I'm looking for some 12 TB drives for archiving family history videos, photos, books, and files. These are intended to be installed in an Iosafe 218 NAS.

Some of the choices include:

Western Digital Gold enterprise
Seagate Ironwolf
Seagate Ironwolf Pro

I've read a number of reviews explaining the pros and cons of the Seagate models compared against each other, but I've not seen anything comparing the 12 TB models of the two brands. If you feel in general one brand is more reliable than the other, or they are likely to be the same, please let me know.

Thank you for your help with this.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: deepocean,

No experience with any of these drives, I would lean toward Western Digital and I wouldn't get any these drives if you're just archiving, I'd get some WD Red drives, and then take the money you'd save on the Reds and buy another set of drives for alternating off-site backups.

12 TB drives?? Holy shit, I am really behind the times.

quote:

Originally posted by Cliff:
12 TB drives?? Holy shit, I am really behind the times.

No kidding!! That's the first thing I thought when I read it as well.

I like WD stuff, but mostly because Acronis lets you clone any HD as long as one drive is WD.

I thought my 4TB photo back up drive was big- Holy guacamole!

 
I've had the best experience for longevity with HGST drives. Originally Hitachi, acquired by WD, but they compete with their own line of drives.
 

Having installed many, many drives I use exclusively Western Digital.
The Gold RE series is what I use for Data Server Applications and I use Red Pro for NAS units.
Otherwise I am slowly migrating even data drives to Intel Server SSD's, it depends on the how much data and the budget.
Never liked Seagate, WD service and warranty is great, Hitachi now a WD company I have little experience but no bad ones.

A couple of years ago I bought a new Seagate external drive for backups, it never worked right. Seagate customer service couldn't fix the problem, wouldn't replace the drive.

I bought a WD that has been perfect, and gave the Seagate to my brother, who teaches computers at a trade college. He uses it for lab training to teach students how to deal with substandard products.

I mentioned that to Seagate cust service, didn't bother them.

quote:

Originally posted by lkdr1989:
I wouldn't get any these drives if you're just archiving, I'd get some WD Red drives, and then take the money you'd save on the Reds and buy another set of drives for alternating off-site backups.

I probably used the wrong term when I posted this. I already have the original media archived for long term storage. The information is protected, but not readily accessible to use for research and reference.

For this project, I need to gather together many types of media and convert them to the digital domain in one central place. I estimate I will end up taking up at least 6 TB, and probably more like 8 TB.

The Iosafe 218 fits my purposes more than any other NAS I've looked at. This model constrains the number of drives I can use to two, which is why I am looking at the 12 TB drives.

I appreciate the suggestions to use the WD Red drives. 10 TB seems to be the upper limit on those from what I can see. The price is in the same ballpark for all of the drives I am talking about.

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:
Having installed many, many drives I use exclusively Western Digital.

Although I've not installed as many drives as smschulz, my go to's are still WD (RED's for your application). Still too many reported failures on Seagates for me to feel comfortable installing them.

You should get a larger NAS.

2 bays, with redundancy, loses half of your storage volume. 4 bays, with redundancy, loses only 25% of your storage volume.

If you went with a Synology 4 Bay, you could install four 4TB drives for $500 ($125 each), vs $820 for two 12TB drives ($410 each).

Future drive upgrades will also be cheaper.

You got a lot of data if you’re estimating 6-8 TB. When I was working for Nortel our Livelink servers (17 of them) scattered out in 4 data centers world wide only had roughly 21 TB of stored data and that was nearly every printable document in the company stored somewhere in one of them.

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
You should get a larger NAS.

I'm starting to think this will be the best option.

quote:

Originally posted by jbcummings:
You got a lot of data if you’re estimating 6-8 TB.

If we were just talking about documents and PDF files, it would take a lot less space.

I have 25+ years of family interviews and videos, including many done in high definition--probably 4 TB+. These interviews tell the story of our family. Most of those interviewed have since passed on.

This does not include the 8mm and Super 8 films we need to have scanned. A lot of family photographs were copied onto 6x7 negatives. The scans of those will take at least 1/2 a TB. There are also 35 mm negatives and slides to be scanned. The images of family documents, PDF's, book scans, etc., will take up more space. Then there are 20+ years of digital cards full of photos which various family members have taken.

In the future we plan to begin doing interviews in 4K. We're not there yet, but that's the plan.

It's a big project.

Other than price, RPM, and the warranty length of 5 vs 3 years, what is the difference between the WD Red Pro and the WD Red NAS drives?

Read these guys, they have some stats for hard drives.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog...rive-stats-for-2017/

I would consider compressing your video to H.264 or preferably H.265 (HEVC). Transferring that large amount of data will be a minor pain in the ass. A 12TB HDD going tits up is a major pain in the ass, even if you have redundancy.

I have just shy of 1200 DVDs ripped to my server. At 5GB each, that would be 6TB. I compressed all of them to HEVC with settings that shouldn't allow any perceived video quality loss. I tried to play the original & compressed version back to back & see any issues and could not.
They are currently taking up just shy of 1TB (998GB)
Between all of my blurays, dvds, downloaded movies/tv, pictures, music & assorted data, I have less than 4TB.

A newish-processor (say, gen3 i5+) + handbrake + a little time now could save you a ton of headaches later,and a little cash now. drives are getting cheaper all the time.

Having had a HDD die, I also 2nd the smaller drives & more bays approach. Re-building Terabytes of data takes days on low-power raid devices, and your butt will be puckered the whole time.
4-6TB is the sweet spot for $/TB right now. last fall I bought 2x 6TB Toshibas for $175 each. They are in my unraid server along with a single 4TB WD Red that was newer from my old server.

If I were you, I'd be considering a raid 5 with warm spare solution as any single failure will not be catastrophic. Expandable if needed is a perk.

quote:

Originally posted by deepocean:


I have 25+ years of family interviews and videos, including many done in high definition--probably 4 TB+. These interviews tell the story of our family. Most of those interviewed have since passed on.

All of which begs the question; who ARE you guys, anyway?

quote:

Originally posted by Georgeair:
All of which begs the question; who ARE you guys, anyway?

The video interviewing part of this started when I interviewed my Grandmother for three hours, two weeks before she passed away unexpectedly. Over the years I have preserved stories from our family that include my family's service in WWI and WWII. There are stories from the time when the family first started driving motor cars, and interesting remembrances of things I find fascinating.

I run four WD Red 6TB (WD60EFRX) drives in a Synology DS916+ NAS as 12TB of total storage with 12TB of RAID backup. It’s hosts about a thousand movies, even more music and tons of pictures. I couldn’t be happier with the drives. So one more vote for the WD Reds.