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Build Advice Recommend harddrives for Server

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by AT0MAC, 28 Apr 2012.

  1. AT0MAC

    AT0MAC Pirate Captain

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    I am about to build a NAS / fileserver and because of that I am looking to find 3-4 harddrives.


    I have four demands:

    1. Low-noise
    2. Low in watt (aka "Green Drives")
    3. Long lifetime / high reliability
    4. Minimum 1.5 TB (but prefer 2TB)

    What do you recommend or what are you using in your own fileserver?
    Eventually, anything you say I should NOT buy?


    Looking forward to some opinions :)
     
  2. Almightyrastus

    Almightyrastus On the jazz.

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    we are running two Western Digital 2TB Greens in our microserver at the moment and they have been fine. Had one in there for about a year now running all the time and not had a single problem yet
     
  3. GeorgeStorm

    GeorgeStorm Aggressive PC Builder

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    Currently I'm using 2 F4s and 2 Hitachi drives for my media storage, both of which I've had no problems with, looking to buy some 3tb 5900rpm seagates next, in the end, aslong as you get a drive with a decent warranty, from a decent manufacturer, I don't think you should have many problems.
    If you want lower noise/heat etc, then go for a lower rpm drive, 5400/5900rpm.
     
  4. AT0MAC

    AT0MAC Pirate Captain

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    WD makes so many different Green Drives, EARX, EARD and so on... Do you happen to know the model you use?
     
  5. AT0MAC

    AT0MAC Pirate Captain

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    I am only looking at 5.400/5.900 RPM drives, wich happens to be mostly all green drives.
    Do you know wich Hitachi you are using? I have looked at the 5K3000 but they cost more than other drives (but also happen to one of the only drives I can't really find any bad reviews/user comments on)
     
  6. GeorgeStorm

    GeorgeStorm Aggressive PC Builder

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    Yeah I was just commenting on the fact that you can use 7200rpm drives fine, not necessarily recommending them :)

    I'm actually using 2 drives which came from externals (were the cheapest way to buy 2tb drives, and when they turned out to be 7200rpm models I was pleasantly surprised :) )

    At this rate I'll be getting more 7200rpm drives since they are a fair bit cheaper at the moment :/
     
  7. Picarro

    Picarro What's a Dremel?

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    Just make sure to buy from atleast two different vendors to make sure you get different batches. If one batch has a production error, and you only get harddrives from that batch, the chances of the drives failing at the same time will be much larger.
     
  8. faugusztin

    faugusztin I *am* the guy with two left hands

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    Currently running 5 WD20EARS, 5 WD20EARX and 4 WD10EADS. And now let's the story begin :D.

    All my WD10EADS drives are still running without any issues, all of them already out of warranty, 15k+ hours.

    WD20EAxx drives - first i bought 6 WD20EARS (both 3 and 4 platter versions) in few months range. From those, one died after few months (the 4 platter version), replaced by a new WD20EARS from RMA (3 platter version), which died in few days, to be replaced by another WD20EARS again. Then i bought 4 WD20EARX last year just before the Thai floods, one of them died in February and got replaced by a new one. Last month, one of the first WD20EARS drives died too, got a refund so i had to buy a new WD20EARX instead.
    Current power on hours - WD20EARS 7k, 12k, 14k, 14k, 17k. WD20EARX - 0.1k, 1.5k, 5k, 5k, 5k.

    But keep in mind, that by "died" i mean it started producing errors. A real "death" (readable one day, unreadable next day) occured only to one WD20EARS drives, every other drive had only few read/write errors which resulted in few damaged files and a error report in WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic which meant a problem free RMA process.

    That means that if i count correctly, 4 of 15 WD20EARS/EARX had to be sent to RMA for various reasons, mostly minor file corruption due read errors.

    I had only one Samsung, a 1.5TB drive, which i sold ASAP because the bootup noises were way too much for me.

    Seagate - had one 5900RPM 1TB drive, too noisy for me, sold it, after a year it died.


    Low-noise - WD is fine there
    Low in watt (aka "Green Drives") - WD is fine there too
    Long lifetime / high reliability - well, read above :D. No hard drive manufacturer can guarantee you this.
    Minimum 1.5 TB (but prefer 2TB) - no problem
     
  9. AT0MAC

    AT0MAC Pirate Captain

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    So for short, you recommend WD10EADS? :)
    Nice story, exactly what I was looking for
     
  10. AT0MAC

    AT0MAC Pirate Captain

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    Haven't thought about it, but good point :thumb:
     
  11. AT0MAC

    AT0MAC Pirate Captain

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    I know, no hard feelings :)

    About the external thing, I have thought about the same - but it's really hard to find people who know what type of disc the different external boxes are equipped with - and if I can avoid 7200 drives I will aim for it (because of lower power and less noise)
     
  12. faugusztin

    faugusztin I *am* the guy with two left hands

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    Well, no :). What i meant was that buying a hard drive is like a lottery. It doesn't matter which one you buy. For example none of my former WD5000YS (2x), WD5001ABYS (2x), WD6400AAKS (6x), WD1001FALS (1x) drives died so far, or at least not in warranty time (3-5 years) because no one who bought them from me called me because of need for RMA.

