Hitachi 2TB Harddrive Owner's Thread

Yeah, they've since bumped the price up $10! Not a big deal, but there was something pleasing about breaking that $100 barrier wasn't there? <grin> It does come with a free dock if you get the combo deal, too bad its USB and not eSATA, though..
 
ww_Crimson said:
Not sure if this link has already been posted but it's a good article to read

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hdd-reliability-storelab,2681.html

In this study they conclude that hitachi has the most reliable drives on the market.
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Literally, one of the worst ways to figure this out, ever. It probably beats out the people who own 1-2 drives, see a failure and declare a brand worthless, but still very poor. They mention that Seagate has 31% market share... but over 40% in the region. It would be reasonable to expect then that that 9% came from competitors, who also are relatively smaller, but we do not know by how much and which ones. e.g. is one completely not present in the region?

Also, they mixed drive types (2.5" and 3.5") and included drives that needed recovery due to *physical* damage. Drop 3.5" drives off a 4m ladder onto concrete from any drive manufacturer and I would bet that there would be a lot of non-working drives.

All that being said, I am at something like a 6% AFR ATM (that is one dead drive though... and the drive "died" but I was able to pull all data off) and this is on the infant mortality portion of the bathtub curve with these 2TB Hitachis so I am happy.
 
pjkenned said:
Literally, one of the worst ways to figure this out, ever. It probably beats out the people who own 1-2 drives, see a failure and declare a brand worthless, but still very poor. They mention that Seagate has 31% market share... but over 40% in the region. It would be reasonable to expect then that that 9% came from competitors, who also are relatively smaller, but we do not know by how much and which ones. e.g. is one completely not present in the region?

Also, they mixed drive types (2.5" and 3.5") and included drives that needed recovery due to *physical* damage. Drop 3.5" drives off a 4m ladder onto concrete from any drive manufacturer and I would bet that there would be a lot of non-working drives.

All that being said, I am at something like a 6% AFR ATM (that is one dead drive though... and the drive "died" but I was able to pull all data off) and this is on the infant mortality portion of the bathtub curve with these 2TB Hitachis so I am happy.
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Yea, as most often happens the study had plenty of errors but it does provide some useful information throughout. The article even mentions that
At this point, we also need to make very clear that the study is not representative and cannot be seen as a comprehensive reliability summary. It reflects only a very tiny fraction of the hard drive market. Drives are taken from analysis made during the recovery process, and there aren't specific test groups. It covers different form factors and different product lines, etc. Think of this analysis as an overview on reliability that might apply to the hard drives in your home city. Results very likely differ somewhere else.
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.

Particularly I found it in interesting because I don't think many people regard Hitachi as a leader in the HDD market (think: Seagate and WD) however this shed some positive light on the products. Sometimes I a "random" real-world test can provide more useful (not completely accurate) information than a purely scientific test.
 
so i'm looking at purchasing some of these drives there retial package but i assume there the same drive in the retial packages there listed at HD32000, if there different can someone let me know, the 2nd question is if i purchase 3 of them to setup in a hardware raid will they would out of the box? or is there any utility that i need to run on them, only asking because i also have some wd20eads drives that i had to run wdtler on to fix the TLER settings, is there any settings/tools tha tneed to be run on these drives inorder to make them able to do hardware RAID without having the dropout issue? my last question is does anyone see an issue running 3 of these drives along with 5 WD20EADS (tler enabled) drives/

Thanks
 
Viper - they work out of the box fine, though many do use the Hitachi disk diagnostics to fully test the drives before putting them into their raid setup.

re: your last question of mixing & matching with WD, I wouldn't do it. There are still lots of people with big RAID groups running fully on WD that would probably like to buy your drives used since they aren't making the drives any more that allow TLER to be adjusted.

If you have decided to move to Hitachi, I'd suggest you sell your WD drives and use the money gained to buy replacement Hitachi disks. I was in the same situation you were in and got rid of my WD disks when I moved fully over to Hitachi (now running 8x in RAID 6 and have never had an issue)
 
@pjkenned,

The important part of the article, past all the charts, is none of the Hitachi drives they received had any discernible quality problems other than user error. That says something.
 
so i swaped these 10 drives out for 10 Hitachi's currentally building the raid6 array, my question is i'm not sure if my raid card (3ware 9750) has settings to idle/spindown, i havent seen any settings int eh bios or on the webconsole, should i be runnin the hitachi AMP tool on each disk, the array is just used for storage i dont need the drives running at 7200 rpm so if the hitachi tool will allow me to set them to 5400 does anyone see a problem doing so, and what about hte idle timeout will disks drop form the array if i set them on the actual disk vs the card (which i cant seem to find).

Thanks
 
I disabled the APM features on my RAID array because i had drives timing out. Unsure if its normal or my settings were bad or raid card compatibility thing so i just disabled it altogether because i dont have the time to eff with it.
 
does anyone know the optimal way to build the file system i just finished building my array 64k block10 2tb Hitachi disks in raid6 just wondering what options i should use on building my file system?
 
depends what you plan to use the array for....

what do you mean on building your file system? as in is 64k blocks good or just folder structure?
 
