Hello,
I’ve never been very clear on this point and figure that, since I need an extra drive, I should actually understand this point.
I read somewhere that most external HDDs (like say Seagate) were actually designed to be accessed once or twice a week, data moved over in a backup and then just sit there idly. Whereas, for something like Plex, the drive is accessed regularly and often and is spinning up much of the time. The argument was that a drive like the former just couldn’t cope with the access and stress that a program like Plex puts on the unit and that’s why we see failures for these drives prematurely.
Is this correct or is it total bunk?
If so, what am I looking for in a drive that can cope with the frequent access and use by Plex? I don’t want to end up with more drives dying around me. I had two Seagates die within a few weeks of warranty ending and within days of each other. I’m still trying to make sense of this and don’t want a repeat. I’ve not purchased Seagate since but I need to understand if the above scenario is contributing to this or if it’s simply a myth.
Thanks so much!
If you tore one of those external drives open, you’d likely find the same HDD that you could buy to put inside your computer. They just created an external case, and the electronics to communicate via USB or whatever. I’ve had a couple such drives that gave up the ghost far sooner than they should have. I dismantled them, and used the HDDs for other purposes, and they’re still going strong. If there’s anything about these external drives that is designed for infrequent use, it’s the enclosure and its electronics, not the HDD itself.
Regardless of the above, however, Seagate drives have not had a good reputation for reliability in the past 10 years or so. Personally, I stick with Hitachi or Western Digital.
I think what you’re thinking about are the drives with shingled recording. This method is quirky in many ways (including slow writes) and was necessary for a while to get larger storage capacities. But now we’re seeing 8TB drives with regular recording so it’s a non-issue.
I’d just make sure you don’t get a drive that uses shingled recording, and you’ll be mostly fine.
That said: HDDs are mechanical, and some are designed for 24/7 “on” use, while others have lower-grade components rated for intermittent use. The former tend to have longer warranties, making them worth the premium to many on that point alone. Then there’s other things like TLER which matter to people building NAS arrays and varies from drive model to drive model.
If you are referring to those ‘archival drives’ destined for large “data graves”, I don’t think they would be ideal for a Plex setup.
Usually these drives are very slow at writing and are optimised for low energy consumption.
Although, one could argue that for a single or dual user deployment they would be good for storing media files. Maybe. But not for more users, as the concurrent accesses to read more files at once is something these drives may not cope very well with.
But you should never use these types of drives for the Plex data folder.
