The price of the Pro version vs the not Pro Ironwolf is very thin... When they will be in shop the PRO will be a wiser choise. Also Ironwolf get very good with time (despite still louder than the more expensive WD), of course don't use this size with only one HDD, in case of failure you lost 22Tb 😉 , use them in RAID in hardware config or in NAS (yes, 8x 22Tb in RAID 5 or 6 make space for lot of p**n... lol, but if you work with them RAID 10 is more secure).

lol, nobody in their right mind uses RAID 5 anymore. However, "10" is not the solution, there are much better ways to manage large arrays of disks without losing much available space. Examples: ZFS, unRAID, btrfs, SnapRaid, Windows StorageSpaces

wavetrex:

lol, nobody in their right mind uses RAID 5 anymore. However, "10" is not the solution, there are much better ways to manage large arrays of disks without losing much available space. Examples: ZFS, unRAID, btrfs, SnapRaid, Windows StorageSpaces

Other than SnapRAID, none of those are better than RAID10 or RAID5 for that matter, especially when you consider nothing is preventing you from doing traditional RAID formatted with ZFS or Btrfs. They all have pros and cons, some of which depend on user preferences. Even SnapRAID has a glaring issue: it claims to only read from 1 disk at a time, which means it probably performs the worst of the bunch. Remember, the whole point of RAID is for redundancy and integrity, as in, if you encounter a drive failure, you didn't lose anything and the system bought you time to fix the problem. For some datacenters, that's all they care about. It is not a backup. The systems you mention (when used for the purposes of replacing RAID and/or backups) can add overhead or negatively impact performance since they're basically trying to act as an an all-in-one solution without the need of buying more drives. That's fine if you've got a workstation and a drive large enough to store multiple snapshots, but there are still a lot of risks involved. It is almost always better to have separate storage dedicated to backups, and if that's what you have then you might as well increase compatibility, increase performance, and decrease overhead by sticking with something like RAID10. Remember, these are 22Tb drives we're talking about here. This isn't your typical workstation.

Thanks for teaching the shoe maker how to make shoes !

wavetrex:

Thanks for teaching the shoe maker how to make shoes !

Seems to me this shoe maker only makes one kind of shoe and acts like his method of making shoes is the only way to do it. You've got an ATX case filled with a bunch of drives. Presumably (and no judgment here) you can't afford to build another rig for physical redundancy (a backup). Therefore, you need to make due with what you've got, where the methods you mentioned are really the only sensible choice. The thing is: your rig isn't the only way to configure drives, let alone common (relative to alternatives). Like it or not, datacenters are using RAID and they're not dumb for doing so.

wavetrex:

Thanks for teaching the shoe maker how to make shoes !

Their post obviously isn't targeted towards those "in-the-know". The message of backing up important data, no matter how it is stored is for those ignorant of the difference between backups and storage mechanisms. Nothing wrong with ignorance, we are all ignorant of something (or lots of things) until we choose to learn more about it. 🙂 I'm looking forward to the day we move away from the magnetic/NAND storage paradigm to whatever is next.

1) rl66 talked about "in case of failure you lost 22Tb", and mentioned Raid 5 or 10 as potential mitigations. 2) The storage systems I listed above are redundancy systems, designed to do exactly that, mitigate potential failures of drives. I never said anything about any "backup", which seems to be brought up passionately by schmidtbag. 3) The reason why RAID 5 is dead and has been for quite a while is that they only cover a single drive failure. If the 2nd happens during recovery, which is bloody long for these double-digit capacity drives, the ENTIRE array is gone, making it worse than just having no raid at all ! 4) Raid 10 might be more fancy, but in reality, it's just a 1:1 copy... if both copies of one drive die for whatever reason, data is still lost, in THE ENTIRE array. Making it no better than RAID 5 for safety. 5) Some of the "non-Raid" redundancy systems listed however can a) Have more than one or two parity drives (beating even RAID6), b) don't lose the entire array with multiple failures, allowing much faster recovery from a backup, when it exists, and in most cases, if done well enough, no data loss at all. @sch -> I can't afford duplicating everything 1:1 with Raid 10 or another computer, but, I do have another computer which on a smaller secondary array (also running ZFS) keeps a copy of the most critical data. The secondary computer is offline and unplugged until needed for a sync, so even in case of a severe power malfunction that would completely destroy my main storage rig, I still don't lose critical work data. All in all, I haven't lost a single file in more than 10 years, despite several drive failures (and they were cheap drives too, shucked from dirt-cheap USB externals). Aaaanyway, can't wait for these large 20-22 TB drives to come down in price, as even 8 and 10 and 14 TB ones which I have now are starting to feel small.

