Testing two 18 TB white label SATA hard drives from datablocks.dev

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Product-review ecosystems & trust

  • Some discuss how video reviews are organized around influencers rather than products; viewers seek known, trusted channels, not product-indexed feeds.
  • There’s debate over who is more biased: large sponsored creators (seen as beholden to advertisers) vs. small “free product for praise” channels (seen as easily bought by PR firms).
  • Many express deep distrust in online reviews generally (Amazon unboxings, YouTube “influencers”), preferring long‑running review magazines or community review portals.
  • Examples from Japanese sites are mentioned to show that product‑centric review platforms can exist, but are rare in the English web.

HDD vs SSD, refurbished & enterprise drives

  • Sharp split between people who value SSD reliability/silence over cost, and those who consider high‑capacity SSDs financially unjustifiable for home storage.
  • Several run large arrays of cheap used/refurbished enterprise HDDs and report multi‑year success; others are wary of anything “refurbished” or “white label”.
  • There’s discussion of HDD age vs failure (U‑shaped curve), SMART health, and mixing batches to reduce correlated failures.
  • Some argue enterprise HDDs aren’t fundamentally more durable than consumer ones, citing data; others emphasize higher rated workloads and longer warranties.
  • Used enterprise SSDs: one side warns about wear and retention (especially for cold storage); another cites bulk testing showing most used units have high remaining endurance.

Redundancy, RAID, and filesystems

  • Strong consensus that redundancy (RAID6/dual parity, ZFS raidz2, SnapRAID, etc.) is more important than trying to avoid failures entirely.
  • Hardware/firmware RAID is generally discouraged; modern software approaches (ZFS, btrfs, Storage Spaces, unRAID, mdraid) are preferred.
  • btrfs is highly contentious: some report flawless multi‑year use; others describe irrecoverable corruption, misleading free‑space reporting, and warn RAID5/6 is still unsafe.
  • ECC RAM is recommended by some for NAS to protect against memory‑induced corruption; others don’t comment, but no strong pushback.

DIY NAS hardware: laptops, mini‑PCs, USB

  • Using an old laptop (as in the article) is seen as attractive for low cost and built‑in battery “UPS”, but:
    • Concerns: swollen/aging batteries under 24/7 load, lack of ECC, limited SATA ports.
    • USB‑attached HDDs are repeatedly flagged as risky for RAID: random disconnects, poor USB‑SATA bridges, rebuild issues. Fine for occasional backups; questionable for continuous arrays.
  • Alternatives proposed:
    • Old workstations or low‑power server boards with many SATA/SAS ports and IPMI.
    • Mini‑PCs/ITX boards with PCIe bifurcation and M.2‑to‑SATA adapters.
    • Purpose‑built NAS or DAS enclosures behind a small server.
  • Some users nevertheless report stable multi‑drive USB arrays in practice, but others insist official docs (e.g., TrueNAS) rightly caution against it.

White-label / “OS” drives and warranties

  • Multiple commenters interpret “OS” white‑label Seagate units as “off‑spec”:
    • Hypothesis: large customers reject a lot after sample testing; returned batches are stripped of branding and sold cheaply as “OS”.
    • Issues may range from cosmetic damage to firmware or reliability problems; testing by resellers is unclear.
  • Several are uneasy that the manufacturer doesn’t want their name on these drives, especially given only modest discounts and sharply reduced warranties (e.g., five years down to one).
  • One detailed anecdote: ~20% failure rate over a few years on “OS” SAS drives vs 0% on shucked branded drives; poor SMART visibility on the white‑label firmware.

Drive acoustics, mounting, and reliability

  • The article’s use of foam under drives triggers warnings: non‑rigid or elastic mounting can increase head positioning errors, power draw, and failure rates due to micro‑vibrations.
  • Some counter with long personal use of rubber‑suspension mounts without apparent issues, but others emphasize that at current track densities, vibration‑induced off‑track writes are a real risk.
  • Suggested compromise: rigid mounting with rubber washers to damp micro‑vibrations, avoiding soft foam or wobbly suspension.

Economics, capacity, and use cases

  • For multi‑tens to ~100 TB home setups, used/refurb enterprise HDDs (SAS/SATA) are widely viewed as the only economical option; new SSDs are 2–3× per TB.
  • A few mention cloud or offline media (tapes, powered‑down HDDs) as better suited for truly archival, rarely accessed data.
  • Large 1U/2U enterprise boxes are praised for density but criticized for noise and power; some suggest re‑housing hardware or moving to newer, more efficient boards.
  • Commenters note that for some regions (e.g., parts of Europe), local pricing makes refurbished white‑label drives barely cheaper than new retail disks, weakening the value proposition.
  • Several wish the article had included full SMART dumps to better assess actual drive condition.