Storage Solutions Giving up on Jellyfin server, 2nd HDD Failed in 1 year time, what am I doing wrong?

[dvader]

Few clarifications,

1. fsck checks(and fixes) the filesystems for errors, it has not to do with fixing underlying hardware. However a failing disk might encounter a lot of filesystem errors but that's beside the point.

2. A power adapter ampere rating is kindda like power rating of PSUs all the 3A is not used at the same time. RPi needs 15W, at 5V you kindda need that 3A to reach 15W. Can you use an a powered usb adapter for external disk?, I suspect your adapter is not supplying smooth power. Use a 15W samsung brick you can get one. Separate RPi and disk power.

3. You are not seeding man ...we need pirates who can seed in these trying times .

4. At this point I am sure it's power issue get a good "powered" usb adapter (or a dock from pibox; works for both 2.5 and 3.5 drives) if it's 2.5" or get a 3.5" drive (you cant run them without power anyway).Once the power is separate from RPi there is not a whole lot Pi can do to drive.

 

[vivek.krishnan]

What drive you have? I guess 3.5mm? Can you tell me name or amazon link or something?

Seagate/WD 8TB/16TB HDDs. Due to the sizes, these are mostly CMR and whitelabel Exos or Red equivalents.

used to run (now only OMV)

VPN (native) not dockerised
youtube-dl - now yt-dlp
aria2
transmission
and some more stuff

This is a RPI4 4GB

Few clarifications,

1. fsck checks(and fixes) the filesystems for errors, it has not to do with fixing underlying hardware. However a failing disk might encounter a lot of filesystem errors but that's beside the point.

2. A power adapter ampere rating is kindda like power rating of PSUs all the 3A is not used at the same time. RPi needs 15W, at 5V you kindda need that 3A to reach 15W. Can you use an a powered usb adapter for external disk?, I suspect your adapter is not supplying smooth power. Use a 15W samsung brick you can get one. Separate RPi and disk power.

3. You are not seeding man ...we need pirates who can seed in these trying times .

4. At this point I am sure it's power issue get a good "powered" usb adapter (or a dock from pibox; works for both 2.5 and 3.5 drives) if it's 2.5" or get a 3.5" drive (you cant run them without power anyway).Once the power is separate from RPi there is not a whole lot Pi can do to drive.

1. true.
2. this was the issue I faced, power. In the end a powered USB HDD solved this issue. He mentioned its a powered hub, so I assumed its a good brand

 

[dvader]

.

Seagate/WD 8TB/16TB HDDs. Due to the sizes, these are mostly CMR and whitelabel Exos or Red equivalents.

used to run (now only OMV)

VPN (native) not dockerised
youtube-dl - now yt-dlp
aria2
transmission
and some more stuff

This is a RPI4 4GB


1. true.
2. this was the issue I faced, power. In the end a powered USB HDD solved this issue. He mentioned its a powered hub, so I assumed its a good brand

I still suspect the power, RPi is tried and tested, I expect software issues (arm again) but nothing that can cause disk failure (Asuming RPi is good hardware wise). @OP can you get a dock from PiBox?, it's not much and you can always use it anyehere else, you can get one with two slots and add another disk in future.

The point I am trying to make is get your disk as logically far away from RPi as possible for 24x7 operation.

Also the hdd dock (and similer products) has UASP enabled SATA controller which again is always great to have.

 

[raksrules]

Few clarifications,

1. fsck checks(and fixes) the filesystems for errors, it has not to do with fixing underlying hardware. However a failing disk might encounter a lot of filesystem errors but that's beside the point.

2. A power adapter ampere rating is kindda like power rating of PSUs all the 3A is not used at the same time. RPi needs 15W, at 5V you kindda need that 3A to reach 15W. Can you use an a powered usb adapter for external disk?, I suspect your adapter is not supplying smooth power. Use a 15W samsung brick you can get one. Separate RPi and disk power.

3. You are not seeding man ...we need pirates who can seed in these trying times .

4. At this point I am sure it's power issue get a good "powered" usb adapter (or a dock from pibox; works for both 2.5 and 3.5 drives) if it's 2.5" or get a 3.5" drive (you cant run them without power anyway).Once the power is separate from RPi there is not a whole lot Pi can do to drive.

1. So you saying I cannot rely on the fsck saying my disk is CLEAN. And yes that is what I am doing, I am expecting the drive to die anytime and will use with that expectation.
2. The power to Pi and external HDD is separate only since last one year. I have a powered USB Hub (not those cheapo ones which don't have external power adaptor. This is proper powered hub to which HDD is connected. This is the one I have -> https://www.amazon.in/gp/product/B011OSM2KW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
3. I am seeding. I am not sure if you are in the TE whatsapp but I posted couple of screenshots where I had seeded like 175 GB on single torrent. The data is definitely transferred to HDD but not moved. It still remains in my torrent client and I only stop and delete torrents once I need space on my MicroSD card (128GB) on which all downloading happens.
4. Answered in Point# 2.