:) the "in case of failure you lost 22Tb" is for those who buy this HDD and will use it in solo single (don't laugh there will be a lot at that price) Most people still use raid 5 for home use because "you waste less space" despite higher risk of failure, raid 10 is better but nearly never used outside of working place. And yes there are many other way to do it, but those are easy to run and compatible with everything (and everyone too 🙂 ). The thing that make me those 22tb unit desirable is that they cost less than a single (not qlv) 8tb SSD... Plenty of bay... hybrid solution... well i will see in the future 🙂

I've never had a total drive fail or die in 27 years of computing. Even cheap Maxtor drivers form 1998-2000. Actually 1 WD black laptop HDD drive did fail but thank God it was just a gaming laptop.

Typhon Six Six Six:

I've never had a total drive fail or die in 27 years of computing. Even cheap Maxtor drivers form 1998-2000.

How many drives have you used at once? (powered up, spinning) Also, how long have you used them before getting replaced with higher capacity?

wavetrex:

How many drives have you used at once? (powered up, spinning) Also, how long have you used them before getting replaced with higher capacity?

I have had maybe 30+ HDD drives. Including NVME and regular sata SSD's. Mostly Samsung and WD. WD black and a few red pros, 2 Toshiba x300 4tb drives,6 WD raptor 1TB in raid and Samsung 950,960,970 and now 2 980 pros in raid 0 with an Iron Wolf pro 16tb for the last 2+ years. I usually upgrade every 2+ years or if I run out of storage and I move them to my laptops or other PC's. The PC's are basically always on. Only time I lost files is formatting the wrong HDD. Now that I think about it, I did have a WD black laptop HDD fail in 2008. I was using raid 0 back in 2002-2006 with 2 160gb Maxtor IDE drives and had no problems. The 4 1tb WD raptor raid 0 ran fine for about a year then I sold them. I know I am forgetting some because I've used raid in other systems.

@Typhon Six Six Six hmm when it comes to hdd seems like you change em a lot before they fail.... I had hdds die on first boot wd blues ..... obviously they had no data to loose but the rma 3 times in a row ....was annoying... I think it was a bad batch or something.

Typhon Six Six Six:

I have had maybe 30+ HDD drives.

Interesting, it seems you are a very lucky person, or as previous poster said, you just change them quickly enough to hit the overall rate of failure chance which is around a few % for the first 5 years. I used about 80 hdds over time, including some that were in use for nearly 10 years, and I've had about 10 failures total. Currently got about 40 still operational - but 5 are too small and don't care about them anymore, will never spin them up again, and 10 more are small but still usable (2-3 TB) Lost a 3TB just two months ago. From the entire stock, every year 1 or 2 go poof, mostly out of the blue, they seem to work fine until one day that they don't...

I've been pretty luck with my HDDs too. I've never had one fail with important info on it (regardless of whether it was backed up or RAID'ed). I don't replace my drives all that often because I don't have a lot of personal data. Excluding games, just about all data I own would fit within 2TB, and of content I myself produced, maybe just a few hundreds GBs. So, my drives tend to last me a long while haha. Thankfully though, my lack of data means I can get by with all SSDs for an affordable price. I'm just not much of a data hoarder. I don't care about preserving the highest quality datasets and I don't keep things that I'll likely never use.

