So I'm looking to replace some drives in my FreeNAS box that are giving the early signs of failure. They are 3TB WD Red drives and I'm looking to upgrade them to HGST Ultrastar 7K6000 HUS726040ALE610 drives, specifially the 4TB version. Yes, I want enterprise level drives for the reliability and all the rest of the good things that come with HGST drives.
I ordered two from Amazon, they arrive and stupid me I didn't do my due diligence and test before putting them in. Well both turned out to be bad, far worse then the drives I was replacing in fact. So after spending all day and well into this morning scanning and testing the old drives they are back in production and claim to be just fine. However I am watching them like a hawk, and I have performed a back up of my data just in case.
On to the question. Where do you guys buy your enterprise gear from? I looked at newegg and they only offer the drive I'm looking for from third party vendors and I don't want to go there due to the bad reviews about packing and other worrisome issues. I looked on CDW and their price isn't the best...but not the worst either. The company work for also has an account with them so it would be easy to order and potentially get a discount as well. If you guys know of any good, reliable, and trust worthy vendors who understand that hard drives are fragile things, please recommend them.
Believe it or not. I get mine second hand from surplus places and recycling places. I'm currently running 8 2tb Hitachi deskstars that I got free from a storage server we were decoming
Direct from Newegg or Fulfilled by amazon. Always had my stuff arrive in good quality from both, plus shipping is fast. I've got prime now in my area so I can get hard drives in under 2 hours from amazon. Ordered a WD Red I needed quick that way, came just fine.
I've order three drives from the same vendor on Amazon...two were DOA. Not good odds. Best part is the box the last two came in was pristine. Not a mark on it, hell not even dirt from truck. Unfortunately I don't like that failure rate. While it could be a coincidence... This is data that I can ill afford to lose and I won't take chances with a vendor that doesn't rotate stock.
I think I've ordered 5 hard drives now from amazon, and never had a problem with a single one of them. I think you just got a really bad bit of luck on that one. IMO you probably shouldn't write amazon off over what is percentage wise a massive fluke. DOA rates for hard drives are under 1%, so I'd say its got pretty good odds to never be a repeat case.
This is true. However it seems that only one vendor is offering the drive I want on Amazon. It's not Amazon itself that is offering the drive, it's a vendor that has a store front on amazon.
Popular stores in USA that I know of (As I am an Aussie) is:- * Microcentre * System76 * Amazon USA * Newegg USA
I guess the old saying applies , quality costs
You could go SAS for better life span or WD Red PRO not the standard RED
If the existing RED non PRO drives are showing issues I suggest buying some more drives to replace them and sending the other drives off for RA (Warranty replacement)
From memory I think the WD Blue and Non pro Red are 3 years warranty and Black and red pro is 5 years
I guess one thing you could do before putting new drives into production is test them on a spare box to make sure its not a lemon
From my own computer experience I don't trust seagate hard drives or dlink networking brand , but thats from all the crap products and failures Ive personally seen over the years
WD isnt perfect, the 2TB greens and 1.5TB greens have had an massive failure rate in Australia , so id never go an eco/green advertised drive again