I’ve had several Seagate drives fail, and warranty replacement is fought. Yes, they will replace them but will question you and make you work for it. It’s as if they offer a warranty only to those serious enough to push back, thinking it will save them money. The opposite is true for me, I try and NEVER recommend Seagate drives to any client unless they demand it.
@@zainahmed6258 -- I should admit I have a few running Seagate's and the clients are happy, but they have had zero failures. I prefer WD or Toshiba. Edit: If you get Seagate's, ask the client or end user to purchase them themselves, not you, and strongly suggest they print hardcopies of all receipts, every charge record, photos of the install, Amazon Receipts, installation notes, etc., put them in an envelope and tape them to the bottom of the NAS. And also write the date of warranty expiration on the envelope. If the drives have different purchase dates or sources, do the same with a sharpie on the drive before installation. Not joking, Seagate will argue with you about everything, THAT drive is older and out of warranty (Date sold to the vendor not end user), THAT drive was not sold to you but whatever the reseller's name was. The hours I have spent tracking down, printing, emailing, etc. receipts for customers would boggle your mind. And on 2 clients behalf, I just purchased another drive and gave up on Seagate support as it just wasn't worth it (but the client was worth keeping happy).
@@Erin-Thor Very strange how internet is divided. I found out the WD has lost its spot and is now producing less reliable drives which break unexpectedly. Seagate EXOS is the way to go. I would prefer Toshiba but only one retailer in Australia has some in stock and they are N300 6tb for $320. When you say WD then which WD and which Toshiba? At the moment i can only afford upto 8tb of space which is plenty for me for storing photos and family videos. Currently EXOS 8tb 7E10 are on sale for $299 same as Toshiba N300 6tb and Ironwolf (not pro) 8tb.
@@zainahmed6258 - I’m in the USA, so this may not be an apples to apples comparison. And yes, everyone will have a different take, opinion, or experiences. I just purchased 6 Toshiba 12 TB N300 drives for about $200 US each for a job. That’ll provide them with 60 TB plus a spare (on site, not hot). If you’re in Australia, Seagate service might be totally different there than here in the US. I would advise you NOT let my bad Seagate experiences influence your decision in Australia. And as I mentioned a few of my clients love and trust them. As you say you budget and needs are small (not being disrespectful), but if you’re looking at, considering a NAS, think redundancy. If you need 8 TB total, 2x 8TB (mirrored) or 3x 4 TB drives would allow that redundancy and fault tolerance, and save you money. If you like and buy Seagate, great! My .02¢ worth is to save, print and document your install just to be safe, something you should be doing anyways with any major purchase. 😎
@@Erin-Thor Thank you for sharing such valuable experience. I am just getting into the world of NAS and I know its going to be one expensive one down the line 🙂
I have over 16 Seagate 16TB Exos drives for my 2 NAS machines.....1 died and I submitted an RMA with Seagate...BACK IN JULY 2023, it is not well into October, I have no replacement, when I contact them they say they are "out of stock" and will replace "soon", and this goes on over and over again. Their warranty has no deadline, how is this legal? They still sell the drives on Amazon and Newegg, always in stock there, they should just send me a check to purchase a new drive if that's the case, this is ridiculous! Because of this, I never want to purchase another Seagate product again, what good is a warranty if they never honor it!?!?! I no longer have a cold spare on hand if another drive fails!
Hi Rex , I have a DS420+ and I have filled it up with Toshiba N300 drives (PN starts with HDWG4xxUZSVA) which are probably the same as the Synology branded ones. Also they tend to have more Toshibas in the compatibility list than the others. They were also cheaper than the WD Pro and Seagate Pro… Firmware was 0601 as Synology recommended.
I recently purchased the DS920+ and love it!! I started off 6 years ago with the base WD cloud drive and was always disappointed with the speed. You get what you pay for I guess. When they announced they were ending the security updates early this year I was fuming!! So I started shopping for another unit and determined not to ever buy a WD NAS again. I found Synology, and LOVE the speed! I have 2x 6TB WD Black hard drive and it works really great. Thanks for your videos and I may hire you one day when I want to upgrade my system. Thanks again.
Advice & Assistance: Hello, I currently have a DS920+ Nas with 4, 4TB drives, and Synology RAM DDR4-2666 Non-ECC SO-DIMM 4GB (D4NESO-2666-4G) . My RAID configuration is SHR1. I'm looking to replace/upgrade one of the drives to a 16TB. When I went to purchase, I saw 2 different kinds and wanted to insure I get what is compatible with the other 3 remaining drives. Descriptions: Current drives - Seagate IronWolf Pro 4TB NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD - 3.5 Inch SATA 6Gb/s 7200 RPM 128MB Cache for RAID Network Attached Storage, Data Recovery Service - Frustration Free Packaging (ST4000NE001) Replacement options - Seagate IronWolf Pro 16TB NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD - CMR 3.5 Inch SATA 6GB/S 7200 RPM 256MB Cache for Raid Network Attached Storage, Data Recovery Rescue Service Or Seagate IronWolf Pro 16TB Enterprise NAS Internal HDD Hard Drive - CMR 3.5 Inch SATA 6Gb/s 7200 RPM 256MB Cache for RAID Network Attached Storage, Rescue Services - FFP g (ST16000NTZ01) I will eventually replace/upgrade all the remaining drives. What’s the difference, and which should I choose to go with in your opinion? Thanking you in advance
Seagate has sales on their website from time to time. That’s how I wound up with 4 14TB IronWolf Pros for my first nas experience. In a Qnap ts-473a. Awesome so far!
I just bought eight 14TB WD Red CMR drives for $279 ea on Amazon. Excellent price. I usually get Iron Wolf Reds, but I was filling a DS1821+ and could not pass up the $279. It is nice to have 86TB of space :). I also upgraded my Synologys to 16GB RAM, 1TB m.2 caches, and a 10G NIC. I also use the 1621+ with 8TB Iron Wolfs as a NAS backup for important files on the 1821. The new project I just finished is a TrueNAS box with a 12400k, 64GB DDR5 RAM, ROG B660-I MB, four 16TB Exos Drives, JONSBO N1 case, Asus 10G NIC, and a 750w SFF PSU! It is a gorgeous NAS!
Toshiba N300s for me. Replacing all my seagates and WDs. Actually cheaper for me too. Glad to know that Synology is rebranding the Toshibas but the price hike for their logo is a bit off. Just get the Toshibas and not the Synology logo ones.
I own a Synology 416 Play which is an update from the 411j. I migrated the drives in 2017 from the 411 to the 416, so I still use the same four WD20EARS 2TB for about 10 years! Never seen one fault report from SMART. My NAS is configured in BTRFS with snapshot, RAID 5, local backup and critical backup in the cloud, so whenever a drive fails, I wil replace them one by one.
I went with 5 16TB Seagate EXOs in my Synology 1520+ in Raid 6 few months ago (1st time buyer). The noise isn't bad but its a lil strange hearing a light knocking or spinning up sound out of the blue. If you're able to keep your NAS in another room you'll never notice it. I can't do that with my apartment but I've gotten used to it. Unless they die on me anytime soon, I'd buy them again.
I started out using an IBM 360 , IBM 370 , and later, an IBM System 3. Yep, a Jurassic Park of the 1970s. Throughout that time until now, I haven't seen anyone be so fucused and so honest for everyone who is watching the video. I have listened to great advice from former MICROSOFT people who always have been available to great things. Your time in explaining everyting in NAS is honorable and very appreciated. I hope others understand why. Tute, si rece vixeris. If John Lennon was a techie, he would love this. Thanks!
On the topic of SMR drives: It can also lead to a RAID failure when there's not enough free storage left. Happened to me and I changed all my WD Reds to Ironwolf after WD had to admit that some of their WD Red models were SMR drives.
Seagate IronWolf is my go-to for Synology. I purchased 8 10TB Ironwolf drives for a project, and about one year later 6 drives began to show sector errors. I contacted Seagate - they covered replacements, and in fact, I received 12TB replacements, Seagate stated they were out of 10TB drives. I paid to ship the failed drives and Seagate paid for the shipping to me. 100% satisfied with Seagate. Side Note: the 6 drives that were failing all were within 100 serial numbers, so it must have been a bad lot.
I'm old enough to remember about two major scandals for each major HDD manufacturer. Every time, they tried to hide it from customers. It's practically SOP for the industry.