Venix:

@Typhon Six Six Six hmm when it comes to hdd seems like you change em a lot before they fail.... I had hdds die on first boot wd blues ..... obviously they had no data to loose but the rma 3 times in a row ....was annoying... I think it was a bad batch or something.

Not really. I have had and have a lot of PC's. I have some Samsung 830,840 SSD's still going and the NVME 950,960,970 pros still work. I'm not running workstations so that's probably why. I have a 250GB WD in an original XBOX for the past 8+ years running in arcade, 2 PS3 with 120gb ssd for 5 years now.

Typhon Six Six Six:

Not really. I have had and have a lot of PC's. I have some Samsung 830,840 SSD's still going and the NVME 950,960,970 pros still work. I'm not running workstations so that's probably why. I have a 250GB WD in an original XBOX for the past 8+ years running in arcade, 2 PS3 with 120gb ssd for 5 years now.

You are quite lucky then I had in total 6 or 7 dead hard drives last 23 years at least the personal ones ... On my job I see dead hdds and ssds on a weekly basis , but I do keep count of those at all.

schmidtbag:

I've been pretty luck with my HDDs too. I've never had one fail with important info on it (regardless of whether it was backed up or RAID'ed). I don't replace my drives all that often because I don't have a lot of personal data. Excluding games, just about all data I own would fit within 2TB, and of content I myself produced, maybe just a few hundreds GBs. So, my drives tend to last me a long while haha. Thankfully though, my lack of data means I can get by with all SSDs for an affordable price. I'm just not much of a data hoarder. I don't care about preserving the highest quality datasets and I don't keep things that I'll likely never use.

Yeah I can not say I am that adamant about the data I backup 95% of what is in my drives I can download again it will just be a bit annoying but that's it .... My creations fit in 200gb and they are already live so really all I do is keep em on my 980 and a hard drive in my PC + a flash drive .... Not exactly "safe" but safe enough for how much I value that data 😛

Venix:

My creations fit in 200gb

200 GB, so cute ;-) Just the raw footage from one single wedding last year was close to 200 GB, if I include all the RAW photos that the photographer made, plus all the edited and processed video and photos, it's easily close to 350 GB just for that one weekend. One single customer, one event. And I archive footage from colleagues as well. One of these 22TB drives wouldn't even last a single summer... TL;DR: Everyone has different needs in storage capacity. HDDs will continue to be around for a long time...

I've gone through all the various HD sizes over the years adding a TB or two every time, like 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, 6TB, 8TB, 10TB drives. Spent a fortune on drives over the last 25 years. Only major loss I ever suffered was on a 6TB Western Digital Purple (surveillance) drive which always said 96% health in SMART parameters which I thought was acceptable (all others always say 100% health). But it went from basically years of saying 96% health to just one day making clicking noise and no more... no way to read off it. Check your SMART people! I find Acronis Drive Monitor a handy utility for this. I now just keep separate full disk backups (on similar 10TB drives) for most important information. Don't use and never have used any online RAID setup.

wavetrex:

200 GB, so cute ;-) Just the raw footage from one single wedding last year was close to 200 GB, if I include all the RAW photos that the photographer made, plus all the edited and processed video and photos, it's easily close to 350 GB just for that one weekend. One single customer, one event. And I archive footage from colleagues as well. One of these 22TB drives wouldn't even last a single summer... TL;DR: Everyone has different needs in storage capacity. HDDs will continue to be around for a long time...

my mesh models often will reach ......15 mbs ! and normally i would use 2048x2048 textures png files .... it might end up being with heigh maps normals ... roughness ...specular .... 50-100 MEGA bytes and is not even something i do weekly it is a hobby that some times earns me some extra cash ....but really i do not care for the cash on it ... is just a hobby ! So really different needs XD