I have quite an extensive collection of media that my server makes available through different means (Jellyfin, NFS, mostly). One of my harddrives has some concerning smart values so I want to replace it. What are good harddrives to buy today? Are there any important tech specs to look out for? In the past I didn’t give this too much attention and it didn’t bite me, yet. But if I’m gonna buy a new drive now, I might as well…

I’m looking for something from 4TB upwards. I think I remember that drives with very high capacity are more likely to fail sooner - is that correct? How about different brands - do any have particularly good or bad reputation?

Thanks for any hints!

  • Avid AmoebaEnglish
    29•22 hours ago

    Buy recertified enterprise grade disks from https://serverpartdeals.com. Prices were around $160/16TB the last time I checked. Mix brands and models to reduce simultaneous failure. Use more than 1-disk redundancy. If you can’t buy from SPD, either find an alternative or buy external drives and shuck them. Use ZFS to know if your data is correct. I’ve been dealing with funny AMD USB controllers recently and the amount of silent data corruption I’d have gotten if not for ZFS is ridiculous.

    • @[email protected]English
      2•2 hours ago

      I use BTRFS for the same. Being able to check for and repair silent corruptions is a must (and this is without needing to read the whole drives, only the actual files). I’ve had a lot of them over the years, including (but not only) because of a cheap USB controller also.

    • @actual_pillowEnglish
      2•7 hours ago

      Damn I just put 32 more TBs in my homelab and wish I would have known about this site.

    • @[email protected]English
      10•15 hours ago

      This is incredible!

      American sites like this so rarely ship to France, or it costs a litteral fortune just in shipping, here it’s 130€ for a 12TB shipping included!

      Wow.

      I Do Not Need A 12TB Hard drive.

      I Do Not Need a 12 TB Hard drive!

      I mean or do I?

      Thanks 💖

    • femtechEnglish
      4•19 hours ago

      Yep, I have 6 14tb drives from them in raid10.

        • TheHolmEnglish
          1•8 hours ago

          I would not trust these kind of dives in the mirror. IMHO RAID6 is the only way.

          • Avid AmoebaEnglish
            1•6 hours ago

            Due to risk of failure or risk of data corruption because the mirror can’t tell which drive is right when there’s a difference?

        • femtechEnglish
          4•18 hours ago

          I just keep adding 2 more drives as it gets full. Not sure if that’s the best thing.