I have 4x seagate barracuda drives. 2 of them are in my system in Raid 1, and the 2 others are hard backup copies that I use to backup the two in the system whenever I add/remove major amount of files. These are stored on a shelf in a dry, cool and dark place. So far this has worked fine.
Be warned that Barracuda drives have issues as they aren't properly being read by software for drive health. I've had multiple drives that either clicked or took a long time to start spinning show as excellent health only to fail with no warning. When monitoring drive health I've never had issues with Western Digital.
Thank you for great explanation. Your way to explain is so detailed and I love it. My firt NAS was configured by your tutorial. I really love your channel and subcribed immediatly. You do very valuable content. Keep doing what you doing man.
When you buy a Seagate 5TB 2.5 inch external USB enclosure, you will find a very low power consumption and very silent Seagate Barracuda 2.5 inch SATA drive in it. These drives have 600000 load/unload cycles. You will find exactly the same in each external enclosure from Seagate. Combine 4 x 5TB in a 4 bay NAS and you get 15 TB of storage :-). Very silent, low power consumption and also very lightweight.
I've had SGT and WD fail on me, so I started buying Hitachi and Toshiba. After the takeover of Hitachi by WD, I'm now exclusively on Toshiba. Love them.
I have always used Ironwolf NAS and have never had a problem. Currently, I am thinking of changing to Exos because they have the same specs and you get a much longer life for the money.
I worked as a PC Technician in the late 80s and again in the mid 90s. I know it's a long time ago, but I saw significantly less failures of WD Drives than Seagate. Couple that with the only HD Failure I've ever had was a Seagate. So I stopped used them completely by 2000. I've never had a failure since. While other people I know who are in particular or Seagate fans are regularly telling me their stories of HDD failures.
I'm running 5 x 16TB IronWolf Pros in RAID6 in my latest Synology 1522+. Same price as the EXOS as that capacity at the moment. I've had great success with the IWPs in the past, plus you get warranty direct with the manufacturer rather than the distributor!
Thanks for your comparison, you have great videos, very informative. I had a Synology RS2016 and changed 7 out of 12 Western Digital Red drives. I have switched to the Ironwolf 10Tb since 3 years that are working extremely well in a Synology 1019. Keep up the good work.
I have the opposite experience - 4 ironwolf drives failed within 6 months of purchase - replacements started failing also so returned them and got my money back. Running WD Red 8 TB fine for 2 years now.
I just bought a synology DS1522+ (from Amazon) along with 3 used Seagate EXOS 14TB HDD from ebay ($115 a piece). I installed the three drives in the 1522 and it says they aren't on compatibility list. I used them anyways but I don't know if I should replace them with another drive or not.. something on the compatibility list. I don't see why they wouldn't be on the list as they are enterprise NAS HDD's. The drives I got are the ST14000NM000G.
Good comparison review and discussion. The amazing reliability and MTBF with the EXOS drives vs. IronWolf is worth any complaint of a little extra dB for the longer lifespan. I switched to using EXOS for my DS2419+II which is simply worth the TCO value over time to know my NAS array will have solid uptime and performance. Honestly, the 12 EXOS drives spinning 24/7 isn't more noticeable audibly than my primary workstation at my desk. iPerf3 tests show I'm reliably getting 8-9Gbps over the 10Gb NIC copper; definitely the better performer when doing Virtual Machines or Docker containers and especially for real-time video/photo editing. But the most important question, "What's your data worth to you?" My Best Disk Buying Tips: 1) Always buy the best you can afford 2) Don't short-change the value of your data when shopping for storage 3) Always buy N+1 cold spare drive (if your data integrity and up-time matters to you when the $h!t hits the fan) 4) Buy with intent for reliability of devices to fail... nothing is perfect, so build into RAID 5 or 6 (best) and plan for (at least) one drive to eventually fail over time, 5) Try to buy matched drives by type and capacity. Mixing drives and using dynamic RAID formats is nice, but nothing beats a RAID 5/6 with matched capacity for speed and reliability. Lastly, I also try to buy disks in mixed batches so that I can have some drives from different production runs (think QA control to offset any disks that might have a repetitive mfg issue.)
I have Exos and they are loud. When they are searching you hear these strong TOK TOK TOK. I can even hear it downstairs in the floor below. Otherwise they work great.
Love your channel and I'm learning a lot. I wanted to share a recent experience with Seagate Ironwolf 12TB hard drives. I ordered five drives for a new Synology DS1522+ and three of the five were dead on arrival. They did not work at all. I've been using a DS716+ for about six years with Western Digital hard drives and have experienced zero problems. I'm going with five Western Digital drives to replace the Seagate drives. BTW, I did move them around in the NAS confirming that it's not the NAS. The NAS was making strange beeping sounds and the green drive lights never came on for the defective drives. The Seagate drives were also deeply discounted at B&H Photo so I'm suspecting they were off spec or something similar.
I've never had good luck with Seagate drives. Their drives have always failed. When showing hard drive health via multiple different health check software. it would always show in excellent or good condition but then completely die on me without warning. All the western digital drives I've had have properly shown drive health on when hey are reaching poor condition. Because I've had multiple seagates fail on me I will never buy them again.
Perfect timing for your video! I’ve just picked up a Synology DS1621+ to replace my old Drobo, I was just beginning to look at what hard drives I should purchase to populate my DS1621+. My Drobo has original older 3TB and 4TB WD Red drives (CMR) but I need larger capacity drives to go in my Synology to have enough space to migrate my data across. Would the Seagate Ironwolf or Exos be my best options then, also what would NVMe SSD would you recommend for use in the 1621+ as a cache?
Either the IronWolf or Exos are fantastic options. I chose Exos for the extra MTBF reliability and data center proven spindles. The Samsung Evo Pro SSDs are the best out there, but depending on your use of the Synology DS1621+ you may not see much performance gain with the file transfers as if you would by adding the 10Gb NIC card. I have both upgrades and found the NVMe cache has done little to accelerate my R/W performance for normal file sharing/transfers. If using the DS for VM's or Docker then yes, adding the SSD cache would be helpful.
@@MatthewMorseCA Thanks for the reply. I've settled on using Seagate Exos drives as my main storage and just waiting on them going on special offer before ordering. Is it worth going with the Samsung 970 Pro over the Evo Plus? I'm guessing it's to do with lifespan of the drive (Read/Write) and overall drive performance?
I am a small business user with DS 1621xs+, I would not buy Synology HDD unless they drop their price to keep in line with other brands. CMR sata 7200rpm exos
Very informative. Surprised at your recommendation for Seagate as I thought WD had a better reputation generally- but as a home user considering an NAS, the Synology brand Toshiba drives make the most sense.
Timely video for me. I’m buying a 1522+. I used the drive selector and decided on these but they are not listed on the synology compatible list. Should this be ok or should I find another!! Seagate IronWolf Pro 4TB NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD - 3.5 Inch SATA 6Gb/s 7200 RPM 128MB Cache for RAID Network Attached Storage, Data Recovery Service - Frustration Free Packaging (ST4000NE001)
I bought a drive to shuck for less than half the price of the drive bought separately, it's still going, super slow drive though i imagine that is why it ended up in an enclosure
I’d really like someone to test the startup draw on these NAS and Enterprise drives. As your NAS gets older and the drives get bigger they put more strain on the power supply, which is usually not got much headroom. My power supply went out after placing a 16TB Toshiba in my fifth slot, that I had never used before. Synology basically said that the drives I had migrated to over the years were probably drawing too much power. Some of the large server manufacturers, like 45Drives, have a feature where the drives will start up sequentially to reduce that initial spike. This is a feature I’d like to see in the smaller NAS systems. I could find nothing about startup current on any of the manufacturers websites.
Over the years I collected a box with broken stuff, all my failed had’s are inside. So there is 4 Seagate, 1 Toshiba that is totally my fault since I dropped it and 1 WD. Swore to myself never use Seagate, so since 2017-18 been using only WD and up to now had 0 troubles.
May years ago my work used Seagate drives all the time, but most of them failed including the replacements. So Seagate left a bad impression for me. I've stuck with WD and have been happy. I do notice my WD Red drives in my Synology 918 are a tad noisy at times for my home office. I have 6 Synology units with WD drives, all have been working great.
I have heard similar things from guys who worked with Segate 10-15 years ago! seems like they have gotten themselves together but its hard to get that kind of a bad taste out of your mouth
@@SpaceRexWill I had so many problems with seagate 10+ yers ago, but for the past 5 years we are using in the studio heavily seagate ironwolf hdd and never had (knock on a wood) any issues
I've run both and defaulted to Exos for the better MTBF and data center reliability. With 12-drives the dB isn't anything louder than my core workstation, and you can set the DS fan controls on many Synology NAS, too.
