewing, usually because I haven't watched it yet. If I lost some of that material I wouldn't be upset about it. I could just copy that stuff to another HD. Obviously, a RAID1 setup would save me the trouble of manually backing up some things. Or maybe I could automate backing up a folder tree.

I went years and years without a HD failure and the WD Elements drives failures were just very aggravating, lost several of them. It never dawned on me that those external drives were never designed for the usage I was putting them to. I really should have upgraded my desktop some years ago. I didn't because what I was doing worked, even if it was a hassle. Still, if a lot of problems are solved by upgrading my mobo etc. I will likely feel like I should have done it long ago. There's things like crashes and an annoying lip synch issue that keeps coming up that I'm hoping an upgrade will resolve.

 

[energee]

WD RE-line is older, server-grade.

Western Digital's RE-series is still alive and well. They've gone through multiple iterations over the years. I have an RE4 drive from several years ago in the PC from which I'm typing. The "enterprise-class" RE4 drives were essentially binned Blacks with tweaked firmware (e.g., lower TLER) -- at least that's my memory of the differences.

The modest price premium of the so-called enterprise SATA drives seemed worth it to me initially, but the price gap eventually increased to the point where they were double the cost of consumer drives with similar specs.

I haven't really kept up with recent changes in the HDD industry, but at a glance it looks as though the market segmentation has only gotten worse.

WD appears to have moved their RE ("Raid Edition") to a new "Datacenter" branding. Given the pricing, I don't seen much point in the high-capacity Black drives, especially considering the abysmal UBER listed in the consumer drive specs.

 

[Oyeve]

All of my works current hds are ssd. The difference is amazing.

 

[Valantar]

All of my works current hds are ssd. The difference is amazing.

Do you use them for mass storage? Do you enjoy throwing money out the window while using SSDs for a workload they're not really suited for?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Do you use them for mass storage? Do you enjoy throwing money out the window while using SSDs for a workload they're not really suited for?

Some people don't need a huge amount of mass storage.

 

[Oyeve]

Do you use them for mass storage? Do you enjoy throwing money out the window while using SSDs for a workload they're not really suited for?

These are file/print/app servers and ssd in raid 5 is great. Fast performance is key at my job. I even use ssd for the backup Nas systems and the backups are loads faster. So yeah, it's suited for that.

 

[Valantar]

These are file/print/app servers and ssd in raid 5 is great. Fast performance is key at my job. I even use ssd for the backup Nas systems and the backups are loads faster. So yeah, it's suited for that.

If they're in active use, sure. When I read "backup," i think along the lines of "cold storage" or similar write-once workloads. SSDs are not really suited for long-term storage due to cell degradation. Although if they're constantly powered, I guess it shouldn't be a problem.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

OP, absolutely no problem in shucking the drives.
All 32x of my He8 UltraStars came that way.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Nice. But I never buy "external drives." I redeploy internal drives to make external drives, or use hot-swap bays and caddies. Sooner or later, these old Thermaltake aluminum boxes may get retired. I converted from IDE->USB to eSATA using the boxes' original power-supplies.

I've described my storage strategy in at least a few threads. I may overwork a small SSD, but it takes the wear and tear off the cached HDDs.

I'll come back here and whine a lot if I have a problem with it, but it's been 2.5 years since I started doing it, and it's working out great.