NAS drive vs. Enterprise drive?

[Z300M]

I have two pools at present, one consisting of two 7-drive RaidZ2 vdevs using 2TB "desktop" drives, the other consisting of one 6-drive RaidZ2 vdev using 6TB "desktop" drives.

I have spare 2TB drives but no spare 6TB drives. Whether I buy a spare 6TB drive now or wait until I need one, which is the most appropriate to buy? NAS drives and Enterprise drives are similar in price and not much more expensive than desktop drives, but which is more appropriate (= durable, cost effective, or...)? The NAS drive has a 3-yr warranty, and the Enterprise drive has a 5-yr warranty, but is there a "cost" to the extra two years of warranty when using the drive in a FreeNAS machine?

 

[Bidule0hm]

There's also a cost in electricity and cooling with the enterprise drives.

 

[Z300M]

I don't see a significant difference in power consumption in the manufacturer's specs. Nothing about temperature.

 

[BigDave]

I don't see a significant difference in power consumption in the manufacturer's specs. Nothing about temperature.

I think @Bidule0hm is just making the assumption that a WD Red drive spinning at 5400rpm and will use less power and
also produce less heat.
He's also assuming (as I did) that the other drives you were considering were running at 7200rpm. (most enterprise grade drives do).
I think you were just being reminded that there may be higher operating costs that you need to consider before your purchase.

 

[BigDave]

I don't see a significant difference in power consumption in the manufacturer's specs.

I'm quoting just the idle mode figures here, if this is accurate, that's not a small difference by my standards.
Average power requirements (W) for 5TB Red Pro, Idle = 7.4
Average power requirements (W) for 5TB Red, Idle = 3.4

 

[Z300M]

I was looking at Seagate drives. The ST6000DX000 desktop drives that I'm using now, the ST6000VN0041 "IronWolf" NAS drive, and the ST6000NM0024 Enterprise drive all spin at 7200rpm. The idle power consumption ranges from 7.2 to 8W, and the operating power consumption from 9 to 10.3W.

 

[BigDave]

Well after reading your signature it's obvious that you are a Seagate fan so I'm not wasting my time trying
to convince you to switch your preference. You have an unusual machine there (20 drives in a tower case),
I could never keep them cool enough here in the Texas summer weather without dedicated A/C lol.
It seems that you need/like better performance with the 7200rpm drives as well. For what it's worth,
I would never choose desktop grade drives for the building of a NAS machine. That's all I have to say about that...
I doubt there's any significant physical difference between the Iron Wolf model and the Enterprise model,
so the extra cost/extra two years of warranty are basically a matter of budget. I buy the best when I can justify it.

 

[Z300M]

The FreeNAS machine is in an otherwise unused room in a house with air conditioning. Each of the iStarUSA drive cages has its own fan. The current drive temperatures range from 28C to 39C. A couple of the 6TB drives hit 41C once. Just this past week I replaced an ST2000DM001 that was itself a warranty replacement for one of the original ST32000641AS drives; the warranty expiry date was that of the original drive (5 years), and that date had passed. If I were going to switch from Seagate drives, it would probably be to HGST.

 

[Scharbag]

I use the cheapest version of Seagate drives. Other than the fact that the ST3000DM001 version was absolute tripe, the desktop models work fine. Backblaze also uses the cheap desktop models in their storage solutions.

Unless you really need the performance gains, 5400RPM drives are fine IMHO. I recently added ZIL and L2ARC to my spinning production pool (5400RPM 4TB drives) and it runs all of my VMs just fine. IOSTAT shows good read/write performance as well as great read/write IOPS, even with small files sizes.

Now, if the price is really similar and you get a much better warranty, then it might be better off to go with the enterprise drives. In my experience, the Enterprise NAS drives (6TB NV0001 model = $382) are quite a bit more than the desktop drives (6TB DM001 model = $240). Prices are in Canadian $. The $140 premium for the extra warranty is not practical for me.

Cheers,

 

[Z300M]

The current prices on Newegg.com for the ones I'm considering range from $209.99 (the ST6000DM001) to $249.99:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?CompareItemList=14|22-179-004^22-179-004,22-178-522^22-178-522,22-145-973^22-145-973,22-178-520^22-178-520,22-178-783^22-178-783

There's a $30 discount code for the HGST.

I don't know the speed of the ST6000DM001, but the others are all 7200rpm (Seagate doesn't specify the speed for either that one or the STBD6000100, but smartctl shows the latter as running at 7200rpm). I could compare no more than 5 drives, but in addition the WD Red (5400rpm, 3-yr warranty) is $231.04.

 

[Scharbag]

Damn Canadian pricing!!!