@@MatthewMorseCA not the fan what is loud. The thicking sound the HDD gives or read and write. Way freakin loud and anoying. This is why I dont use them anymore.
I've chosen to go with Toshiba Enterprise drives and they have been both best value and very good performance. The fact that it's who Synology uses, should make them an obvious choice.
Bought a 920 plus about a year ago. Started with WD 2Tb drives. Now have two WD 20Tb drives installed. Just purchased two more identical WD 20Tb drives, and Synology software won't let them initialize. There is a workaround using SSH, but I hesitate without instruction. This is like removing car features after purchase, and it's not right. Unable to add more data, and stuck at 86 percent.
So I've got an Ironwolf 4 TB. My main concern has been that I've got it partitioned with 1 TB dedicated to Surveillance station. I know that Skyhawks are better for camera footage. In your opinion are the Ironwolfs ok to use as dual purpose for NAS use AND cameras? I'm debating whether or not to buy another Synology (mine only has two bays) with four bays, two of which I could dedicate for Cameras with a Skyhawk.
I've bought my first Synology NAS for testing, just a small 2 drive system and am really impressed with the operating system, functionality etc. All the videos I've seen use traditional hard drives. Is there any reason not to use SSD's as the storage media?
It's really simple: SSDs are expensive. Even 10-15 years after their first occurrence, they are still at least double the price of hard disks on the lower side.
Personal experience - Ironwolf was really good at first but it seems companies build a name, then make worse stuff relying on the name, then release a new series. I had been recommending ironwolf, but the last couple of years, for me at least, have been poor. 2 DOA and the replacements failed in two years. Total failures were 3. My ironwolf drives from the first few years are still running. My first two wd reds had a good run, but the ones after not so great. Running HGST at home, with one Toshiba I had to get because there were no other drives available that wasn't 3x the price in the middle of the pandemic and I had a wd red failure. Personally, never had a hgst fail. We'll see what happens going forward. Again just my experience. Also I find backblaze's reports interesting.
As far as I can tell (have looked at those before) they are designed to be OEM clones for business who want to buy a dell, but don’t want to pay dell 4x the cost of the hard drive. I probably would look at something like a cheap Exos before going for those unless there was a really good price reason
I only buy reds for my storage. I have external enclosure WD units that have been going strong for multiple years where I'm constantly writing data to them (security camera footage). But I also have backups for these units just because I know they will fail. Plus the warranty is normally shorter than buying reds directly.
Thank you and I will have to look for some cheap stand alone drives to harvest. I have an older six bay Synology NAS with. 2 empty slots, that should not be a big risk. Do you have any concerns? I am not too tech savvy but am willing to experiment. Cheers.
Will, so did you purchase the EXOS drives and how did you get around the compatible firmware version Synology requires which is SN02 for the 16TB drives since they appear to only be available with SN03 or SN04? You are correct that they are less expensive than the IronWolf / Pro.
Thank you very much for sharing your thought for once more. I am about to upgrade my DS220j synology to DS920+. Following your info i am about to stop using WD Red and turning into buying two drives Exos X 16-14 TB. What is your opinion about those drives? Is there any big difference with the X18 you suggest? I also checked Synology's list with all the compatible drives and i realized that the disk i am looking for, also the one you suggest are out. Should be safer to buy a little smaller disks as long as i am about to use SHR-1 for the very beginning? and therefore the Ironwolf would me more ideal for me? Thanks
@@zainahmed6258 It's going without any problems so far. I'm using three 18-TB disks per an SHR1 volume with a nominally 10Gbit/s computer interface, getting read speeds between 300 MB/s and 1 GB/S, depending on whether the installed M.2 SSD cache can be utilized. - Eero
@@jigsound Thanks man. I have just placed an order for two 8tb Exos for personal NAS. I haven't bought a NAS yet for personal photos and videos. Any recommendations? DS218, DS220+ etc?
@@zainahmed6258 Glad to help! 😊 My only experience, as of yet, is with DS1821+, of which I bought two units (one for working directly off it and the other for HyperBackup). Working without problems so far. 👍
Not sure if this is a HDD or NAS question. I’m looking to set up a NAS that will be part file storage, part Plex server and in the near future a surveillance NVR. Could I/should I use IronWolf Pros for the file storage and Plex server RAIDs and a NVR class drive for the NVR or should I use IronWolf Pros for the entire NAS?
It is also not uncommon for USB hard drives to simply have recertified hard drives installed instead of completely new ones. Recertified are hard drives that were sent back to e.g. Seagate, WD etc. due to a defect or other reasons, then checked and/or repaired, the SMART entries were reset and then reused. I once had 2 USB hard drives, both of which were from WD, where the USB controller was defective, but the hard drive was still OK and I removed it and the sticker on it said Recertified
Man, your videos are top notch and really helpful. I was set to buy 2x8TB WD REDs but now I'm considering Seagate Ironwolf (or Ironewolves bacause I need two of them :-) Good work indeed. I will forgive you your taste in shirts and sometimes weird almost-out-of breath way of speaking :-).
There are several models of the IronWolf disks: IronWolf, IronWolf Pro, IronWolf NAS and then those with different transfer rates or Max. Workload Rate. This is quite confusing! I ask myself every time anew, which model I should now use in a Synology NAS.
Is it better to buy large drives if you have a LOT to store? Thinking for backup....25TB of current storage (approx), I'm thinking using the NAS ability to self back-up the data.
Either buy one of the largest if enough (for your 25gb not yet, maybe near September if you're willing to wait for the 26+gb HDDs to FINALLY be released to the market) Or go raid5 with at least 4 drives and just scale as much as you need. Raid 5 can rebuild all your backup if any of it's constituent drive goes bad. Making your backups Ironclad. All for the cost of losing ONE drive that will keep your data safe. Dont go Raid0 tho as I mentioned earlier, as if any of your drives goes dead, you lose everything, even if just ONE out of X goes bad. Personally, If I was getting a DS1522+ I would stuff it with 5x WD Red Plus drives, probably the 14TBs (so 4x14 = 56TB - fifth dive is for data parity) I am building my raid from 4HDD in my new computer tho and most likely am going for the 22gb drive if I can get a good deal, so 66tb for me. As I said, I will never lose my data unless I get a catastrophic failure of that PC. I would still save the most important data on another external backup drive tho, just in case, but a single drive would be enough for that. Good luck !
Recent subscriber... your vids are always worth the time to watch. Can you comment on using the newest and largest hard drives on Synology? I am OK with forgoing tech support on the drive but want to know if a particular drive "should" work. For me specifically I want to use EXOS 18TB drives on a DS1520+. Are there any architectural or size issues that would result in incompatibility? Thanks, Tony
Synology is based on Linux and Linux is able to run with 18 / 20 hard drives no issue so I would say any issue you would run into would actually be synologys fault. That being said I have not tested any sizes larger then 16TB with a synology so I cannot verify it would work (but it should)
how to like storage no need to connect to net ? or always connected to net ? this one like a harddrive in pc because i need to more storage thanks for the answer
Thanks for the info on HDs. Someday I may replace my current (DS1019+) Synology NAS but not anytime soon. I probably will replace drives before the NAS unit itself.
So i have a 2 bay Synology and i've bought 2 Barracudas for it by mistake. However, after watching this video i kinda feel like i'm just going to go ahead and use them as i'm literally only using it for TimeMachine backups on 1 mac. Maybe some storage but it won't be in constant use. I feel like i'll be ok no...? I mean the data's not sensitive so if i lose it all it's not a problem. I guess i'll just buy the NAS drives when/if the worst happens.
I don't know if anyone said anything about it but I looked at prices just now since I'm planning to get another newer NAS at some point and like to look beforehand... I have a Gold from before but since WD has done what they've done I've started looking more at Seagate as well and... The price difference between Exos and Ironwolf Pros could be due to there being two different Exos-models. I found one that was 400 SEK (I'm in Sweden) cheaper than the other, both being 4TB Exos. Noticed one was mentioned to be 512n, the other 512e/4kn, so different sector sizes and less compatible with older software/hardware. Could be what you saw back then as well... The newer standard 4kn is cheaper :p Might not work with all NAS:es though. Would be loathe to find out my new drive just won't work in the NAS.
