is the seagate warranty valid? their source is local authorized distributor is it?

on shopee some confirmed that (their claims...) others they said is overseas import (do not buy this one. its essentially same as saying no seagate rma. store warranty is usually bs)

This one? but no hdd listed
https://www.etexpc.com/


This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: Nov 5 2025, 05:53 AM

Thats the shop. Just saying their legit shop around the area so you can visit both places to find out. Whether their authorised reseller can try ask them. Also can visit their shopee/Laz site (afaik its their real webshop coz I bought online and collect in shop).

If Pro/Enterprise stuff your after, maybe can ask sifu Myway here tho he is more a SI builder. Also can try ask other SI; illegear, Idealtech, etc

bought the ironwolf 12tb non pro.

was considering the wd red plus but i didnt get it though it was cheaper


because

1. its lower rpm. so for a nas they will use the lowest rpm drive.... so my other drives are 7200 rpm...

2. different brand. might not be a good idea to mix. it will work, but i rather not do that

3. not a fan of wd warranty rma. u have to pay for shipping urself.


i also got from the official seagate seller list. i dont want to argue with seagate saying i didnt buy from the list, then get rma rejected

This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: Nov 12 2025, 03:22 PM

Yes better be safe than sorry. BTW which seller you bought from?

viewnet


they offered about rm 1580 at the shop but i not free to go. so i got it at 1700 on shopee. so if u want a cheaper deal, u have to drive down to lowyat and ask in viewnet for that price.

first thing i did was check rma (dont have to open the anti static since u can see the serial. so i check first before i open, in case i need to return). it's valid. also they are indeed an official source for seagate.

yes the shopee is legit, cause i asked direct on whatsapp from their shop , and they confirmed.

i was looking for some 11.11 deals, but wasn't lucky. ironically the prices for the drive i was looking at was cheaper prior to 11.11

fyi this drive sells for close to rm 1k on us amazon. so basically overpaid, but what to do, the malaysia market for the nas drives r just more expensive than US

I did bad block scan for my other 3 drives. so only 1 was bad. so silver lining only 1 needed to replace. giving me time to save budget for next replacement, hopefully not anytime soon.


viewnet shopee they ship the drive in a very bubbled wrapped package, and inside a small cardboard box to fit 1 drive. i've seen better hdd packaging where they do bubble wrap + box + foam enclosure. So not the best packaging, but not worse either.

Now i have to bad block scan and check the drive arrived in good condition or not. Seems to be local stock since it took 1 day to ship.


day of manufacture is 18 sept 2025. with the rma Dec 2028 so yes 3 year warranty from seagate rma.


the cardboard box, the anti static bag, and bubble wrap i keep for later rma in future. hopefully not needed. it also came with a receipt, which is good cause u can scan a copy and send with ur rma if they ask if u bought from their official malaysia seller



allit, thundermatch all on shopee no stock



so my setup now has 12tb x 4 in raidz1.

My backup is 6-8 x 4tb. Since the backup is powered off unless i recover or backup, running that many hdds isnt a big deal. just need to backup once or twice a year or as needed.

this is why for my main nas i run 4 hard drives max. because more drive means more electricity consumption. my elec bill with 4 x 12tb for my homelab is ok for my bill


took video and photo before opening package. so plan is, within this 15 day period, i have to do the bad block scan, do smart short and long. then check. if not good, immediately request refund. i rather not rma and get a recertified drive. refund better then order again. anyway hopefully the test is alright.

fyi it takes about 10 days to do the bad block scan for 12tb hard drive.



i tested the smart and farm both show 0. Which clearly matches the manufacturer date to indicate it's brand new unused. so yes it's legit. i mean the source was credible to begin with, but doesn't hurt to check.

just a reminder u can check farm using this docker container app
https://github.com/gamestailer94/farm-check


its better to check farm before u do the smart test and bad block test. so u can check that it is 0 hours.

This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: Nov 12 2025, 04:56 PM

It's advisable to mix brand especially if it's for RAID setup.
The idea is to mitigate the risk of simultaneous failures caused by a single bad manufacturing or firmware bug.

But of course need to ensure all have comparable performance such as same RPM speed, capacity and no mixing CMR with SMR drive.

Thanks for the very detailed details. And yes Viewnet is as legit as any lowyat shop will get. Then again back when physical buying was the only way, even these major shops do have some bad customer experience stories (all of them have to a certain degree).

Since warranty is that important to you, paying that more for a peace of mind with that assurance is well worth it imo.

Cant blame the seller pricing too as AI is sucking HDD back from the dead of being obsoleted when many of the HDD players had over the years been downsizing its production and replacing capacity with SSD (WD & Seagate).

u said it yourself. my reason for not doing so, because the difference in rpm.

if in raid it will choose to use the slowest drive as the speed for all the other drives. so i didnt want that. so i stuck to the 7200 rpm drives. so may as well stick to seagate.

