Those are windows not W*ndows

Oh, no I haven’t tried pushing the PS button, thanks for the tip! I’ll try it

Thanks. I did try just PnP but it wouldn’t work. Could it be because Steam was running? I’ll have to try again after closing Steam

Bad word

That’s a long guide! Thanks for now, I’ll check it out as soon as I can!

Got it once in the one year I’ve been on Linux

Teach me your ways. I don’t have a very new model, I think it’s a 4130e or something. Do you use CUPS?

My issue lies elsewhere, it takes me that long to have the printer recognized by the OS, then by CUPS browser, then I send the printing job and… it just stalls, never prints. I then cycle the USB ports and start all over again until it miraculously prints

I have a HP printer and printing is never a smooth process. No idea why, but it takes me 5/10 minutes each time

Hell yea

Sorry for late reply, app kept saying “this account is being verified” and I coulnd’t comment or anything else.

Anyways, I kept them. One drive loss won’t be catastrophic (got two mirrored and also spare backup), so I decided to go for it!

Sorry for late reply, app kept saying “this account os being verified” and I coulnd’t comment or anything else.

In the end I decided to keep them, considering the store provides warranty! Loving the gigantic storage amount I have now haha

Sorry for late reply, app kept saying “this account os being verified” and I coulnd’t comment or anything else.

Anyway, yes, the store I bought them from is a legit store and provides warranty, so I decided to keep the drives!

That’s fair, I paid three times as much though so I do care a bit more haha

Actually, I found something: “DOM: 07JUN2022”. I guess that’s “Date of Manufacturing”?

I was a bit off, they were 15% cheaper than the Ironwolf on the same website/from same seller (156, not USD, vs 179, not USD).

For a better comparison, I went to WD’s official store and for what I spent on these two 8TB Exos (312, not USD) I can get two 4TB Red Plus (310, not USD). Can’t make a direct comparison with other Seagates because their “buy now” section redirects me to Amazon, which, as you said, is not the best since they allowed third party sellers, but on there the 8TB Ironwolf is 250 (!!).

As you already know, I’m not in the US so I can’t buy from there. Unfortunately, Seagate’s “buy now” section (which should be official retailers) brings me to either Amazon or other chains that don’t have much else besides portable drives.

At this point I have two options, really: try again the same online store (which is kinda like Amazon, many third party sellers), but getting Ironwolf, which should be more likely to be “legit”, and of course check them as well when they arrive, or settle for two 4TB WD Red Plus (which isn’t ideal as I’m already nearing 2.5TB total, but should allow me to get by a while longer) bought directly from WD.

edit: looking at the link you provided, I paid 30% less for my Exos. Would that sway you towards keeping it without warranty (apart from the seller’s, which is one year I think)? Mind that I don’t need enterprise-grade drives, and I think even NAS drives are overkill for my needs. For example a WD Blue with its 55TBW per year might be enough for me (that’s 150GB a day everyday for a year, which is above my average writes), but those don’t come big enough (I need 6TB min to be comfortable) nevermind, they do come in 8TB size, just at a lower spinning speed (5640rpm), but they cost more (267) than the Ironwolf, and are SMR and have 128MB cache. Sounds like a bad deal!

No I don’t, I wrote it in the OP haha unless there’s a way to know it by looking up the S/N. Have to check.

How can you be so sure they’re older? They were sold to me as new and they did come in the usual sealed plastic wrap.

Anyway I don’t think saving some money is worth more than a full warranty, so I’m basically set on returning them and get something else

Thanks a lot for all the help! You’ve been very patient and helpful, I appreciate that! Have a nice day!

Apologies for the wall of text

Not at all, rather thank you!

I researched again for parts and, whichever way I go, it’s all very expensive.

The “cheaper” options are still expensive considered the lack of expandability: I can get, for example, two 3.5" 4TB drives for around 90-100 each, or, slightly better, two 2.5" 4TB drives for around 120-130 each; the 2.5" drives would allow me to get rid of the HDD cage in my PC and mount a fan in its place. Either way, 8TB (actually 4TB + mirrored backup) for 200-250, and I can’t expand it further.

Slightly more expensive: a one drive Synology NAS, for around 300 (including a 4TB HDD, bought separately); again, locked with no further scaling possible.

Then, a two drives Synology NAS, for 450-500 (including two 4TB drives, bought separately), no scaling. But it’s getting closer to my needs.

Finally, a four drives Synology NAS, definitely fitting for my needs, which is 500 not including drives; once I add storage, for example just two 8TB drives (to which I’d add another two down the road), I’m close to 800 (and this is by getting the cheapest 8TB drive I can find, nothing with “NAS” in the name haha).

Shucking isn’t really a financially good option, it looks like, since external drives are actually more expensive in my country.

tiny case

Well, the Node 304 can hold six drives. Realistically, that should be enough for me even if I decide to have two backups (so using two drives for storage and then the other four just to back up those two) and even if I get 8TB drives (at the moment I have just shy of 3TB of data and I think i can easily add another 2TB onto it, but further than that… not sure). Worst case scenario changing only the case is pretty painless, especially if I can sell the old one to buy the larger one.

gpu

Yeah, I know I can get an APU, issue is, with that MoBo I picked only PRO APUs support ECC RAM. For what I understand, ECC RAM, while not mandatory, is highly recommended. The data I have is not vital, but if I can avoid corruption and having to download it again, I’d rather do so. To be fair, I’m currently not using ECC RAM and I haven’t encountered data corruption in the past two or three years… so I’m a bit torn on this point now

your config

That’s a very expensive motherboard, wow! I can’t find it for less than 350! Definitely over budget for me at the moment

larger case for my current setup

This is definitely something I’ll consider, at least as a stopgap until I can build a proper NAS. This way would allow me to have many drives and I could also repurpose the ones I already have.

I think I’ll have to put this project on hold for now haha but thanks for the huge help, I’ll definitely watch that video in the meantime!

Thanks again!

edit: looks like I can shave off another 100 from the planned build, since I can get a CPU (Ryzen 5 2600) and a 550W PSU for free. Which is actually not bad. Remove one stick of RAM, since 8GB should be enough, and I can save another 30, bringing the total to around 500. Not that bad as a start! Actually, bring that back to 600, since it would make more sense to get 8TB drives since I’m already around 3TB. Still, saved money is money saved haha

I’m sorry about your experience! I actually have an IronWolf, a small 2TB one, and it’s been a year without issues. I don’t write big amounts of data daily on it though, so my experience might be different.

Good luck with your replacement though!