Another Great video, and thanks so much for the WD warning/recommendations. Years ago I swore off seagate due to frequent failures on a netgear nas and only bought Hitachi or WD, from your video I learned we had 4 WD SMR with 8 WD CMR in a 12 drive synology raid. I'm swapping them out one by one as fast as I can. One question I had is if you know if the RED drives (WD3001FFSX) also had this secret swap of smr for cmr NAS drives ? I've tried searching on the net and haven't found evidence of this, it seems the WD gold (WD4003FRYZ) are all cmr drives. Based on your suggestion, I've ordered all new seagate iron wolf pro drives. Thanks so much SpaceRex, keep the educational videos coming!
What about a raid 6 w/ hot spare using a in large arrays? I solved the supported drive error issue on the RS2821RP+. Using the 10G NVME cache network card... it moves data...
Wow! That was an incredibly helpful and clear overview of NAS drive options, best practices and also the added details about the inner workings of the companies, their pricing models and the few "questionable" practices of some were great side notes. I feel significantly better informed as a consumer. What are your thoughts about using SSDs instead of HDDs for a DS220+ NAS? If price weren't a major concern, would you be comfortable with the reliability and performance of SSDs vs HDDs with the added benefit of reduced noise, power and mechanical failures? Also, do you have a threshold for minimum RPMs for HDD such as 5400 or 7200? Thanks for the great video! Cheers
Thank you. That is a great tip about the Exos drives. 👍 Would the Exos 18 Sata 3 be a good choice. 2 of them and beginning with my first Nas ever , the DS1522+ ? And what kind of Raid setup schould i choose ?
Very informative video, kudos for that. I have a 5 bay Synology that is meant for personal use (DS 1019+), I have 5X12TB WD 5400 RPM in it, 2 of them are WD RED and 3 are shucked easystore drives. My question is: Can I replace any of them with a WD Plus 7200 RPM? My goal is to replace all of them gradually, one at a time.
Seagate Ironwolf 12TB, how are they for acoustics? I'm currently running WD Red Plus 14TB, but in the future I'm looking to leave WD, I saw your other video about flagging early
How do you know if your HDD is SMR? I have a number of WD Red Plus 14TB NAS Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM Class SATA 6Gb/s, CMR, 512MB Cache, 3.5 Inch - WD140EFGX
Never used an Exos drive but I see the price per gig is way lesser than an ironwolf drive or the standard Seagate. I just need them for a plex server migration. Not sure how they'd work in a Plex server. Anyone use them? Any issues?
I am planning to purchase synology 2 bay nas but on their website in compatibility HDD support for seagate is ST16000VN001 so my question is, can I go with ST16000NT001
New Video, if you don't have it. I have a DS920 with 4TB drives in all bays on RAID 5. It is 90% full. I want to replace the drives with 16TB. Can I do it by swapping out a drive in the RAID one at a time?
Yes you can. Make sure to first backup your crucial data just in case something happens as if a disk failed while the NAS was being rebuilt you would lose the volume.
Hi, Thanks for your channel and sharing with us. I just bought a DS220+. Is it possible this NAS doesn’t recognise basic WD Red Plus HDD (ref : WD40EFPX). It’s seems Synology isn’t very transparent about that 😕.
Ok but right now 3x6TB WD RED (WD60EFRX-68MYMN1) and I've to replace one drive in RAID5, can I use Segate IronWolf 6TB and mix HD from different vendors?
If you are setting up a larger NAS (4 and more slots) and are starting out with say 3 10TB disks so you make a raid 5 on that, and a year ahead you have the money to fill the NAS up to the maximum of say 6 drives. Now you can get the same drives in a 20tb version. So what is best .. keep the 3x10 and just make a new 3x20 or expand the 1st one to 6x10 and make a new 3x10 on the bigger disks ? on the one solution you get 3 disks on each array and each disk only serves 1 array, on the 2'nd You get 1 bigger array spread on 6 disk but 3 of the disks servers 2 arrays and will obviously have more reads/writes that will lower their overall performance (my logic). I'm leaning to the one were each disk only serves 1 array, but at some point evening out all the disk sizes would propably be the best but also most expensive solution. Not ALL will have the money right away to fill up a 4bay NAS with 4x22tb which I think is the current max size, but most likely the sizes of disks will keep going up about once a year so this is kinda a cartwheel you can keep running on untill the NAS or disks dies 🙃
I did the mistake to fill up my 5-bay Synology NAS with 3TB and 4TB drives when I bought it a few years ago. Now, I’m out of space and stuck with no more room for expanding. I could replace some of the current drives with 8TB or 12TB drives (depending on what I can afford). But then I have no use for the current drives anymore so they will be wasted. Maybe a better option could be to buy the extension cabinet and fill it with only a couple of new drives.
@@thomashinna6370 Ya it depends how many money you have, even spinners arent too expensive, I mean even a 20tb Exos isn't too bad, but 5 off em it sums up well, and dependent what sizes you have already and you buy one larger, you need a place to move your data to while you build a larger raid
@SpaceRex - based in part on your helpful vids, I just bought and set up my first NAS - a Synology DS923+ with a pair of 18TB Iron Wolf Pro drives. Does it sound right that my drives (and thus Drive Pool) size are showing as 16.4TB with just 15.7TB as the total size of starter Volume 1?
Great Video!! I am researching for a purchase of a NAS. I like the DS920+ but I have a question about adding more hard drives in the future. if i went with 3 drives to start with say 4TBx3 drives. can I add a four drive that is larger then 4TB to gain more storage.
I am planning to buy Nas. My friend told me that WD are worse than symology. I was considering wd es2 ultra, but it has much worse specs than synology 223 or 224+. Drive will be needed only to backup data, maybe rarely to access the data. Which one should I buy? Which drive should I get? I am trying to understand if synology 223 or 223j will be enough, and I think yes, it will be. Am I correct that more expensive Nas like 224+ are for more professional use? And that they differ only with hardware? What is the difference between 223 and 223j?
I’ve had several Seagate drives fail, and warranty replacement is fought. Yes, they will replace them but will question you and make you work for it. It’s as if they offer a warranty only to those serious enough to push back, thinking it will save them money. The opposite is true for me, I try and NEVER recommend Seagate drives to any client unless they demand it.
Thanks but what do you recommend? I was looking at newer EXOS 7E10 8tb drives from home NAS.
@@zainahmed6258 -- I should admit I have a few running Seagate's and the clients are happy, but they have had zero failures. I prefer WD or Toshiba.
Edit: If you get Seagate's, ask the client or end user to purchase them themselves, not you, and strongly suggest they print hardcopies of all receipts, every charge record, photos of the install, Amazon Receipts, installation notes, etc., put them in an envelope and tape them to the bottom of the NAS. And also write the date of warranty expiration on the envelope. If the drives have different purchase dates or sources, do the same with a sharpie on the drive before installation. Not joking, Seagate will argue with you about everything, THAT drive is older and out of warranty (Date sold to the vendor not end user), THAT drive was not sold to you but whatever the reseller's name was. The hours I have spent tracking down, printing, emailing, etc. receipts for customers would boggle your mind. And on 2 clients behalf, I just purchased another drive and gave up on Seagate support as it just wasn't worth it (but the client was worth keeping happy).
@@Erin-Thor Very strange how internet is divided. I found out the WD has lost its spot and is now producing less reliable drives which break unexpectedly. Seagate EXOS is the way to go. I would prefer Toshiba but only one retailer in Australia has some in stock and they are N300 6tb for $320. When you say WD then which WD and which Toshiba? At the moment i can only afford upto 8tb of space which is plenty for me for storing photos and family videos. Currently EXOS 8tb 7E10 are on sale for $299 same as Toshiba N300 6tb and Ironwolf (not pro) 8tb.
@@zainahmed6258 - I’m in the USA, so this may not be an apples to apples comparison. And yes, everyone will have a different take, opinion, or experiences. I just purchased 6 Toshiba 12 TB N300 drives for about $200 US each for a job. That’ll provide them with 60 TB plus a spare (on site, not hot). If you’re in Australia, Seagate service might be totally different there than here in the US. I would advise you NOT let my bad Seagate experiences influence your decision in Australia. And as I mentioned a few of my clients love and trust them. As you say you budget and needs are small (not being disrespectful), but if you’re looking at, considering a NAS, think redundancy. If you need 8 TB total, 2x 8TB (mirrored) or 3x 4 TB drives would allow that redundancy and fault tolerance, and save you money. If you like and buy Seagate, great! My .02¢ worth is to save, print and document your install just to be safe, something you should be doing anyways with any major purchase. 😎
@@Erin-Thor Thank you for sharing such valuable experience. I am just getting into the world of NAS and I know its going to be one expensive one down the line 🙂
I have over 16 Seagate 16TB Exos drives for my 2 NAS machines.....1 died and I submitted an RMA with Seagate...BACK IN JULY 2023, it is not well into October, I have no replacement, when I contact them they say they are "out of stock" and will replace "soon", and this goes on over and over again. Their warranty has no deadline, how is this legal? They still sell the drives on Amazon and Newegg, always in stock there, they should just send me a check to purchase a new drive if that's the case, this is ridiculous!
