Marus
Occasional Visitor
Hi !
I already have a Raspberry Pi 4 with a bunch of external USB drives to it, and it's somehow... fine. With one disk I got about 80 MB/s read and write, and other three (same model) 35 read and 64 MB/s write. They are quite old... and they are all SMR. So I thought of buying some new hard disks... I don't want to make a real NAS, I just want to connect some drives to the Raspberry Pi, that's all. No RAID, no other special functions... I decided to go with Seagate... because those from Western Digital don't offer any technical specifications about their drives, they only give us the physical dimensions as if we were fools who don't need to know anything.
So I did a little research on Seagate 4TB hard drives (I need 2 of these):
(red is bad, green is good, and orange is intermediate)
For me, the most important aspects are:
- Type CMR or SMR
- RPM
- Consumption
- Noise
- Start time
So from what can be seen the Pro versions (Firecuda and Ironwolf) have the most bad points. Then the Baracuda is out of the game just because it's SMR (otherwise it's pretty good).
The final battle is between Ironwolf and Skyhawk:
- Both have the same noise level
- Ironwolf consumes a little more, but almost insignificantly
- Instead, Skyhawk starts almost 2 times faster (very important!)
For me, the operating mode of the hard drive is as follows:
- it will be powered non-stop
- it will have to enter stand-by after 20 minutes of idle time (preferably by default)
- because it will always enter stand-by, it matters a lot how quickly it can switch back to operating mode
- it will be used quite rarely (perhaps a maximum of 1 hour/day and not every day)
- will be accessed by only one user (me)
- it should be as silent as possible
- I don't want any special function (RAID, etc...), I just want a simple HDD
Which do you think would be more suitable between the 2 ?
I would like Skyhawk better because it starts the fastest and is also cheaper than Ironwolf. But I don't understand what the difference between them is supposed to be. Ironwolf is said to be for NAS and Skyhawk for surveillance cameras... OK. I don't know how it could be a special HDD for surveillance cameras... An HDD is a storage medium, that's all. What does it matter what you put on it? Both are made to work 24/7... So I really don't know what makes them so different. If it is for surveillance and I copy some movies on it, what will happen ? It will die ?
)
What amazes me the most is the start-up time of these hard drives... How can they start in 17...23 seconds? Well, the ones I have now stacked in the hub and connected to the Pi start in about 4 seconds... 2TB (2.5") external HDDs. How can you wait 23 seconds to be able to access your disk ?
I already have a Raspberry Pi 4 with a bunch of external USB drives to it, and it's somehow... fine. With one disk I got about 80 MB/s read and write, and other three (same model) 35 read and 64 MB/s write. They are quite old... and they are all SMR. So I thought of buying some new hard disks... I don't want to make a real NAS, I just want to connect some drives to the Raspberry Pi, that's all. No RAID, no other special functions... I decided to go with Seagate... because those from Western Digital don't offer any technical specifications about their drives, they only give us the physical dimensions as if we were fools who don't need to know anything.
So I did a little research on Seagate 4TB hard drives (I need 2 of these):
(red is bad, green is good, and orange is intermediate)
For me, the most important aspects are:
- Type CMR or SMR
- RPM
- Consumption
- Noise
- Start time
So from what can be seen the Pro versions (Firecuda and Ironwolf) have the most bad points. Then the Baracuda is out of the game just because it's SMR (otherwise it's pretty good).
The final battle is between Ironwolf and Skyhawk:
- Both have the same noise level
- Ironwolf consumes a little more, but almost insignificantly
- Instead, Skyhawk starts almost 2 times faster (very important!)
For me, the operating mode of the hard drive is as follows:
- it will be powered non-stop
- it will have to enter stand-by after 20 minutes of idle time (preferably by default)
- because it will always enter stand-by, it matters a lot how quickly it can switch back to operating mode
- it will be used quite rarely (perhaps a maximum of 1 hour/day and not every day)
- will be accessed by only one user (me)
- it should be as silent as possible
- I don't want any special function (RAID, etc...), I just want a simple HDD
Which do you think would be more suitable between the 2 ?
I would like Skyhawk better because it starts the fastest and is also cheaper than Ironwolf. But I don't understand what the difference between them is supposed to be. Ironwolf is said to be for NAS and Skyhawk for surveillance cameras... OK. I don't know how it could be a special HDD for surveillance cameras... An HDD is a storage medium, that's all. What does it matter what you put on it? Both are made to work 24/7... So I really don't know what makes them so different. If it is for surveillance and I copy some movies on it, what will happen ? It will die ?
)What amazes me the most is the start-up time of these hard drives... How can they start in 17...23 seconds? Well, the ones I have now stacked in the hub and connected to the Pi start in about 4 seconds... 2TB (2.5") external HDDs. How can you wait 23 seconds to be able to access your disk ?