 

[dvader]

1. So you saying I cannot rely on the fsck saying my disk is CLEAN. And yes that is what I am doing, I am expecting the drive to die anytime and will use with that expectation.
2. The power to Pi and external HDD is separate only since last one year. I have a powered USB Hub (not those cheapo ones which don't have external power adaptor. This is proper powered hub to which HDD is connected. This is the one I have -> https://www.amazon.in/gp/product/B011OSM2KW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
3. I am seeding. I am not sure if you are in the TE whatsapp but I posted couple of screenshots where I had seeded like 175 GB on single torrent. The data is definitely transferred to HDD but not moved. It still remains in my torrent client and I only stop and delete torrents once I need space on my MicroSD card (128GB) on which all downloading happens.
4. Answered in Point# 2.

1. fsck clean means your filesystem is good, means your content is intact. It has nothing to do with your disk. You can have your data on a virtual disk and fsck will report clean. Point is fsck has nothing to with underlying storage.

In short fsck doesn't say your disk is clean (which doesn't make sense if you think about it). It says your filesystem is clean.

2. Well I was suggesting more in line of using a trusted sata dock meant to run 24x7 than an external hdd housing/controller.

3. It's ok to not seed, I was just passing on the message. Anyway are seeding off of your HDD? because then you are using your HDD everytime a peer requests even a bit of data. Your microsd can't be big enough to store all ur torrents and seed.

I am still pretty confident that if you run a disk off a good dock, you will not face such issues.

BTW, has anyone shucked a WD drive recently?, I blacklisted WD external drives after I found that these ****ers have built the usb interface right on the drive (void warranty for nothing). There is a special place in hell for the guy who came up with that. I have shucked 5-6 seagates and they are just Barracudas mostly.

 

[vivek.krishnan]

BTW, has anyone shucked a WD drive recently?, I blacklisted WD external drives after I found that these ****ers have built the usb interface right on the drive (void warranty for nothing). There is a special place in hell for the guy who came up with that. I have shucked 5-6 seagates and they are just Barracudas mostly.

Wow, did not know that. What is the capacity of these? Model number would be appreciated.

EDIT - I am assuming these are the powered external ones, not the USB internal ones.

 

[ibose]

BTW, has anyone shucked a WD drive recently?, I blacklisted WD external drives after I found that these ****ers have built the usb interface right on the drive (void warranty for nothing). There is a special place in hell for the guy who came up with that. I have shucked 5-6 seagates and they are just Barracudas mostly.

The smaller ones, yes. Toshiba also does the same.

 

[dvader]

The smaller ones, yes. Toshiba also does the same.

Yeah bastards through and through. This kind of anti consumer behaviou stirs me to my core. Eitherway @OP I wouldn't advise shucking your drive then.

It can just be the shitty non standard WD interface that is causing this along with power issues. You can try using a standard sata drive and that shouldn't cause any issues.

 

[Decadent_Spectre]

1. fsck clean means your filesystem is good, means your content is intact. It has nothing to do with your disk. You can have your data on a virtual disk and fsck will report clean. Point is fsck has nothing to with underlying storage.

In short fsck doesn't say your disk is clean (which doesn't make sense if you think about it). It says your filesystem is clean.

2. Well I was suggesting more in line of using a trusted sata dock meant to run 24x7 than an external hdd housing/controller.

3. It's ok to not seed, I was just passing on the message. Anyway are seeding off of your HDD? because then you are using your HDD everytime a peer requests even a bit of data. Your microsd can't be big enough to store all ur torrents and seed.

I am still pretty confident that if you run a disk off a good dock, you will not face such issues.

BTW, has anyone shucked a WD drive recently?, I blacklisted WD external drives after I found that these ****ers have built the usb interface right on the drive (void warranty for nothing). There is a special place in hell for the guy who came up with that. I have shucked 5-6 seagates and they are just Barracudas mostly.

Why are you shucking drives? Is the price difference that large? I know they've been doing it abroad for a while but never heard anyone doing it here. Do you ever find a Ultrastar when you do it?

 

[6pack]

Why are you shucking drives?

Not the person you're asking the question to but I've saved two drives by shucking them. One a Verbatim 2.5" hdd which was in a portable 2.5" case with a USB 3 interface and which wasn't turning on. After some trial, i removed the 2.5" hdd from the case and connected it directly and it was 100% fine. The second drive was a 3.5" WD HDDs in some WD external case. Same problem. It "died" suddenly. Removed the drive from the case and connected it directly to the pc and it was 100% fine after a disk check. Normal people would have thrown the drives of the warranty period was over or bought a new drive or wasted money on data recovery. The new drives don't have this option of removing the drives since the USB interface is directly soldered to the drive pcb.