Because of this, I never want to purchase another Seagate product again, what good is a warranty if they never honor it!?!?! I no longer have a cold spare on hand if another drive fails!
Hi Rex , I have a DS420+ and I have filled it up with Toshiba N300 drives (PN starts with HDWG4xxUZSVA) which are probably the same as the Synology branded ones. Also they tend to have more Toshibas in the compatibility list than the others. They were also cheaper than the WD Pro and Seagate Pro… Firmware was 0601 as Synology recommended.
I recently purchased the DS920+ and love it!! I started off 6 years ago with the base WD cloud drive and was always disappointed with the speed. You get what you pay for I guess. When they announced they were ending the security updates early this year I was fuming!! So I started shopping for another unit and determined not to ever buy a WD NAS again. I found Synology, and LOVE the speed! I have 2x 6TB WD Black hard drive and it works really great. Thanks for your videos and I may hire you one day when I want to upgrade my system. Thanks again.
WD cloud is BS. I transformed my wd cloud mirror to xpenology and still using this device like synology NAS.
Advice & Assistance: Hello, I currently have a DS920+ Nas with 4, 4TB drives, and Synology RAM DDR4-2666 Non-ECC SO-DIMM 4GB (D4NESO-2666-4G) . My RAID configuration is SHR1.
I'm looking to replace/upgrade one of the drives to a 16TB. When I went to purchase, I saw 2 different kinds and wanted to insure I get what is compatible with the other 3 remaining drives.
Descriptions:
Current drives - Seagate IronWolf Pro 4TB NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD - 3.5 Inch SATA 6Gb/s 7200 RPM 128MB Cache for RAID Network Attached Storage, Data Recovery Service - Frustration Free Packaging (ST4000NE001)
Replacement options - Seagate IronWolf Pro 16TB NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD - CMR 3.5 Inch SATA 6GB/S 7200 RPM 256MB Cache for Raid Network Attached Storage, Data Recovery Rescue Service
Or
Seagate IronWolf Pro 16TB Enterprise NAS Internal HDD Hard Drive - CMR 3.5 Inch SATA 6Gb/s 7200 RPM 256MB Cache for RAID Network Attached Storage, Rescue Services - FFP g (ST16000NTZ01)
I will eventually replace/upgrade all the remaining drives. What’s the difference, and which should I choose to go with in your opinion?
Thanking you in advance
Seagate has sales on their website from time to time.
That’s how I wound up with 4 14TB IronWolf Pros for my first nas experience. In a Qnap ts-473a.
Awesome so far!
I just bought eight 14TB WD Red CMR drives for $279 ea on Amazon. Excellent price. I usually get Iron Wolf Reds, but I was filling a DS1821+ and could not pass up the $279. It is nice to have 86TB of space :). I also upgraded my Synologys to 16GB RAM, 1TB m.2 caches, and a 10G NIC. I also use the 1621+ with 8TB Iron Wolfs as a NAS backup for important files on the 1821. The new project I just finished is a TrueNAS box with a 12400k, 64GB DDR5 RAM, ROG B660-I MB, four 16TB Exos Drives, JONSBO N1 case, Asus 10G NIC, and a 750w SFF PSU! It is a gorgeous NAS!
Damn, that's a lot of porn!
Toshiba N300s for me. Replacing all my seagates and WDs. Actually cheaper for me too. Glad to know that Synology is rebranding the Toshibas but the price hike for their logo is a bit off. Just get the Toshibas and not the Synology logo ones.
I own a Synology 416 Play which is an update from the 411j. I migrated the drives in 2017 from the 411 to the 416, so I still use the same four WD20EARS 2TB for about 10 years! Never seen one fault report from SMART. My NAS is configured in BTRFS with snapshot, RAID 5, local backup and critical backup in the cloud, so whenever a drive fails, I wil replace them one by one.
I went with 5 16TB Seagate EXOs in my Synology 1520+ in Raid 6 few months ago (1st time buyer). The noise isn't bad but its a lil strange hearing a light knocking or spinning up sound out of the blue. If you're able to keep your NAS in another room you'll never notice it. I can't do that with my apartment but I've gotten used to it. Unless they die on me anytime soon, I'd buy them again.
I started out using an IBM 360 , IBM 370 , and later, an IBM System 3. Yep, a Jurassic Park of the 1970s. Throughout that time until now, I haven't seen anyone be so fucused and so honest for everyone who is watching the video. I have listened to great advice from former MICROSOFT people who always have been available to great things. Your time in explaining everyting in NAS is honorable and very appreciated. I hope others understand why. Tute, si rece vixeris. If John Lennon
was a techie, he would love this. Thanks!
Thanks!
Lol fortran for the win :) started off running a IBM 360 moved up to a 360/40.back in the stone age
@@oranaz551old timers unite! 360 with REXX and COBOL, assembler. Then as400, then z series. Good old days! Now relaxing by the beach 😊
On the topic of SMR drives: It can also lead to a RAID failure when there's not enough free storage left. Happened to me and I changed all my WD Reds to Ironwolf after WD had to admit that some of their WD Red models were SMR drives.
I have a DS918+ with Ironwolfs and just built a DS910+ with Exos. Both have been flawless so far.
Seagate IronWolf is my go-to for Synology. I purchased 8 10TB Ironwolf drives for a project, and about one year later 6 drives began to show sector errors. I contacted Seagate - they covered replacements, and in fact, I received 12TB replacements, Seagate stated they were out of 10TB drives. I paid to ship the failed drives and Seagate paid for the shipping to me.
100% satisfied with Seagate. Side Note: the 6 drives that were failing all were within 100 serial numbers, so it must have been a bad lot.
Great to know! I have had the same experience when I have had to do an RMA
I'm old enough to remember about two major scandals for each major HDD manufacturer. Every time, they tried to hide it from customers. It's practically SOP for the industry.
I have 4x seagate barracuda drives. 2 of them are in my system in Raid 1, and the 2 others are hard backup copies that I use to backup the two in the system whenever I add/remove major amount of files. These are stored on a shelf in a dry, cool and dark place. So far this has worked fine.
Be warned that Barracuda drives have issues as they aren't properly being read by software for drive health. I've had multiple drives that either clicked or took a long time to start spinning show as excellent health only to fail with no warning. When monitoring drive health I've never had issues with Western Digital.
Thank you for great explanation. Your way to explain is so detailed and I love it.
My firt NAS was configured by your tutorial. I really love your channel and subcribed immediatly. You do very valuable content. Keep doing what you doing man.
Thanks man! Really glad you like it!
When you buy a Seagate 5TB 2.5 inch external USB enclosure, you will find a very low power consumption and very silent Seagate Barracuda 2.5 inch SATA drive in it. These drives have 600000 load/unload cycles. You will find exactly the same in each external enclosure from Seagate. Combine 4 x 5TB in a 4 bay NAS and you get 15 TB of storage :-). Very silent, low power consumption and also very lightweight.
I've had SGT and WD fail on me, so I started buying Hitachi and Toshiba. After the takeover of Hitachi by WD, I'm now exclusively on Toshiba. Love them.
I have always used Ironwolf NAS and have never had a problem. Currently, I am thinking of changing to Exos because they have the same specs and you get a much longer life for the money.
i got those seagate exos and I think they are just fine sound wise.
Just did a quick price check and at the time of writing a 16TB Synology drive is more than twice the price of an Ironwolf Pro in my market.
I worked as a PC Technician in the late 80s and again in the mid 90s. I know it's a long time ago, but I saw significantly less failures of WD Drives than Seagate. Couple that with the only HD Failure I've ever had was a Seagate. So I stopped used them completely by 2000. I've never had a failure since. While other people I know who are in particular or Seagate fans are regularly telling me their stories of HDD failures.
