Time for new HDDs, and DVD ripping

[Frick]

Hey hey.

So my WD Blues are getting up there in age, they're from 2013 and 2014. Not much load on them though. The main reason for the new drives is a plan to put my movies on them. I don't know how much space I need, but I'll try to snag a 4TB drive (or two if good enough price) on Black Friday, or after that if no deals present themselves.

But I have no idea what are good drives these days. The WD Reds have good reviews and seem cheap, but I'd love more input. The main use will be pure storage. In the long (or short) run I might setup a media server (Plex or whatevs) but they will see little use apart from the early ripping process.

Which brings me to my second question: is there a good program for ripping DVDs? Like the entire things, with subtitles and different audio tracks (for commentaries), while being somewhat clever about it (i e less time doing handiwork with the files after ripping, for instance those shows where they make each disc one file with timestamps)? I looked at this about six months ago and and didn't really find one that made me happy. I didn't spend a lot of time on it though, but I feel it definitely is time to do it.

Any input is appreciated.


And BTW, there will be no backups. The discs shall serve as backup.

 

[Solid State Soul ( SSS )]

WD Ultrastar HDDs are designed to be the most reliable hard drives

 

[wolar]

The one i have is really good but its loud(Hitachi Deskstar NAS )! According to reviews its also reliable so yea. Ill have to warn you though there are 2 different models with same name & tbs but they are actually different.

 

[EarthDog]

The difference between most drives and their failure rates is not much at all. You are going to have people here reply and say things that A/B/C is teh best or 'good for me' and the reality is most are low single digit failure rates in the first place.

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I haven't ripped DVD's since the early-mid 2000s, so I have no idea about software... but don't let anecdotes sway you.

 

[newtekie1]

Most drives are good. Find the size you need with the specs you want and go with it. For this usage, 5400RPM should be fine.

As for ripping the DVD, I don't think there are any good programs that do it all in one easy step. You need a program to rip the DVD files off the DVD, then a program to convert them to a more usable single file format. I haven't done it in a long while, but I used MeGUI to convert the DVD files to a single avi/mp4. But the real trick is finding a program that will decrypt the DVD and rip the files. We aren't really allowed to give that information here on the forums.

 

[_L_]

WD Elements on sale + shuck

 

[Frick]

Most drives are good. Find the size you need with the specs you want and go with it. For this usage, 5400RPM should be fine.

As for ripping the DVD, I don't think there are any good programs that do it all in one easy step. You need a program to rip the DVD files off the DVD, then a program to convert them to a more usable single file format. I haven't done it in a long while, but I used MeGUI to convert the DVD files to a single avi/mp4. But the real trick is finding a program that will decrypt the DVD and rip the files. We aren't really allowed to give that information here on the forums.

Gray area (where I live atleast).

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Consider going the NAS route if you are setting up a media server.

 

[cornemuse]

https://redfox.bz/

Rips to *.iso & vob

 

[GamerGuy]

IF your WD Blue HDD is still functioning well, why not go the external HDD route? Yes, it takes a bit longer to transfer files, after ripping, from your local HDD to the external one (even with USB3.0 or higher, unless you rip directly into your external HDD). I keep my SSD's and HDD's in my rigs for OS and games, and use external drives for storing stuff.

 

[Frick]

Consider going the NAS route if you are setting up a media server.

I probably have hardware for a dedicated server already, or I just use the desktop. It will be local streaming to only me, so I just tur it on when watching whatever, which I don't often do these days.

IF your WD Blue HDD is still functioning well, why not go the external HDD route? Yes, it takes a bit longer to transfer files, after ripping, from your local HDD to the external one (even with USB3.0 or higher, unless you rip directly into your external HDD). I keep my SSD's and HDD's in my rigs for OS and games, and use external drives for storing stuff.

Yeah, and considering they can be cheaper I have considered this, but I also don't like the extra cable clutter this will bring.

 

[phill]

I'm looking at some Seagate Exos because the price/size of them seem so much cheaper for like for like sizes compared to Seagate IronWolf/IronWolf Pro's..

I'll be updating my NAS eventually with some as it's getting a little full which I need to make sure I have everything covered and backed up before I do. Will you be considering setting up a raid 1 or 5 or something to cover for any failures or will it be just a straight drive?

As for software, a friend from work gave me a legit key for DVDFab, it rips and encodes everything brilliantly and I must say I've really enjoyed using the software. To buy it complete it's a little expensive but I do feel that it's worth the cash for everything that it does. Up to 4k rips, loads of different export options and quite easy to navigate the software for novice users like me

 

[John Naylor]

For movies, speed isn't a big thing ... so it comes down to proce and warranty. Picking by brand is fool's errand as every vendor has hits and misses. What matters is a) what models are failing and b) what source you are using. If you are using Backblaze, you're doing it wrong. When backblaze installs conumer drives for sever usage, it's like inytentionally destrying the drives ... especually when they are put in table top cases and held in place with rubberbands.

"In short, by its own admission, Backblaze employed consumer-class drives in a high-volume enterprise-class environment that far exceeded the warranty conditions of the HDDs. Backblaze installed consumer drives into a number of revisions of its own internally developed chassis, many of which utilized a rubber band to "reduce the vibration" of a vertically mounted HDD.

