Hi folks, I'm looking to increase the storage in my NAS (currently running 2x2TB WD Green, 1x1TB Hitachi and 1x500GB WD), each one individually backed up to a USB drive as I don't like RAID. The weapon of choice seems to be 3TB WD Red for NAS operations - unless I'm missing something better or cheaper? And while I'm at it all my games are stored on a 1TB Samsung Spinpoint in my PC (this drive used to be the default for price/performance in a gaming system). I'm tempted to buy a 1TB SSD and shift my games across - so long as it's a good time to do that just now, or should I wait for prices to drop? No big rush on either upgrade but some pointers from those in the know would be appreciated! Many thanks and happy new year! Cleggy.
Toshiba DT01ACA300. Toshiba bought Hitachi's 3.5" drive arm (WD only bought the 2.5" division) so they're essentially Hitachi drives, renowned for reliability. SMART log from one of them sitting in my Microserver: Code: SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16 Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000b 100 100 016 Pre-fail Always - 0 2 Throughput_Performance 0x0005 139 139 054 Pre-fail Offline - 72 3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0007 202 202 024 Pre-fail Always - 295 (Average 272) 4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0012 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 11 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 005 Pre-fail Always - 0 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000b 100 100 067 Pre-fail Always - 0 8 Seek_Time_Performance 0x0005 124 124 020 Pre-fail Offline - 33 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0012 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 7720 10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0013 100 100 060 Pre-fail Always - 0 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 11 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 211 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0012 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 211 194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0002 193 193 000 Old_age Always - 31 (Min/Max 14/40) 196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0022 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0008 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x000a 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 Nearly a year of runtime (spindown disable), with no errors. And they're hosting a regularly scrubbed ZFS array, so there definitely aren't any bit errors hiding there. It's sale season, so if you grab a discounted 1TB SSD now, prices are unlikely to drop again to that level for some time. Plus there's the random variability in the NAND market, so depending on production and demand prices could swing further up or down with little warning.
3D nand is rumored to make prices plummet on larger capacity ssd end of quarter/next quarter as they ramp up production. It may possibly be the first time we see 'sane' prices on 2/3/4TB ssd for consumer market. As for hdd, for me I have been buying Seagate ST4000DM/ST5000DX. They have been reliable and are very quiet drives with good fast performance. At least in the US Seagates are priced very aggressively for large capacity drives. I also have some smaller 2TB Toshiba DT*ACA which are also quite good though scheduled for replacement with larger drives.
I agree with IvanIvanovich. Cheapest 3tb drives I've found, in fact pretty much cheapest of any drive at any capacity usually ends up being a seagate drive. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3tb-seagate-st3000dm001-barracuda-720014-sata-iii-6gb-s-7200rpm-64mb-cache-8ms-ncq-oem I make these drives about £16 per drive cheaper than the WD Red drives. I personally have 10tb of storage in my server spread across 2 1.5tb seagate barracuda's and two 3tb ones. Not had any issues with any of them. The final 1tb is on a hitachi drive which I've also had no issues with. Been running the dual 1.5tb's since 2010 the 3tb's since 2012. Not had any issues with any of them. Still got two 500gb barracudas been running daily since 2007. One of which is so old it has a jumper for sata 1.
Thanks folks, much appreciated. Just logged onto Amazon to buy some drives and the prices are up on all of them, around 15%. The power of Bit-Tech! I'll check out the other UK suppliers in the meantime and report back...
DABS significantly cheaper than Amazon on the Toshiba drives as recommended by edzieba. Bought! My thanks again Edzieba!.