I'm running 5 x 16TB IronWolf Pros in RAID6 in my latest Synology 1522+. Same price as the EXOS as that capacity at the moment. I've had great success with the IWPs in the past, plus you get warranty direct with the manufacturer rather than the distributor!
Thanks for your comparison, you have great videos, very informative. I had a Synology RS2016 and changed 7 out of 12 Western Digital Red drives. I have switched to the Ironwolf 10Tb since 3 years that are working extremely well in a Synology 1019. Keep up the good work.
I have the opposite experience - 4 ironwolf drives failed within 6 months of purchase - replacements started failing also so returned them and got my money back. Running WD Red 8 TB fine for 2 years now.
I just bought a synology DS1522+ (from Amazon) along with 3 used Seagate EXOS 14TB HDD from ebay ($115 a piece). I installed the three drives in the 1522 and it says they aren't on compatibility list. I used them anyways but I don't know if I should replace them with another drive or not.. something on the compatibility list. I don't see why they wouldn't be on the list as they are enterprise NAS HDD's. The drives I got are the ST14000NM000G.
Good comparison review and discussion. The amazing reliability and MTBF with the EXOS drives vs. IronWolf is worth any complaint of a little extra dB for the longer lifespan. I switched to using EXOS for my DS2419+II which is simply worth the TCO value over time to know my NAS array will have solid uptime and performance. Honestly, the 12 EXOS drives spinning 24/7 isn't more noticeable audibly than my primary workstation at my desk. iPerf3 tests show I'm reliably getting 8-9Gbps over the 10Gb NIC copper; definitely the better performer when doing Virtual Machines or Docker containers and especially for real-time video/photo editing. But the most important question, "What's your data worth to you?" My Best Disk Buying Tips: 1) Always buy the best you can afford 2) Don't short-change the value of your data when shopping for storage 3) Always buy N+1 cold spare drive (if your data integrity and up-time matters to you when the $h!t hits the fan) 4) Buy with intent for reliability of devices to fail... nothing is perfect, so build into RAID 5 or 6 (best) and plan for (at least) one drive to eventually fail over time, 5) Try to buy matched drives by type and capacity. Mixing drives and using dynamic RAID formats is nice, but nothing beats a RAID 5/6 with matched capacity for speed and reliability. Lastly, I also try to buy disks in mixed batches so that I can have some drives from different production runs (think QA control to offset any disks that might have a repetitive mfg issue.)
Another in depth review. Thanks so much! How do you know if your WD drives are either CMR or SMR?
I have Exos and they are loud. When they are searching you hear these strong TOK TOK TOK. I can even hear it downstairs in the floor below. Otherwise they work great.
Love your channel and I'm learning a lot. I wanted to share a recent experience with Seagate Ironwolf 12TB hard drives. I ordered five drives for a new Synology DS1522+ and three of the five were dead on arrival. They did not work at all. I've been using a DS716+ for about six years with Western Digital hard drives and have experienced zero problems. I'm going with five Western Digital drives to replace the Seagate drives. BTW, I did move them around in the NAS confirming that it's not the NAS. The NAS was making strange beeping sounds and the green drive lights never came on for the defective drives. The Seagate drives were also deeply discounted at B&H Photo so I'm suspecting they were off spec or something similar.
I've never had good luck with Seagate drives. Their drives have always failed. When showing hard drive health via multiple different health check software. it would always show in excellent or good condition but then completely die on me without warning. All the western digital drives I've had have properly shown drive health on when hey are reaching poor condition. Because I've had multiple seagates fail on me I will never buy them again.
Perfect timing for your video! I’ve just picked up a Synology DS1621+ to replace my old Drobo, I was just beginning to look at what hard drives I should purchase to populate my DS1621+. My Drobo has original older 3TB and 4TB WD Red drives (CMR) but I need larger capacity drives to go in my Synology to have enough space to migrate my data across. Would the Seagate Ironwolf or Exos be my best options then, also what would NVMe SSD would you recommend for use in the 1621+ as a cache?
Either the IronWolf or Exos are fantastic options. I chose Exos for the extra MTBF reliability and data center proven spindles. The Samsung Evo Pro SSDs are the best out there, but depending on your use of the Synology DS1621+ you may not see much performance gain with the file transfers as if you would by adding the 10Gb NIC card. I have both upgrades and found the NVMe cache has done little to accelerate my R/W performance for normal file sharing/transfers. If using the DS for VM's or Docker then yes, adding the SSD cache would be helpful.
@@MatthewMorseCA Thanks for the reply. I've settled on using Seagate Exos drives as my main storage and just waiting on them going on special offer before ordering. Is it worth going with the Samsung 970 Pro over the Evo Plus? I'm guessing it's to do with lifespan of the drive (Read/Write) and overall drive performance?
I am a small business user with DS 1621xs+, I would not buy Synology HDD unless they drop their price to keep in line with other brands. CMR sata 7200rpm exos
Yeah, I really hope they do not bring the Synology hard drive recommendation down to the smaller units!
Very informative. Surprised at your recommendation for Seagate as I thought WD had a better reputation generally- but as a home user considering an NAS, the Synology brand Toshiba drives make the most sense.
Timely video for me. I’m buying a 1522+. I used the drive selector and decided on these but they are not listed on the synology compatible list. Should this be ok or should I find another!! Seagate IronWolf Pro 4TB NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD - 3.5 Inch SATA 6Gb/s 7200 RPM 128MB Cache for RAID Network Attached Storage, Data Recovery Service - Frustration Free Packaging (ST4000NE001)
I bought a drive to shuck for less than half the price of the drive bought separately, it's still going, super slow drive though i imagine that is why it ended up in an enclosure
I’d really like someone to test the startup draw on these NAS and Enterprise drives. As your NAS gets older and the drives get bigger they put more strain on the power supply, which is usually not got much headroom. My power supply went out after placing a 16TB Toshiba in my fifth slot, that I had never used before. Synology basically said that the drives I had migrated to over the years were probably drawing too much power. Some of the large server manufacturers, like 45Drives, have a feature where the drives will start up sequentially to reduce that initial spike. This is a feature I’d like to see in the smaller NAS systems. I could find nothing about startup current on any of the manufacturers websites.
Over the years I collected a box with broken stuff, all my failed had’s are inside. So there is 4 Seagate, 1 Toshiba that is totally my fault since I dropped it and 1 WD. Swore to myself never use Seagate, so since 2017-18 been using only WD and up to now had 0 troubles.
I am very satisfied with DS920+ with 4 pieces of WD 18TB Gold (WD181KRYZ). Running 24/7/365 fifth year.
Thanks for the SMR & CMR topic, Its Helpful
IronWolf was my choice also when I first got into NAS, it's still what I have
May years ago my work used Seagate drives all the time, but most of them failed including the replacements. So Seagate left a bad impression for me. I've stuck with WD and have been happy. I do notice my WD Red drives in my Synology 918 are a tad noisy at times for my home office. I have 6 Synology units with WD drives, all have been working great.
I have heard similar things from guys who worked with Segate 10-15 years ago! seems like they have gotten themselves together but its hard to get that kind of a bad taste out of your mouth
@@SpaceRexWill I had so many problems with seagate 10+ yers ago, but for the past 5 years we are using in the studio heavily seagate ironwolf hdd and never had (knock on a wood) any issues
It's weird and goes through cycles. I had SO many problems with WD Drives, especially Raptors. Switched to Seagate with no problems...
I got the 6x10 TB IronWolf Pro. Exos is CRAZY loud compare to Ironwolf Pro. (IronWolf pro is also kinda loud)
I've run both and defaulted to Exos for the better MTBF and data center reliability. With 12-drives the dB isn't anything louder than my core workstation, and you can set the DS fan controls on many Synology NAS, too.
@@MatthewMorseCA not the fan what is loud. The thicking sound the HDD gives or read and write. Way freakin loud and anoying. This is why I dont use them anymore.
I've chosen to go with Toshiba Enterprise drives and they have been both best value and very good performance. The fact that it's who Synology uses, should make them an obvious choice.
how is their sound ? i think 14TB toshiba. i have ironwolf pro 14tb and it is high when writing.
@@serdar-ors not that bad but I also have them in a case with acoustic dampening and away from my desk.
@@VirtualTourPhotographer acoustic dampening , interesting. thanks.
Bought a 920 plus about a year ago. Started with WD 2Tb drives. Now have two WD 20Tb drives installed. Just purchased two more identical WD 20Tb drives, and Synology software won't let them initialize. There is a workaround using SSH, but I hesitate without instruction. This is like removing car features after purchase, and it's not right. Unable to add more data, and stuck at 86 percent.
