This really isn’t dangerous unless you already screwed up badly. If it wipes, you just restore from backup/DR.

You do have backups and a DR plan for your prod servers, right?

Seagate SMART values don’t mean what you think they mean

The SMART values that might be read out by third-party SMART software are not based on how the values may be used within the Seagate hard drives. Seagate does not provide support for software programs that claim to read individual SMART attributes and thresholds. There may be some historical correctness on older drives, but new drives, no doubt, will have incorporated newer solutions, attributes and thresholds.

Seagate uses the general SMART Status, pass or fail. The individual attributes and threshold values are proprietary and we do not offer a utility that will read out the values. If the values that you are seeing with a third party SMART utility are not displaying properly or seem to be false, please contact your software vendor for further explanation of the values.

Some third-party SMART software programs display a list of attributes that seem to announce or foreshadow a SATA hard drive failure. Some of the most common are:

Raw Read Error Rate
Raw_Read_Error_Rate
Reallocated Sector Count
Reallocated_Sector_Count
Reallocation Count
Reallocation_Count
Seek Error Rate
Seek_Error_Rate
Spin Retry Count
Spin_Retry_Count
Hardware ECC Recovered
Hardware_ECC_Recovered
Current Pending Sector
Current_Pending_Sector
Ultra DMA CRC Error Count
Ultra_DMA_CRC_Error_Count
Ultra ATA CRC Error Count
Ultra_ATA_CRC_Error_Count
Offline Uncorrectable Sector Count
Offline_Uncorrectable_Sector_Count
ECC hardware errors recovered
ECC_hardware_errors_recovered
Current_Pending_Sector
Offline_Uncorrectable
ECC Seek Error
Pre-Failure: Imminent loss of data is being predicted

Please remember that these third-party programs do not have proprietary access to Seagate hard disk information, and therefore often provide inconsistent and inaccurate results. SeaTools is more consistent and more accurate and is the standard Seagate uses to determine hard drive failure.

Source

I think you mean LGA (Land Grid Array), meaning the pins are on the motherboard. Ball Grid Array (BGA) is used for embedded, non-removable CPUs.

The only thing I’ll add is that RAID is redundancy. Its purpose is to prevent downtime, not data loss.

If you aren’t concerned with downtime, RAID is the wrong solution.

The absolute easiest and simplest would be to modify your grub config to have a longer timer on the boot menu, effectively delaying them until the NAS is up.

That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best option- there are ways to make the actual boot process wait for mounts, or to stagger the WOL signals, or the solutions others have mentioned. But changing grub is quick and easy.

You’re overlooking a very common reason that people setup a homelab - practice for their careers. Many colleges offer a more legitimate setup for the same purpose, and a similar design. But if you’re choosing to learn AD from a free/cheap book instead of a multi-thousand dollar course, you still need a lab to absorb the information and really understand it.

Granted, AD is of limited value to learn these days, but it’s still a backbone for countless other tools that are highly relevant.

Careful with this- since MLC just means multi, I’ve seen drives marketed as “3-bit MLC”, i.e. TLC

That was my line of thinking. However, my subdomain.chickenkiller.com frequently (but but universally) resolves to the IP of regular chickenkiller.com. I don’t believe it’s an issue with my config, since my previous domains (not run by josh) worked just fine until they folded.

Each domain is run independently. Unfortunately, I have the worst luck in choosing them. The past 3 I’ve used have folded, and the one I’m on now (by an established operator) isn’t reliable. Most endpoints fail to resolve the subdomain DNS, instead returning the parent IP.

You know how you need to test any backup solution? This is the same. Have anyone that you’re expecting to do this run through the process entirely from your documentation. If they can’t, adjust the doc/process until they can. Then include that with your will, or with other documents people will be looking through in the event of your death.

The risk was poorly-made power adapters, where 2 pins could short/arc. These cables were almost exclusively injection molded and sold through cut-rate outlets like Ali Express (and Amazon resellers of them).

Technically crimped cables are not immune, but they are rarely seen with such cost cutting. Quality molded cables are also fine, but that is very difficult to recognize or verify after purchase.

The manual should tell you the power limits, and you can cross-reference the power usage of the drives. It’s probably ok for normal consumer drives, but high-draw or enterprise drives could be an issue. You could also (probably) just get power from the PSU.

Just FYI for the future, you can find SATA power extender cables for just a few bucks. Just be careful to get crimped instead of injection molded

If you install fresh using a USB created by the Media Creation Tool, there is one detail you’ll need to know. The install/OOBE setup will still prompt you to enter a key and activate. Just tell it to skip for now/activate later. Once it finishes and goes online, it will activate automatically.

Owned by, yes. Have their operations actually been integrated though? I haven’t checked in a long time, but it was still a separate division last time I did.

Not OP, but this comes up regularly.

A lot of people have very strong opinions of brands based on a woefully inadequate sample size. Typically this comes from a higher than expected failure rate, possibly even much higher than expected. It could’ve been a bad model, a bad batch at manufacturing, improper handling from the retailer, or even an improper running environment. But even the greediest data hoarders only have a few dozen drives, often in just a couple of environments and use-cases.

Very few of these results are actually meaningful trends. For every person that swears by WD and will never touch a Seagate, there’s someone else that swears by Seagate and will never touch another WD. HGST and Toshiba seem to have a very slight edge on reliability, but it’s very small. And there are still people that refuse to touch them because of the “Death Star” drives many years ago.

It’s also very difficult to predict which models will have high failure rates. By the time it becomes clear one is a lemon, they’re already EoL.

I avoid buying WD new because of their (IMHO completely illegal) stance on warranty, but I’m comfortable buying their stuff used.

Don’t worry too much about brand. Instead go for specs and needs. Follow a good backup strategy and you’ll be fine

I had a terrible experience with them. They are selling drives that previously failed in the data center, but currently pass manufacturer tests. They also wipe SMART. Or at least, they usually do. That’s how I know the first part. I had 4/3 drives fail on me- all of the original set within my burn-in tests, and 1 replacement (before I returned the others for refund) a year later. The last one was clearly meant to be wiped, but had the error still in the SMART logs.

They did have good customer service at least, but the parts are unreliable garbage that should not be trusted.

The “designed for 24/7” thing is a myth. Yes, some server/enterprise parts have a lower failure rate, but it has nothing to do with 8 hours a day vs 24.

Also, my setup is almost entirely the cheapest consumer drives available, and I’ve never had any significant failure rates outside of the one bad supplier. If you are seeing anything like that, you should examine your setup. I suspect you either have cooling issues or (more likely) vibration that’s causing premature failures.