SATA server hard drives? Need suggestions.

[MN Scout]

I'm looking to put together a file server that about 25 people will be using. I need 250+ gigs of space. Since money is limited, I'd like to go Raid 1 and Serial ATA. I'd also like to use the newer NCQ technology for improved performance, and a 5yr warranty is important. These are the drives I'm considering

400GB Western Digital Caviar RE2 16mb NCQ WD400YR
300-400GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 ST3300831AS
300GB Maxtor MaXLine III 7(L300SO)

There are also Seagate 7200.9 drives in the 300-400gb capacity that just came out, but currently I'm only seeing 160gb or 500gb for sale. Should I wait for these to show up? Are they super good?

Have any of you heard about how good these are? Which hard drive would you recommend out of these 4 and why?

Any recommendations on a PCI-X or PCI Express controller card to complement these drives would also be helpful. One that wont slow the drives down. I haven't yet chosen the motherboard, so if there is one that has 4 sata ports that support NCQ that would be cool also, if you know of any I'd welcome suggestion on one (I know this isn't the motherboard forum, but I figure if you know something why not suggest one).

Thanks so much everyone. All suggestions are welcome.

-MN Scout
http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/87.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&id=87)

[Oline61]

Not sure about the HDs, I have a 120 GB Seagate 7200.7 (same as 7200.7, just lower capacity), and it is pretty loud as modern hard drives go, but it is blazing fast. I'm pretty sure that nForce4 Ultra boards have 4 SATA ports supporting 3gbps and NCQ. Newer Intel chipsets (i.e. 955) probably support the same.

[xonik]

Don't bother with an additional hard drive controller unless you're dealing with an older system that doesn't sport Serial ATA ports. RAID 1 will slow the drives down from their single-drive speeds anyways, and a controller card won't do much if anything to fix that.

In terms of sheer speed, the MaXLine III has the edge over the Caviar RE2, with the Seagate trailing behind somewhat. The 7200.9 will probably narrow the gap, but it won't likely cause an upset. By the way, I'd like to point out that the Maxtor and WD drives you listed are considered near-line or entry-level enterprise drives, while the Seagate is a pure desktop drive. A more fitting choice would be Seagate's NL35, which fits the file server profile better.

[unhappy_mage]

Maxline III all the way, baby! I got 3 of these, they're lovely when I have the drivers for the controller card working. Plenty fast.

And as someone else said, for raid 1 it's probably not worth the extra money for a "good" controller. I might suggest mirroring the drives in software, though, as opposed to hardware; mirroring is easy enough that it doesn't slow down any (and it's likely implemented in software anyways, if you're using onboard) and it may have the effect of making the array portable across machines.

http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/150072 (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&id=150072&tm=33)

[Slacker]

400GB Western Digital Caviar RE2 16mb NCQ WD400YR

Just bought one of these from zipzoomfly. $40 cheaper then newegg with shipping. It's eventually gonna be part of an 8 drive RAID 5 array. But right now the price break is at 300/320GB drives so I'm gonna wait a few months for prices to fall and use this in the meantime. My 250GB external drive just took a shit one me and I can recover the files but I don't have any free space, so that's what this is for. Plus it should last until prices fall enough to get a few more drives for the array. And it's specially made for RAID arrays; rated for 1.2 million hours and a 5 year warranty, sounds good to me.

[Treyshadow]

Any reason this is a build not buy?

I mean you can get a comparable dell server for approximately what you are looking to pay. Especially with the recent discounts and coupons.

[feigned]

Something to remember because it's extremely easy to forget.

RAID 1 is not a backup solution. Please, for your own sanity or someone else's down the road, have a true backup solution in place for when you do this. Do not rely on RAID 1 as a backup.

[Engine101]

I've been researching something similar.

I've decided on Seagate drives. They have NCQ and a great warrenty. I'm also going with a Highpoint 2224 for a SATAII RAID card.

Contrary to an earlier post, i WOULD suggest an add-in RAID card. Usually better performace and more options(more RAID configs, better RAID mgnt soft).

And TreyShadow, DELL only sells SCSI and Intel ... BLECH!!