So I've got an Ironwolf 4 TB. My main concern has been that I've got it partitioned with 1 TB dedicated to Surveillance station. I know that Skyhawks are better for camera footage. In your opinion are the Ironwolfs ok to use as dual purpose for NAS use AND cameras? I'm debating whether or not to buy another Synology (mine only has two bays) with four bays, two of which I could dedicate for Cameras with a Skyhawk.
I would not worry about it! Ironwolfs are still rated for very high work loads!
@@SpaceRexWill Thanks!
I've bought my first Synology NAS for testing, just a small 2 drive system and am really impressed with the operating system, functionality etc.
All the videos I've seen use traditional hard drives. Is there any reason not to use SSD's as the storage media?
It's really simple: SSDs are expensive. Even 10-15 years after their first occurrence, they are still at least double the price of hard disks on the lower side.
Personal experience - Ironwolf was really good at first but it seems companies build a name, then make worse stuff relying on the name, then release a new series. I had been recommending ironwolf, but the last couple of years, for me at least, have been poor. 2 DOA and the replacements failed in two years. Total failures were 3. My ironwolf drives from the first few years are still running.
My first two wd reds had a good run, but the ones after not so great. Running HGST at home, with one Toshiba I had to get because there were no other drives available that wasn't 3x the price in the middle of the pandemic and I had a wd red failure. Personally, never had a hgst fail. We'll see what happens going forward.
Again just my experience. Also I find backblaze's reports interesting.
Where are you buying from?
@@SpaceRexWill @SpaceRex BH photo, "Shipped and Sold from Newegg," and Microcenter. The replacements were under manufacturer warranty.
What about Water Panther Arsenal series? I'm trying to stay very, well cheap so I'm thinking about getting a couple "renewed" drives on Amazon.
As far as I can tell (have looked at those before) they are designed to be OEM clones for business who want to buy a dell, but don’t want to pay dell 4x the cost of the hard drive. I probably would look at something like a cheap Exos before going for those unless there was a really good price reason
I only buy reds for my storage. I have external enclosure WD units that have been going strong for multiple years where I'm constantly writing data to them (security camera footage). But I also have backups for these units just because I know they will fail. Plus the warranty is normally shorter than buying reds directly.
I was going to go with the EXOS drives but I didn't see them on the Synology compatibility list...? Would've been nice to save some $$
Thank you and I will have to look for some cheap stand alone drives to harvest. I have an older six bay Synology NAS with. 2 empty slots, that should not be a big risk. Do you have any concerns? I am not too tech savvy but am willing to experiment. Cheers.
Will, so did you purchase the EXOS drives and how did you get around the compatible firmware version Synology requires which is SN02 for the 16TB drives since they appear to only be available with SN03 or SN04? You are correct that they are less expensive than the IronWolf / Pro.
Thank you very much for sharing your thought for once more. I am about to upgrade my DS220j synology to DS920+. Following your info i am about to stop using WD Red and turning into buying two drives Exos X 16-14 TB. What is your opinion about those drives? Is there any big difference with the X18 you suggest? I also checked Synology's list with all the compatible drives and i realized that the disk i am looking for, also the one you suggest are out. Should be safer to buy a little smaller disks as long as i am about to use SHR-1 for the very beginning? and therefore the Ironwolf would me more ideal for me? Thanks
Went with EXOS. Let's see how it goes! 😎
how is it going so far?
@@zainahmed6258 It's going without any problems so far. I'm using three 18-TB disks per an SHR1 volume with a nominally 10Gbit/s computer interface, getting read speeds between 300 MB/s and 1 GB/S, depending on whether the installed M.2 SSD cache can be utilized.
- Eero
@@jigsound Thanks man. I have just placed an order for two 8tb Exos for personal NAS. I haven't bought a NAS yet for personal photos and videos. Any recommendations? DS218, DS220+ etc?
@@zainahmed6258 Glad to help! 😊 My only experience, as of yet, is with DS1821+, of which I bought two units (one for working directly off it and the other for HyperBackup). Working without problems so far. 👍
Isn't there a risk of external drives being SMR? Especially since base WD Red are SMR
Yes! With shucking drives you really want to put in some work to make sure you get good drives if you can
Not sure if this is a HDD or NAS question. I’m looking to set up a NAS that will be part file storage, part Plex server and in the near future a surveillance NVR. Could I/should I use IronWolf Pros for the file storage and Plex server RAIDs and a NVR class drive for the NVR or should I use IronWolf Pros for the entire NAS?
It is also not uncommon for USB hard drives to simply have recertified hard drives installed instead of completely new ones.
Recertified are hard drives that were sent back to e.g. Seagate, WD etc. due to a defect or other reasons, then checked and/or repaired, the SMART entries were reset and then reused.
I once had 2 USB hard drives, both of which were from WD, where the USB controller was defective, but the hard drive was still OK and I removed it and the sticker on it said Recertified
Man, your videos are top notch and really helpful. I was set to buy 2x8TB WD REDs but now I'm considering Seagate Ironwolf (or Ironewolves bacause I need two of them :-) Good work indeed.
I will forgive you your taste in shirts and sometimes weird almost-out-of breath way of speaking :-).
There are several models of the IronWolf disks: IronWolf, IronWolf Pro, IronWolf NAS and then those with different transfer rates or Max. Workload Rate. This is quite confusing! I ask myself every time anew, which model I should now use in a Synology NAS.
Is't Toshiba getting hot? I have WD red and they worked for years, non smr.
Who still miss Maxtor drives, my favourite brand of HDDs ever
Such great review once again.
Is it better to buy large drives if you have a LOT to store? Thinking for backup....25TB of current storage (approx), I'm thinking using the NAS ability to self back-up the data.
Either buy one of the largest if enough (for your 25gb not yet, maybe near September if you're willing to wait for the 26+gb HDDs to FINALLY be released to the market)
Or go raid5 with at least 4 drives and just scale as much as you need. Raid 5 can rebuild all your backup if any of it's constituent drive goes bad. Making your backups Ironclad. All for the cost of losing ONE drive that will keep your data safe. Dont go Raid0 tho as I mentioned earlier, as if any of your drives goes dead, you lose everything, even if just ONE out of X goes bad.
Personally, If I was getting a DS1522+ I would stuff it with 5x WD Red Plus drives, probably the 14TBs (so 4x14 = 56TB - fifth dive is for data parity)
I am building my raid from 4HDD in my new computer tho and most likely am going for the 22gb drive if I can get a good deal, so 66tb for me.
As I said, I will never lose my data unless I get a catastrophic failure of that PC. I would still save the most important data on another external backup drive tho, just in case, but a single drive would be enough for that.
Good luck !
What about SSD drives?? I have some of those, but they're not on the synology compatibility list. Samsung 870 evo. 860 is on the list, but not 870.
Recent subscriber... your vids are always worth the time to watch. Can you comment on using the newest and largest hard drives on Synology? I am OK with forgoing tech support on the drive but want to know if a particular drive "should" work. For me specifically I want to use EXOS 18TB drives on a DS1520+. Are there any architectural or size issues that would result in incompatibility? Thanks, Tony
Synology is based on Linux and Linux is able to run with 18 / 20 hard drives no issue so I would say any issue you would run into would actually be synologys fault. That being said I have not tested any sizes larger then 16TB with a synology so I cannot verify it would work (but it should)
@@SpaceRexWill Thanks!
Thx!
How about Toshiba HDWG21EUZSVA 14TB?
If they produce for Synology - and it have the sensor it sould be OK?
What about the old Hitachi, now WD, ultrastars? They are the all time stars of backblaze statistics on reliability...
how to like storage no need to connect to net ? or always connected to net ? this one like a harddrive in pc because i need to more storage thanks for the answer
TOP TIPS ...
Don't buy all your hard drives from the same shop at the same time.
Spread it out and hope they're from different batches.
Thanks for the info on HDs. Someday I may replace my current (DS1019+) Synology NAS but not anytime soon. I probably will replace drives before the NAS unit itself.
So i have a 2 bay Synology and i've bought 2 Barracudas for it by mistake. However, after watching this video i kinda feel like i'm just going to go ahead and use them as i'm literally only using it for TimeMachine backups on 1 mac. Maybe some storage but it won't be in constant use. I feel like i'll be ok no...?
