What are good harddrives to use with servers (discuss.tchncs.de)

submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I have quite an extensive collection of media that my server makes available through different means (Jellyfin, NFS, mostly). One of my harddrives has some concerning smart values so I want to replace it. What are good harddrives to buy today? Are there any important tech specs to look out for? In the past I didn't give this too much attention and it didn't bite me, yet. But if I'm gonna buy a new drive now, I might as well...

I'm looking for something from 4TB upwards. I think I remember that drives with very high capacity are more likely to fail sooner - is that correct? How about different brands - do any have particularly good or bad reputation?

Thanks for any hints!

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[-] [email protected] 20 points 3 days ago

I'd like to second the 'manufacturer doesn't matter, all drives are going to fail' line, but specific models from manufacturers will have a much higher failure rate than others.

Backblaze, for example, publishes quarterly(ish?) stats showing the drives with the highest failure rates in terms of percentages, so you can kind of get a good view on if there's a specific drive model you should maybe avoid.

Or just buy an actual enterprise drive, avoid SMR, and have backups is also a sane approach.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 14 hours ago

Do be aware that Backblaze drive access patterns will probably be quite different from yours. So if there's a really good deal on something with a bit higher failure rate, but your usage pattern is pretty tame, it may be worth taking the gamble.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 14 hours ago

Yeah I was more referring to huge outliers, like the 4? 6? Tb seagates they had a few years ago that were like 25% Afr.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Some manufacturers have lower failure rates overall. But yes, you do have to mind the specific model.

this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2024

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