I’ve found these NetApp SAS Festplatte 6TB 7,2k SAS 12G 3,5" - 111-02374 E-X4064A-R6 ST6000NM0034, that cost only 38€! It’s a brand that I’ve never heard about and I’ve no idea how many hours they’ve worked (I’ve asked and I’m waiting for an answer). What do you think?
Edit: I’ve asked the seller if there is a custom firmware that makes the drive unusable and it answered me saying that they work with any SAS HBA controller. They have worked 1863h and written 130TB (he showed me 4 screenshots of 4 tests of 4 drives)
NetApp makes storage devices, just like Dell’s DataDomain.
Looks like the ad is referring to a ST6000NM0034, a drive from Seagate. Personally, I like to stay away from that brand as far as possible.
Have had good experiences with WD.
It’s funny how it is the exact opposite for me.
All my WD drives died, while all my Seagate drives are in perfect working order.
Bought 2 WD hdds new, used them for about 4 years in RAID for daily borg backups, one died, the other got very slow with tons of smart errors.
Bought 2 Seagate hdds new, same usecase, same capacity, have been running for over 5 years now.
Personal anecdotes are not a reliable factor for manufacturer quality.
To quote some statistics:
In general, Seagate drives are less expensive and their failure rates are typically higher in our environment. But, their failure rates are typically not high enough to make them less cost effective over their lifetime.
Source: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-2022/
For what I saw there’s a good chance it has a custom firmware that makes them unusable outside the walled garden
Mmm…interesting, how did you arrive to that thought?
Edit1: in the meanwhile I’ve asked the seller if they have a custom firmware. They have already answered me with 4 test of 4 drives that reports 1863h of work and about 130TB written
Edit2: the seller has answered me saying that they work with any SAS HBA controller
NetApp is big in enterprise DAS space; think big server rack with highly redundant components to provide block storage devices to multiple workstations in the office. If I remember correctly, they’re also the ones where their drives are formatted with 520 bytes per sector, and you’d need to reformat them using
sg_formatto 512 bytes per sector before you can use them with some systems.Reading around I’ve notice that there could be this risk and I’ve ask the seller if they’re 520 or 512.
I have a bunch of ST6000NM0095 (which are similar specs) in my NAS, and despite already being well used when I got them, so far only one needed to be replaced in nearly 5 years of (my) usage.
My only advice with these is: if you notice a maddening noise coming from them when they’re idle, update them to the latest firmware and it’ll go away.
Hi Antsu, thanks for your precious feedback!
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