I have a drive with he 3EA firmware. It seems AAM support has been removed with this version of the firmware. I was thinking of downgrading to the 28A firmware, but I can only find the 3EA firmware online. Is that something anyone has tried, and does anyone have a copy of 28A? I contacted Hitachi, but they have not replied yet, and I'm guessing they are unlikely to help me downgrade anyway. I know most people are interested in the performance increase of the 3EA firmware, but this particular drive is in a bedroom, and I rather have silence. Does anyone know why AAM was removed in the first place?
 
For anyone that's curious, I'm using 6 of these in a QNAP TS-659 Pro with no problems so far whatsoever.
 
nitrobass24 said:
I disabled the APM features on my RAID array because i had drives timing out. Unsure if its normal or my settings were bad or raid card compatibility thing so i just disabled it altogether because i dont have the time to eff with it.
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Here's the settings you want to use with Hitachi 2Tb's and an Areca 1680 series. I am familiar with the timeout issue when setting the array to spindown, brought it up to Areca, no dice. They said it wasn't an enterprise class drive and thus Hitachi won't cooperate with troubleshooting issues with a raid card. Whether or not that's true about Hitachi who knows, that was Areca's speculation.

Then I discovered that using the "Low RPM Mode" timeout instead of "Time to spin down HDD" achieves relative equivalence, the drive doesn't spin and it goes in more of a true sleep mode. No more timeouts when waking up the array.

power.jpg
 
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I have completed zero fill and verify tests on each drive TWICE. It took about 11 hours a drive but I am happy to report all 6x 2TB Hitachi 7K2000 passed with flying colors.



Edit: Damn, my account is almost 8 years old-- only 72 posts. Haha, hello everyone!
 
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I just got another one of these for $70 because the place I work at was discontinuing the OEM ones and we had one left. Score! :D
 
By the way, Fry's was selling the new model # (H3IK20003272SP), which from everything I can tell by reading online is still the same drive, but just an FYI for anyone picking one up that the model # and packaging have changed.
 
yes the H3IK20003272SP is physically the exact same drive as the HDS722020ALA330. only diff is a firmware bump and no one knows what exactly changed. i would have no hesitation mixing the new model# drives in with old model# drives in a raid array.
 
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Thanks odditory. I'm planning to add the two new drives to my array in a couple of weeks. Last time I extended my R6 from 7x2TB to 8x2TB it took ~3-4 days (on a Highpoint 4320), so I'm imagining it'll be the same or longer this time as well. I'll post back as info once it's done.
 
Is this still the most recommended drive to use in RAID-array's without having to pay an enterprise class price?

Second minor question, I saw odditory post a beter setup for power management to counter time out errors. Can these drives be spun down? My future array will sit idle for like 99% of the time.
 
Spun down, yes. While I've been a big fan of the Hitachi 2Tb's, to be objective in the question of "best 2Tb for home RAID arrays" i'd say the Samsung F4's definitely warrant a look, at least based on reports from others that they're working fine in raid arrays.
 
Just purchased 3 x 7K2000's and one failed after 6 hours use so has been RMA'd. The other two I quick formatted and copied about 700GB of data to each. Both drives started reporting Raw Read Error Rates in SMART of 99 99 16 and a vairable data value whilst idling. But as soon as I start a surface scan the values reset themselves to default 100 100 16 0.

I spoke to Hitachi who recommended running the drive fitness test which failed both drives with error corruption. Hitachi's original reply to my query recommended doing a full format which I am doing now. I will then retest the drives using their boot CD. I am concerned though that if it is bad sectors on a two brand new drives that it fixes/reallocates then surely by definition these drives are faulty out of the box?
 
deadman3000 said:
Just purchased 3 x 7K2000's and one failed after 6 hours use so has been RMA'd. The other two I quick formatted and copied about 700GB of data to each. Both drives started reporting Raw Read Error Rates in SMART of 99 99 16 and a vairable data value whilst idling. But as soon as I start a surface scan the values reset themselves to default 100 100 16 0.

I spoke to Hitachi who recommended running the drive fitness test which failed both drives with error corruption. Hitachi's original reply to my query recommended doing a full format which I am doing now. I will then retest the drives using their boot CD. I am concerned though that if it is bad sectors on a two brand new drives that it fixes/reallocates then surely by definition these drives are faulty out of the box?
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Where did you buy them from? Just return them. It was probably damaged during shipping or something.
 
scan.co.uk

I have already RMA'd one which was collected today so am waiting on a replacement. I am concerned about my setup though and am going to strip out the splitters from the rails and reorganize. I only say this because the front fan was not spinning on one of the rail splitters and when I swapped it to another rail it worked fine. So I am suspecting there may be a power/cabling issue. I will try and get most of the SATA HDD's onto two rails and an old ide plus DVD-Rom and the fans onto the third rail and see how I fare. The PSU is rated for 580 w I think so should be enough for 6 drives. I am not running anything major like a beefy video card or anything. It's just a filserver with a brand new Asus P5Q Premium motherboard in it.
 
deadman3000 said:
Just purchased 3 x 7K2000's and one failed after 6 hours use so has been RMA'd. The other two I quick formatted and copied about 700GB of data to each. Both drives started reporting Raw Read Error Rates in SMART of 99 99 16 and a vairable data value whilst idling. But as soon as I start a surface scan the values reset themselves to default 100 100 16 0.