 

[freaks-and-peaks]

USB HDD for 24x7 operations, that's a no no. I tried a similar setup years back but eventually, it required way more oversight than I had time. There are multiple things that can probably go wrong,

1. Your RPi USB itself might be the issue.
2. Almost all external drives I have had in the past (15-20) had ata-passthrough issues in Linux, especially the ARM kernels, I would shuck the devices just to get the SATA interface. Happened mostly with Seagate drives.
3. How are you dissipating heat, external drives are not meant to be plugged 24x7.
4. Configure your torrent client to limit read/write speeds. This helps a lot when you stream media.

Cloud VPS/VMs/Dedicated hosts are another option but it's gonna cost, you can get a budget NAS for that price (I mean when you combine the yearly cost). You can head on to lowendtalk, lowendbox, lowendspirit and get yourself a storage box. However, budget hosts would be unreliable too. If you have an old PC lying around that can serve as NAS too.

Are external drives really considered problematic for 24x7 use? Anecdotal but I've been using a 2TB external drive 24x7 connected to my Raspberry Pi for about 4 years now. The only downtime being a few minutes every 2 weeks or so when I clean the setup. I have a similar setup to OP, except I don't use Jellyfin, just a simple SMB share to play videos on other devices via VLC. Been seeding 500-ish torrents the entire time too, with about 1TB both downloaded and uploaded. NTFS-formatted WD drive, not enterprise. I was under the impression that drives don't usually die that easy, and heat dissipation issues are more about badly-ventilated setups.

 

[dvader]

Are external drives really considered problematic for 24x7 use? Anecdotal but I've been using a 2TB external drive 24x7 connected to my Raspberry Pi for about 4 years now. The only downtime being a few minutes every 2 weeks or so when I clean the setup. I have a similar setup to OP, except I don't use Jellyfin, just a simple SMB share to play videos on other devices via VLC. Been seeding 500-ish torrents the entire time too, with about 1TB both downloaded and uploaded. NTFS-formatted WD drive, not enterprise. I was under the impression that drives don't usually die that easy, and heat dissipation issues are more about badly-ventilated setups.

Not all HDDs ofcourse I have run seagate external drive 24x7 without any issues. It's these non standard external HDDs that I think are purposely designed to be fragile.

 

[vivek.krishnan]

Not all HDDs ofcourse I have run seagate external drive 24x7 without any issues. It's these non standard external HDDs that I think are purposely designed to be fragile.

2.5 ones are the issue i feel, not the 3.5 ones

 

[dvader]

2.5 ones are the issue i feel, not the 3.5 ones

Ohh ofcourse, given how much 3.5" drives sells worldwide, they wouldn't mess with standardized controllers and designs.

 

[raksrules]

Finally, my drive seems fully dead now. RPi4 is no longer detecting it. It worked after my last post and I was able to download and stream but I guess there were bad sectors and I would see issues with streams not always working, some videos working and some not and such.

Now I have shifted to my already available 128 GB MicroSD card as primary storage and 64 GB MicroSD card as torrent download location and will use this for sometime. I only download something which I intend to watch sooner than hoard.

 

[dvader]

Finally, my drive seems fully dead now. RPi4 is no longer detecting it. It worked after my last post and I was able to download and stream but I guess there were bad sectors and I would see issues with streams not always working, some videos working and some not and such.

Now I have shifted to my already available 128 GB MicroSD card as primary storage and 64 GB MicroSD card as torrent download location and will use this for sometime. I only download something which I intend to watch sooner than hoard.

RIP your HDD man. I hope he goes to hard disk heaven where there are no bad sectors, no head crashes, and no bit rot. I hope he finds a nice, hot SSD there

Jokes apart, You should try using a 3.5" HDD this time though

Edit: Fixed SSD typo

 

[meehatpa]

Do any of your clients require transcoding? I've read that it can be bad for hdds and it's preferred to use ramdisk for that.

 

[raksrules]

Do any of your clients require transcoding? I've read that it can be bad for hdds and it's preferred to use ramdisk for that.

My kids and I are the client.
Also no transcoding is done, it is blocked in jellyfin by me.

RIP your HDD man. I hope he goes to hard disk heaven where there are no bad sectors, no head crashes, and no bit rot. I hope he finds a nice, hot SSD there

Jokes apart, You should try using a 3.5" SSD this time though

I won't for now. I will get this replaced and then "may" or "may not" use for Jellyfin. I have realized that there is no point in downloading stuff in anticipation of watching at later date. So now I will download stuff but when I know I can watch starting say tomorrow and such and then delete old shows.

 

[Mr.J]

Jokes apart, You should try using a 3.5" SSD this time though

Yeah, after having multiple HDDs failed over the last decade or so I have started buying only SSDs. It feels like manufacturers don't give a shit about quality of HDDs anymore. Afterall there are only 2 players in the market.

 

[guest_999]

Yeah, after having multiple HDDs failed over the last decade or so I have started buying only SSDs. It feels like manufacturers don't give a shit about quality of HDDs anymore. Afterall there are only 2 players in the market.

All HDD fail sooner or later, in my case those almost all of my hdd managed to clock at least 40000 hours before showing signs of failure.