I mean the data's not sensitive so if i lose it all it's not a problem. I guess i'll just buy the NAS drives when/if the worst happens.
somewhere i read that synology switched to seagate for their "own drives" as well
can someony confirm please
I don't know if anyone said anything about it but I looked at prices just now since I'm planning to get another newer NAS at some point and like to look beforehand... I have a Gold from before but since WD has done what they've done I've started looking more at Seagate as well and... The price difference between Exos and Ironwolf Pros could be due to there being two different Exos-models. I found one that was 400 SEK (I'm in Sweden) cheaper than the other, both being 4TB Exos. Noticed one was mentioned to be 512n, the other 512e/4kn, so different sector sizes and less compatible with older software/hardware. Could be what you saw back then as well... The newer standard 4kn is cheaper :p Might not work with all NAS:es though. Would be loathe to find out my new drive just won't work in the NAS.
Strange time happenning. Just bought Exoses into home NAS, just because they are cheaper than Ironwolves, not telling about IronWolf Pro
Was about to go with EXOS but a huge sale went on for WDs Ultrastar line so went for that instead, hopefully they can last long enough.
Nice! 100% go with where ever the sale is at (esp if they are high quality)
How are they doing? Noisy?
I want to buy 4x WD ultrastar 16TB for my nas, they are a lot cheaper than WD gold here lately.
@@the_bogeyman. occasionally they to make a bit of noise but nothing unacceptable, none of them have failed yet.
@@ArrangingFear56 thankyou.
Thank you for the video thats great information!
Another Great video, and thanks so much for the WD warning/recommendations. Years ago I swore off seagate due to frequent failures on a netgear nas and only bought Hitachi or WD, from your video I learned we had 4 WD SMR with 8 WD CMR in a 12 drive synology raid. I'm swapping them out one by one as fast as I can. One question I had is if you know if the RED drives (WD3001FFSX) also had this secret swap of smr for cmr NAS drives ? I've tried searching on the net and haven't found evidence of this, it seems the WD gold (WD4003FRYZ) are all cmr drives. Based on your suggestion, I've ordered all new seagate iron wolf pro drives. Thanks so much SpaceRex, keep the educational videos coming!
Red plus, red pro, and wd gold should all be cmr. Regular reds I believe are all SMR now (old ones may or may not be).
Thanks Rex, I'm going with Synology Ironwolf drives!
What about a raid 6 w/ hot spare using a in large arrays? I solved the supported drive error issue on the RS2821RP+. Using the 10G NVME cache network card... it moves data...
Have you looked at the Exos Mach 2 dual actuator drives? If so, do they work as intended in a Synology NAS?
Wd red for em all the way. Luckily, we haven’t had any server yet that requires those Synology drives.
Wow! That was an incredibly helpful and clear overview of NAS drive options, best practices and also the added details about the inner workings of the companies, their pricing models and the few "questionable" practices of some were great side notes. I feel significantly better informed as a consumer.
What are your thoughts about using SSDs instead of HDDs for a DS220+ NAS? If price weren't a major concern, would you be comfortable with the reliability and performance of SSDs vs HDDs with the added benefit of reduced noise, power and mechanical failures?
Also, do you have a threshold for minimum RPMs for HDD such as 5400 or 7200?
Thanks for the great video!
Cheers
Thank you. That is a great tip about the Exos drives. 👍
Would the Exos 18 Sata 3 be a good choice. 2 of them and beginning with my first Nas ever , the DS1522+ ?
And what kind of Raid setup schould i choose ?
Very informative video, kudos for that. I have a 5 bay Synology that is meant for personal use (DS 1019+), I have 5X12TB WD 5400 RPM in it, 2 of them are WD RED and 3 are shucked easystore drives. My question is: Can I replace any of them with a WD Plus 7200 RPM? My goal is to replace all of them gradually, one at a time.
Setting up a new NAS. I currently use an SSD on my laptop and really like it. Is an SSD a good idea for a Synology NAS?
wd had a sale recently on its gold drives.
Just bought two 4TB Seagate Ironwolf's a week ago to replace a failing WD 6TB drive in my Synology DS215J, which now employs Raid. Happy with them.
Nice!
Seagate Ironwolf 12TB, how are they for acoustics? I'm currently running WD Red Plus 14TB, but in the future I'm looking to leave WD, I saw your other video about flagging early
How do you know if your HDD is SMR? I have a number of WD Red Plus 14TB NAS Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM Class SATA 6Gb/s, CMR, 512MB Cache, 3.5 Inch - WD140EFGX
We are getting Unverified drive for Seagate Exos drive? Can we use the unverified drive for Synology DS1522+ Please advise
Never used an Exos drive but I see the price per gig is way lesser than an ironwolf drive or the standard Seagate. I just need them for a plex server migration. Not sure how they'd work in a Plex server. Anyone use them? Any issues?
I am planning to purchase synology 2 bay nas but on their website in compatibility HDD support for seagate is ST16000VN001 so my question is, can I go with ST16000NT001
Yes
@@SpaceRexWill Thank you Sir
New Video, if you don't have it. I have a DS920 with 4TB drives in all bays on RAID 5. It is 90% full. I want to replace the drives with 16TB. Can I do it by swapping out a drive in the RAID one at a time?
Yes you can. Make sure to first backup your crucial data just in case something happens as if a disk failed while the NAS was being rebuilt you would lose the volume.
Hi,
Thanks for your channel and sharing with us.
I just bought a DS220+. Is it possible this NAS doesn’t recognise basic WD Red Plus HDD (ref : WD40EFPX).
It’s seems Synology isn’t very transparent about that 😕.
Ok but right now 3x6TB WD RED (WD60EFRX-68MYMN1) and I've to replace one drive in RAID5, can I use Segate IronWolf 6TB and mix HD from different vendors?
Thank you Will! What about DSM 7.1 beta, do you recommend installing it? A brief DSM 7.1 highlight video would be great to watch. Take care! 😊
7.1 is really a business update, so I would always recommend waiting till release unless you have a real feature you need
If you are setting up a larger NAS (4 and more slots) and are starting out with say 3 10TB disks so you make a raid 5 on that, and a year ahead you have the money to fill the NAS up to the maximum of say 6 drives. Now you can get the same drives in a 20tb version. So what is best .. keep the 3x10 and just make a new 3x20 or expand the 1st one to 6x10 and make a new 3x10 on the bigger disks ? on the one solution you get 3 disks on each array and each disk only serves 1 array, on the 2'nd You get 1 bigger array spread on 6 disk but 3 of the disks servers 2 arrays and will obviously have more reads/writes that will lower their overall performance (my logic). I'm leaning to the one were each disk only serves 1 array, but at some point evening out all the disk sizes would propably be the best but also most expensive solution. Not ALL will have the money right away to fill up a 4bay NAS with 4x22tb which I think is the current max size, but most likely the sizes of disks will keep going up about once a year so this is kinda a cartwheel you can keep running on untill the NAS or disks dies 🙃
I did the mistake to fill up my 5-bay Synology NAS with 3TB and 4TB drives when I bought it a few years ago. Now, I’m out of space and stuck with no more room for expanding. I could replace some of the current drives with 8TB or 12TB drives (depending on what I can afford). But then I have no use for the current drives anymore so they will be wasted. Maybe a better option could be to buy the extension cabinet and fill it with only a couple of new drives.
@@thomashinna6370 Ya it depends how many money you have, even spinners arent too expensive, I mean even a 20tb Exos isn't too bad, but 5 off em it sums up well, and dependent what sizes you have already and you buy one larger, you need a place to move your data to while you build a larger raid
@SpaceRex - based in part on your helpful vids, I just bought and set up my first NAS - a Synology DS923+ with a pair of 18TB Iron Wolf Pro drives. Does it sound right that my drives (and thus Drive Pool) size are showing as 16.4TB with just 15.7TB as the total size of starter Volume 1?
Great Video!! I am researching for a purchase of a NAS. I like the DS920+ but I have a question about adding more hard drives in the future. if i went with 3 drives to start with say 4TBx3 drives. can I add a four drive that is larger then 4TB to gain more storage.
I am planning to buy Nas. My friend told me that WD are worse than symology. I was considering wd es2 ultra, but it has much worse specs than synology 223 or 224+. Drive will be needed only to backup data, maybe rarely to access the data. Which one should I buy? Which drive should I get? I am trying to understand if synology 223 or 223j will be enough, and I think yes, it will be. Am I correct that more expensive Nas like 224+ are for more professional use? And that they differ only with hardware? What is the difference between 223 and 223j?