    In terms of noise, Samsung and Seagate were nowhere near any of my Western Digital drives. Even my 1.5TB WD Black (WD1502FAEX) i bought for my VM drive (ESXi boot + virtual machine drive) is probably less noisy than Seagate and Samsung drives i ever used.

    By the way, if you are thinking about Seagate 5900RPM drives, think fast. They are phasing them out :
    http://www.seagate.com/about/newsro...s-costs-seagate-pr/?paramChannelName=newsroom
     
  13. AT0MAC

    AT0MAC Pirate Captain

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    You are right, even if I buy the most expensive drive on the planet it can still go wrong...
    That said, the best harddrives still looks to me to be hitachi or a few wd models - thats also why I don't worry so much about what Samsung or Seagate have to offer.
     
  14. Pookeyhead

    Pookeyhead It's big, and it's clever.

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    I'm using WD Green EARS drives here in both my servers. So far, 2 disk failures (replaced via RMA), and countless times they drop off the RAID when doing patrol reads... probably because of minor surface errors that would normally be re-allocated. A single drive in a desktop machine will just pause while it sorts that out, but if a drive on a enterprise level RAID card doesn't respond, it's usually dropped.

    I would NOT go with EARS drives for a server again.


    [edit]

    Enterprise grade drives for me next time. Less hassle... or I may give Samsung a try in RAID. SO far, I've never had a single issue with a Samsung drive.
     
    Last edited: 29 Apr 2012
  15. Landy_Ed

    Landy_Ed Combat Novice

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    This, sort of.

    I also mix drive manufacturers, then there's no need to worry about different batches. Got two Seagate & two western digital drives in my home server, all different models. And as with others, these choices were pure chance in some cases as a couple of them were bought as iomega external drives on offer in stores rather than as retail internal drive products.
     
  16. faugusztin

    faugusztin I *am* the guy with two left hands

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    No. Your issue is that you bought wrong drives for your use-case scenario. WD EARS drop out of RAID, because they are desktop drives, with head parking after few seconds. That means random slow reads, which equal to dropping out of RAID array because they didn't respond in time (most RAID controller give the drives only few seconds at best).

    You know, there is a reason for WD RE4-GP drives, and that reason is TLER, which you complain the desktop drive doesn't have. If you buy a non-TLER drive for a HW raid array, then it is your fault, drives are not at fault here.

    Next time either buy a non-green drive which doesn't park their heads every few seconds, or get the enterprise drives, but you are going to have fun with the costs :
    http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2tb-...intellipower-(5900rpm)-64mb-cache-8ms-hdd-oem - desktop drive - £93.00
    http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2tb-...re4-gp-sata-3gb-s-intellipower-64mb-cache-ncq - enterprise drive - £186.24
     
  17. Pookeyhead

    Pookeyhead It's big, and it's clever.

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    Yep.. hence my comment "Enterprise grade drives for me next time" :)


    My fault 2 of them failed? LOL I've had two drive failures with EARS drives that were not this issue. They failed, and had to be replaced via RMA.
     
  18. faugusztin

    faugusztin I *am* the guy with two left hands

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    No. Your fault was in the fact, that your drives are getting kicked out of RAID array because of the sleep feature.
     
  19. Pookeyhead

    Pookeyhead It's big, and it's clever.

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    Why are you being an arse? I've already stated in my own post that I need enterprise drives, and the two drives that failed... FAILED... nothing whatsoever with them being desktop drives. They mechanically failed!! How is that my fault? LOL


    You not had coffee yet this morning or something?


    ALso.. as for getting kicked off the RAID.. this has actually only happened a handful of times in 2 years... it's not something happens daily or anything.


    [edit]

    Oh.. one other thing I just remembered. I can disable TLER monitoring on the LSI.. and also I've asked Thecus about this too, and their RAID controller pays no attention to TLER, CCTL or ECC signals from the drives, and has a propitiatory method of handling drive time-outs.
     
    Last edited: 29 Apr 2012
  20. faugusztin

    faugusztin I *am* the guy with two left hands

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    For anything else but home server one time is more than enough.

    Sorry if i look like being a bit in bad mood, but i am bit angry at people who buy things without checking for potential issues before :). It's not like it's not in the product description :

    http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-701229.pdf
    Unfortunately, enterprise drives will and can fail in pretty much same way as desktop drives. The real difference between WD Green and RE4-GP is really only TLER, no sleep feature and some other minor features. So if you switch to Enterprise drives because of "higher reliability", don't bother.
     

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