NAS, media, torrenting.

[dueda]

The cable is good here on a notebook with a USB external drive but thinking on a $1000 NUC+NAS rig. Suggestions?
Gigabyte and QNAP sound good. WD Red 6TB price too, but that will leave me with only 24TB *6x4 while a RAID 10 will cut that in half.
While some wont take drives over 12TB, right now price over 8TB is a no-go for me. Cutting off the NUC could help with a smart NAS (torrent capable).

[RodneyYouPlonker]

Personally dueda, I would stay well away from Seagate drives (if possible) from recent experience they are not good.  Whatever they do, they do it wrong.  I've had some Seagate drives recently and I have to say they are pretty terrible, had some bad errors even from brand new.  You're right WD is a lot better choice to go for, they just seem to be much better IMO.  I talked to somebody a while ago who was talking about the Iron Wolf disks but I'm a bit put off now with Seagate, you just can't rely on them really I've been ripped off myself.  It's annoying these days, trying to find that exact drive you need.  You do sound though you're on the right track there but please if you can just avoid Seagate unless it's absolutely necessary.

[dueda]

[const AvoidSeagate default true]. Thanks for reminding me.
I only got a Seagate USB 4TB as an intermediate solution, it was noisy but worked well while I had it, some months.
Right now the Fujitsu notebook is handling uTorrent well, although it is too slow to browse for torrents and I'm pretty sure it will collapse with hundreds of torrents.
I'll have to get a NUC box and remote control it from the main desktop PC (or even the smartphone).

[theSEMAR]

but...


i have +10 years old seagate hdd in all my PC. it is still run well and i never have problem with my hdd.
i will share, what's make my seagate still okay. it's only by giving a fan beside hdd. so, hdd never get overheating.

[RodneyYouPlonker]

I would imagine that mostly the new stuff that comes out these days from Seagate is mostly crap.  Not really always about the heating issues more to do with actual mechanical errors that happen even from new, bought from the shelf brand new.  I have lots and lots of hard drives myself, you've got to understand I really do have a lot of them at the moment.  The WD's are fine, it's the Seagates they are naff.  Stay well away if possible and also they can be hugely expensive.  It's such a shame really the market is not good these days, you end up being forced onto Seagate.  If it were different I would swap to another brand in a heartbeat.

[Moe]

For mass storage, your best bet is find low cost used components and run Unraid OS.

There is an entire community dedicated to building cheap servers for media: https://www.serverbuilds.net


Regarding whose drives suck the most:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-driv...-for-2019/

The short answer is none of them.  Buy whatever is available locally with a solid warranty, and be sure to have backups.

[dueda]

Thanks Moe. Although assembling a rack or tower isn't what I have in mind, it could be the case to buy a cheapo just for it. Just I don't expect to find good choices amongst used drives around here. Also would like to know more about Western Digital drives, they didn't make it to the charts.

[RodneyYouPlonker]

Western Digital are really good, they are much better than Seagate and I know this from lots of experience.  If possible I would try and go with WD if you can and then you should be fine.  Seriously Seagate so so bad, they are highly expensive in some cases and you end up getting ripped off.  They are made badly, it's not always a very nice experience to buy Seagate when you find out after a couple of days they are seriously unrepairable and issues happen.  Either you can take them back and get your money back and buy something else, just seems silly to have to do that when you could have gone for WD in the first place.

If anybody tells you that Seagate are good they are lying completely, they are rubbish.

---

Also I've noticed recently over the last 12 months or so now that infact lots of external hard drives that used to be sold have all been pulled from the shelves now and are not being sold anymore.  These are all Seagate drives, you used to be able to buy all these kind of things these externals which have all totally disappeared now from the market and have not been replaced by a similar product.  It makes me wonder really probably had too many problems people returning these drives under warranty.  Too many problems and it gets too much and they all go back to get their money back, kind of sad really.  Stay well away from those, I've got loads of WD they are really good

[Moe]

Also would like to know more about Western Digital drives, they didn't make it to the charts.

All the HGST stuff is WD.

[dueda]

Thanks again. Yup I notice the article, but besides HGST I'd like to know about the other WD's brands, like Red, Red Pro, etc. I suppose they aren't exactly the same, like HGST are made from the best tested stuff and the rest goes to Red, Blue, Green, Purple, etc?