I spoke to Hitachi who recommended running the drive fitness test which failed both drives with error corruption. Hitachi's original reply to my query recommended doing a full format which I am doing now. I will then retest the drives using their boot CD. I am concerned though that if it is bad sectors on a two brand new drives that it fixes/reallocates then surely by definition these drives are faulty out of the box?
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Thanks for this information. I noticed this on two that I got recently as well, and the performance on them is a little odd when using hddscan (starts at around 60MBps and then goes up to a normal value). I'll have to run DFT on them and see what it says; if they turn out to be bad, I may try exchanging for the Samsung F4s. The Hitachi drives are nice, but I don't really need 7200rpm for my usage, and they definitely are a little louder than other drives.
 
If you're seeing benchmarks of around 60MBps on your drives then something else is interfering. To be fair I think that individual accounts of getting a bad drive(s) from a retailer or seeing weird benchmark scores don't really represent the general experience with these drives. FWIW, with 96 of these drives between home and work, I still have never had to RMA one, and only 2 out of the 96 developed a single bad sector (which was remapped - not enough of an offense to RMA). Maybe I've been lucky, maybe they're just good drives, probably both.

Your Hitachi 2Tb benchmarks should generally look like this, at least this is what all my drives bench:

Hitachi 2Tb HDS722020ALA330 connected to LSI 9211-4i HBA (no cache):

Hitachi_2Tb_Read.png

Hitachi_2Tb_Write.png


4 x Hitachi 2Tb HDS722020ALA330 connected to LSI 9211-4i HBA (no cache) and configured as software Raid0 in Windows Server 2008 R2 disk management:

Hitachi_2Tb_x_4_Raid0.png
 
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mikesm said:
Frys now has this for $87 AR. Great price...
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In-store only presumably? Seems to be 130$ online with shipping 'unavailable'

I need 8 of these babies but they never hit anything less than about 120$/drive online (that I have seen thus far).
 
odditory said:
If you're seeing benchmarks of around 60MBps on your drives then something else is interfering.
...
Your Hitachi 2Tb benchmarks should generally look like this, at least this is what all my drives bench:

Hitachi 2Tb HDS722020ALA330 connected to LSI 9211-4i HBA (no cache):

Hitachi_2Tb_Read.png

Hitachi_2Tb_Write.png
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Yeah, this is essentially what I see with the three that I have no questions about. (I have 5 of them in total now.) What I see with the one that I'm questioning is a start around 60MBps for maybe 100GB or so (judging by the scale on those graphs), and then it jumps back up to "normal" and seems ok from there.
 
Kritter said:
will the 3ea firmware update work on the 20n drives?
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Hi everyone, this is my first post here so thank you all for all the information.

Yes, I did check this with Hitachi when they sent me f/w 3ea, and although they initially said it will update 28a, when prompted they confirmed it will also update 20n.

Problem is the update software doesn't seem to be working in Win7, so I formatted a boot disk with WinXP (SP3), and although the Hitachi drives are detected by XP, the utility doesn't seem to be able to detect them. This is using an Asus P5E (with all the drivers installed, included Intel chipset), with the drives on the Intel SATA connectors, in IDE (not RAID) mode.

I'll get in touch with Hitachi on Monday if I haven't found a way to get it to work, but happy to hear if someone has a suggestion.
 
I just got 4 X 2TB Hitachi drives (HDS722020ALA330) for RAID 10 setup with my Perc 6/i.

But, I just want to make sure these drives are in good condition before I RAID them. Will Drive Fitness Test from Hitachi be good enough of a test? or is there any other test/burn in I need to do to confirm the drive is good?
 
myrison said:
Thanks odditory. I'm planning to add the two new drives to my array in a couple of weeks. Last time I extended my R6 from 7x2TB to 8x2TB it took ~3-4 days (on a Highpoint 4320), so I'm imagining it'll be the same or longer this time as well. I'll post back as info once it's done.
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For anyone curious, OCE completed today. Expansion from 8x2TB R6 to 10x2TB R6. Source was 80% full when expansion began. Total time: 152 hours (6 days, 8 hours) Performance was very poor at times during the expansion, but it's definitely usable. Most importantly though, the end result is that it again expanded without a hitch, just as expected. 16TB usable up and running as of this morning.
 
I'm looking to get 5 of these and then 3 more down to the line.

Are these hitachi 2TB models still the best for raid setups for their price?

I see alot of uk stores are discontinuing these-are these now end of line?
 
this is getting me worried too. If they are almost gone I have a big problem unless those ecogreen f4 drives are suitable.
 
So there is a new retail package version of the Deskstars. The old red/ black/ white retail packaging is getting hard to find (and becoming higher priced) but the new white/ green retail packaging is cheaper and widely available.

I bought 4x of the newer packaged drives a week or two ago ($87 each).
 
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