09-16-2022, 10:30 PM
Hey NC,
This might be a neat video idea.
Background:
I have a Synology DS2415+ (12-bay tower) that I had filled with 10 TB Ironwolf drives (minus 2x 1TB SSDs for cache). As is expected, I started having a few failures over the years, and Seagate's RMA policy is to send the next higher capacity drive that is available in stock. For two of the occurrences, they sent 12 TB Ironwolf drives. This got me thinking, I want to think long term about expansion as my needs have grown, but I wasn't necessarily at the 'upgrade platform' stage at the time. I stumbled upon a new hard drive vendor (might be a re-label) called Water Panther. Usually their prices are very good compared to Seagate or WD, however I see prices have normalized a bit across the board. Water Panther occasionally lists refurbished drives that have deep discounts.
I purchased 3 Water Panther DAS SATA drives, which claim to be compatible with NetApp disk shelves, Synology RS and RX series, etc. I can attest that my Synology 2015 DS platform with an ARM processor is happy with them (green checkmarks).
Semi recently, I did upgrade my platform temporarily to a 2021 Rack Station RS2421+ when they were brand new, only to discover the show-stopping drive lock; didn't even like my Ironwolfs (yes, I saw your videos on that topic). I did see a video recently regarding the slight loosening of restrictions on non-Synology drives.
If you think it is worth your time, could you do a video on Water Panther drives and how some of the new platforms handle them?
I absolutely love the management, applications and functionality of Synology. I'm anxious to upgrade to a platform with 10G+, a better processor and is rack mountable, but I don't know what to expect when I bring these drives over even with the loosening of restrictions.
Use Case:
Mostly home user, massive Plex collection, DS2415+ sitting next to a GPU backed Dell R720 running Proxmox. Since I don't trust Water Panther as much as IronWolf, I am using 2 drive fault tolerance and keeping a cold spare. With the price of the refurbs, I can't beat it. Anything critical is backed up to 2 cloud environments, anyway.
This might be a neat video idea.
Background:
I have a Synology DS2415+ (12-bay tower) that I had filled with 10 TB Ironwolf drives (minus 2x 1TB SSDs for cache). As is expected, I started having a few failures over the years, and Seagate's RMA policy is to send the next higher capacity drive that is available in stock. For two of the occurrences, they sent 12 TB Ironwolf drives. This got me thinking, I want to think long term about expansion as my needs have grown, but I wasn't necessarily at the 'upgrade platform' stage at the time. I stumbled upon a new hard drive vendor (might be a re-label) called Water Panther. Usually their prices are very good compared to Seagate or WD, however I see prices have normalized a bit across the board. Water Panther occasionally lists refurbished drives that have deep discounts.
I purchased 3 Water Panther DAS SATA drives, which claim to be compatible with NetApp disk shelves, Synology RS and RX series, etc. I can attest that my Synology 2015 DS platform with an ARM processor is happy with them (green checkmarks).
Semi recently, I did upgrade my platform temporarily to a 2021 Rack Station RS2421+ when they were brand new, only to discover the show-stopping drive lock; didn't even like my Ironwolfs (yes, I saw your videos on that topic). I did see a video recently regarding the slight loosening of restrictions on non-Synology drives.
If you think it is worth your time, could you do a video on Water Panther drives and how some of the new platforms handle them?
I absolutely love the management, applications and functionality of Synology. I'm anxious to upgrade to a platform with 10G+, a better processor and is rack mountable, but I don't know what to expect when I bring these drives over even with the loosening of restrictions.
Use Case:
Mostly home user, massive Plex collection, DS2415+ sitting next to a GPU backed Dell R720 running Proxmox. Since I don't trust Water Panther as much as IronWolf, I am using 2 drive fault tolerance and keeping a cold spare. With the price of the refurbs, I can't beat it. Anything critical is backed up to 2 cloud environments, anyway.