I do have a mix of older wd with seagate on my backup. but it's a backup so thats perfectly fine. U use whatever u have on hand.

but yes u r correct. under the right pre-requisites u can mix match.



i've tried both low rpm and 7200 rpm hard drives for nas before (what i mean is, i use a batch of 4 for each one run separately in their own raidz1 or mdam raid5 so no mix and match). low rpm is nice because less noise and feels like they would last longer. Downside is the performance, is gonna be less than the 7200 rpm. I use a 10g networking setup. So less performance is not really what i want haha...

But that said, i find that with 4x 12tb 7200rpm hard drives, i can't hit 10g speeds. I think i need 6 hard drives to do that.







electricity cost not too bad, replacing 2 additional drives when they die is the main problem. they do die, just a matter of when.



price wise, 4 drives is the limit for me. speed wise, highest i saw was about 5-6g thoroughput r/w with just 4 drives better than most homelabbers haha..








The drive i got is ST12000VN0008




says old model but it was recently manufactured so should be ok. i didn't ask what the price was for the newer pro model


actually though AI said it's an older model, there is actually an older model than the 008 which is the ST12000VN0007. So luckily they didn't give me that older model at least. some shops on shopee do list they sell the 007 so at least get the ST12000VN0008 or the ST12000NT001 for seagate. pro is probably 5 year warranty but will cost extra. so 008 which is a non pro with 3 year warranty may be more attractive if on a budget.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/commen...is_write_cache/



when i enable scrutiny metric, my drives dont pass. only this new drive passed. but when i set to smart only, all pass

scrutiny metric can get false positives at times. i only rely on smart mostly to tell if the drive is dying.

even smart isn't fully reliable but based on my own experience, when smart shows some indication of failure, usually it's spot on in my experience. so i do replace when i see something is going wrong

This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: Nov 14 2025, 08:55 AM

completed bad block scan and long smart test. no issues



*this took about 12 days or so to complete for 12tb. Basically it was written and read back for all blocks and it found no errors. this was done multiple times with different patterns. doesn't get as thorough as this when checking a new hard drive. i highly recommend doing this when you first receive your brand new hard drive.


so yeah the viewnet seagate hard drive arrived in good condition both in delivery and no manufacturing defect based on the results. and warranty is in order, so all good (cept the price paid )

anyway, to restore my data, i had to load back the saved truenas config. i also re-did the pool and shares and imported them. next, go to the backup (which also uses a truenas), then did the push from the backup shares to the main nas.

Had to re-do the key pairs and ssh connections between the 2. when it says the cert is invalid (reason self made), just click to ignore, then it will just proceed to work. If you are doing remote over the internet, you can setup a validated cert if u wish. but for local, it's not as important afaik.

anyway after recovered everything is working

This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: Nov 22 2025, 11:26 AM

Hi Guys,

I am thinking to get an HDD to backup my phone data such as photo etc. Earlier i am using SSD, and I found out my SSD wont last long as my family member are actively backing up their photo and video especially.

Reading out NAS seems a good choice, but i am not into NAS yet as it out of my budget. I am wondering what is the best reliability of backing up my data? I will keep a copy into my pc, a copy into external hard disk. Should i consider another internal hard disk? such as WD Red Plus / Pro?

Please do let me know if there is a suggestion on how should i proceed? My budget currently perhaps 500 bucks looking at 2 - 4TB , is it sufficient?

depends on how you use your ssd. all storage media are sensitive to heat and vibration, so keep that in mind and take good care of them when you use or carry them around.

the best practice is to follow the 3-2-1 rule: keep 3 copies of your data, stored on 2 different types of media, with 1 copy kept offsite.

if you’re getting a nas, synology is a great option for beginners.

i’d suggest 4tb and above. a single 4tb external hdd fits your rm500 budget and already covers basic backups (pc + external drive). later, if you want better reliability, you can add another drive or move to a nas. a proper nas setup usually starts with 2 × 4tb drives plus a basic synology 2-bay unit (around rm900).

The easiest method would be to use NAS.

The cheapest method would be to backup on your PC. Then also make another backup on external SSD/HDD. This way you got 3 copies of data, in case 1 or 2 devices is missing or damage you still have 1 more copy. Syncthing would be one of the popular app and it support autorun from the phone to copy the data to your PC. But this app is more on mirroring, while you can set it so that PC only receive data but can't change data on phone, if the data is deleted on your phone, it will also delete on the PC. You need to use versioning or recycle bin on the computer to recover deleted files.
There might be other app that can do pure backup solution.

Another solution is to use Immich, but this app only for photos and videos, not other files. From what I read need to use Docker to run the server.

This post has been edited by xxboxx: Yesterday, 09:24 AM