The first revision of the pods, pictured above, had no fasteners for securing the drive into the chassis. As shown, a heavy HDD is mounted vertically on top of a thin multiplexer PCB. The SATA connectors are bearing the full weight of the drive, and factoring the vibration of a normal HDD into the non-supported equation creates the almost perfect recipe for device failure.

The Backblaze environment employed more drives per chassis and featured much heavier workloads (both of which accelerate failure rates tremendously) than the vendors designed the client-class HDDs for. "

The drives that had high failure rates drives were models that did not feature RV (Rotational Vibration) sensors that counteract excessive vibration in heavy I / O usage models. In addition, consumer drives use afeature called head parking that saves your drive when the copy machine guy bumps your desk w/ his hand truck when delivering 4 boxes of paper or when the doorbell rings and ya dog, sleeping under your desk, jumps up and hits it. Consumer drives are rated for 250 to 500k cycles ... in a server high I/O environment, you can hit that bin as little as 3 months,

Unfortunately the only real data source for consumer hardware has ceased publishing the data. Here's adata set fro one of the last oines I saved ... The 1st number was the then current 6 month reporting period, the second is the 6 months before that:

Overall Failure rates:

• Seagate 0,72% (0,69%)
• Toshiba 0,80% (1,15%)
• Western 1,04% (1,03%)
• HGST 1,13% (0,60%)

Model failure rates:

2 TB :

• 2,39% Toshiba DT01ACA200
• 1,25% WD Red Pro WD2001FFSX
• 1,10% WD Blue WD20EZRZ
• 0,82% Seagate Barracuda 7200.14
• 0,81% WD Red WD20EFRX
• 0,77% Seagate Enterprise NAS HDD ST2000VN0001
• 0,74% WD Purple WD20PURX
• 0,72% WD Green WD20EZRX
• 0,56% Seagate NAS HDD ST2000VN000
• 0,45% WD Black WD2003FZEX
• 0,43% Seagate Desktop SSHD ST2000DX001
• 0,41% Seagate SpinPoint M9T ST2000LM003
• 0,36% WD Re WD2000FYYZ

3 TB :

• 3,04% WD Black WD3003FZEX
• 2,89% Toshiba DT01ACA300
• 2,29% Seagate Enterprise NAS HDD ST3000VN0001
• 2,23% WD Red Pro WD3001FFSX
• 2,18% WD Green WD30EZRX
• 1,52% Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 ST3000DM001
• 1,41% Seagate NAS HDD ST3000VN000
• 0,96% Western Red WD30EFRX
• 0,75% Seagate Surveillance HDD ST3000VX000

4 TB :

• 2,37% WD Purple WD40PURX
• 2,02% WD Red WD40EFRX
• 1,89% Seagate Desktop SSHD ST4000DX001
• 1,53% Seagate Desktop HDD.15 ST4000DM000
• 1,04% Seagate NAS HDD ST4000VN000
• 1,02% WD Blue WD40EZRZ
• 0,95% WD Green WD40EZRX
• 0,90% WD RE WD4000FYYZ
• 0,56% Toshiba MD04ACA40
• 0,40% Seagate Constellation ES ST4000NM0033
• 0,39% Hitachi Deskstar 7K4000
• 0,37% Toshiba X300
• 0,21% Hitachi Deskstar NAS

5 / 6 TB :

• 3,42% Toshiba Toshiba X300 5 To
• 3,37% WD Red WD60EFRX
• 2,67% WD Green WD60EZRX
• 1,43% WD Red WD50EFRX
• 0,87% Seagate Enterprise NAS HDD ST6000VN0001
• 0,74% Seagate Desktop HDD ST6000DM001

As you can see, failure rates of the vendors are pretty close .....models, not so much. I wouldn't consider anything with over 2%

Speed isn't an issue so no need to go faster than 5400 / 5900rpm ... and truth be told, give how often does one watch a specific move, load will be light. You will find for this reason that many archive / media oriented HDs will have short warrantees as manufacturerers dont wanna be on the hook when flks use them in gaming boxs. or other high load applications.. These days many folks are storing movies on HDs and using a docking station to view them.

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The 4 GB Barracuda is a popular choice at $90 or so for movie enthusiasts, tho the Seagate ST4000NC001 4TB 5900 RPM drive is a bit faster and has an extra year's warranty... and low price as will cease production soon with new model coming out. User reviews are very positive. Skip the models with tags for Ebterprise, Surveillance, Green, NAS. performance as they are more costly and most are tweaked for their specific target user.

 

[puma99dk|]

To be honest if you can live with 5900rpm drives the Red and Purple drives from WD are great for their storage size and price.

I been running a couple of WD Red 4TB's for so long I cannot remember when I purchased them and they are still rocking strong even got a Purple i run a media server from and I got no problems with 3-4 people steaming Fuld-HD from it and it's in a Orico USB 3.0 enclosure.

 

[authorized]

I buy pretty much the cheapest, lately that's been 4TB Barracudas. For me, there's not enough difference between them, especially that nowadays mechanical drives are usually used only for storage.

 

[Jetster]

Buy as large as you can afford, and think about back ups. Always back up!!
I have both toshiba X300, N300 6 Tb in NAS no issues now for 2 years and they run 24/7

The bigger drives typically are more reliable and quieter 5Tb +