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Need more storage? TechARP has just published a review of the Western Digital Red 3TB hard drive that will definitely be of interest.
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Western Digital Red 3TB HDD
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At least they (TechARP) show a picture of the drive they are reviewing like they might actually have a 3TB drive for the testing...unlike that garbage review of the 4TB drive posted a few days ago. (Come on, shopped Sandra results and picture of the 2TB drive from techware labs review of a 4TB drive?)
Some interesting facts(?) from the review:
1) Hard drives that are not properly balanced may cause excessive vibration and noise in a multidrive system, reduce the hard drive life span, and degrade the performance over time.
What does "balanced" mean? Is this arguing for drives to always be horizontal? Or is it merely referring to it being in an unstable position?
2) Breather holes allow condensation inside the hard drive to escape. They also equalize the hard drive's internal pressure with the ambient air pressure. The hard disk drive needs them to function properly, so please make sure you do not occlude the holes!
Wouldn't they be occluded in most scenarios? Not the holes themselves, but the indented area surrounding them which encompasses the holes, nearly amounting to the same thing. Any time you place the drive horizontally on a flat surface, you'd seemingly be sealing off this pocket of air.
1) Hard drives that are not properly balanced may cause excessive vibration and noise in a multidrive system, reduce the hard drive life span, and degrade the performance over time.
What does "balanced" mean? Is this arguing for drives to always be horizontal? Or is it merely referring to it being in an unstable position?
2) Breather holes allow condensation inside the hard drive to escape. They also equalize the hard drive's internal pressure with the ambient air pressure. The hard disk drive needs them to function properly, so please make sure you do not occlude the holes!
Wouldn't they be occluded in most scenarios? Not the holes themselves, but the indented area surrounding them which encompasses the holes, nearly amounting to the same thing. Any time you place the drive horizontally on a flat surface, you'd seemingly be sealing off this pocket of air.
1. Balanced like your cars tires. IE they vibrate less internally. Nothing to do with your mounting but they should always be vertical or horrizonal to reduce stress. Mountain on an odd angle would be bad. Never seen a case where this is a problem.
2. Almost any case mounting bracket would leave some air space. Placing them flat on a table, making a custom bracket with no space or a really bad case where the drives are pressed together would be bad.
2. Almost any case mounting bracket would leave some air space. Placing them flat on a table, making a custom bracket with no space or a really bad case where the drives are pressed together would be bad.
1) No. "Balanced" means the rotating assembly itself. The motor/bearing/platter may not be in perfect balance introducing vibration to that drive, AND to the chassis which may combine with vibration from other hard disks in your drive rack to cause more vibration wear than should ideally happen.
2) Not sure what you mean. This warning has been on every hard disk pretty much forever. No they would not be blocked in almost any normal mounting circumstance. You just have to allow the holes to be exposed to regular atmosphere and pressure. Orientation doesn't matter. Pretty much the only way to get into trouble is to tape them shut or to take your hard disk on an aircraft over 10k feet with no pressurization of the cabin.
Why were they only testing WD drives. I was hoping they'd put in a ST3000DM001 in there. I run four of those in RAID10, have been for about a year now. As far as I know, they are the fastest 3.5 drives around in transfer rates outside of enteprise stuff. I use them for video editing so It's nice to push around uncompressed RGB24 1080p60.
If these WD's did close or better, I might move to those on my next upgrade.
If these WD's did close or better, I might move to those on my next upgrade.
omniscence
[H]ard|Gawd
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They are not better. They consume less power and produce less heat, have worse transfer rates and comparable read access times. If you care for transfer rates the most (i.e. video editing), the Seagates are the ones to get.
I combined a ST3000DM001 with a 64GB caching SSD to make up for the access times and I'm pleased with the overall performance.
I combined a ST3000DM001 with a 64GB caching SSD to make up for the access times and I'm pleased with the overall performance.
D-OveRMinD
Weaksauce
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I have 4 of these 3TB Reds in a RAID 5 QNAP TS-469-Pro, and they easily saturate line speed. They are meant for NAS enclosures, so top SATA speeds aren't really the issue, since you will only ever get ~120MB/s line speed on gigabit enclosures.
The BIGGEST thing with these drives, is that they are super cheap, are special made for NAS enclosures (anti-vibration and heat handling when mixed with several other drives in close proximity, etc), and have a 5 YEAR WARRANTY. NAS enclosures are meant to be left on 24/7, and generally handle very important data, so a warranty of this nature is almost a requirement.
These are the reasons I decided to go with these drives, and have not regretted it.
The BIGGEST thing with these drives, is that they are super cheap, are special made for NAS enclosures (anti-vibration and heat handling when mixed with several other drives in close proximity, etc), and have a 5 YEAR WARRANTY. NAS enclosures are meant to be left on 24/7, and generally handle very important data, so a warranty of this nature is almost a requirement.
These are the reasons I decided to go with these drives, and have not regretted it.
Even that's debatable. 3 platters in ST3000DM001, 5 platters in 3TB WD RED. More heads = more friction, more platters = more weight for the motor to push = more heat. Seagate's reasoning for not producing a "5x00 RPM" line was that the lower heat and power draw with 1TB platters made the margin between 7200RPM and 5900RPM practically insignificant. Confirmed it in my testing ST3000DM001 vs 5-platter 3TB Hitachi coolspin, idle temp, running temp and power draw were within 3-5% of one another.
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According to the review, the one they had was a 3 platter design, is WD releasing different platter designs for the 3TB drives as well?
"According to the review" doesn't mean much since a tech blog copy-pasting a spec sheet from WDC isn't providing much insight into the "situation on the ground", where there are complaints from people ending up with Reds that don't appear 1TB/platter - the tip-off being that some drives are producing a lower beginning sequential throughput number on benchmarks (due to platters with lower density).
Whether that means WD is playing games with 1TB and/or 2TB models only and not the 3TB remains to be determined, but if they're doing it with one then I wouldn't assume they aren't doing it with others and thus people should test every drive when receiving before putting into production - making sure the performance profile matches up with numbers you see posted online and in reviews.
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1704476&page=26
Whether that means WD is playing games with 1TB and/or 2TB models only and not the 3TB remains to be determined, but if they're doing it with one then I wouldn't assume they aren't doing it with others and thus people should test every drive when receiving before putting into production - making sure the performance profile matches up with numbers you see posted online and in reviews.
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1704476&page=26
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omniscence
[H]ard|Gawd
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Judging from the harddrive case they are not 5 platter drives. I would also rule out 4 platters, unless they significantly reduced the head height. The 4TB RE drives are 5 platter models I think.
EDIT: I agree on you stance towards the platter lottery. If they start the same game with the Reds like they did with the Greens I will stop buying them. That said, the Seagate 2TB models also exist in 2 and 3 platter variants with the same type number as far as I know.
EDIT2: Okay, it seems that they already started. Any brand left? Can you be safe as long as you buy only the largest model?
EDIT: I agree on you stance towards the platter lottery. If they start the same game with the Reds like they did with the Greens I will stop buying them. That said, the Seagate 2TB models also exist in 2 and 3 platter variants with the same type number as far as I know.
EDIT2: Okay, it seems that they already started. Any brand left? Can you be safe as long as you buy only the largest model?
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M
mls1995
Guest
I have 4 Red 3 TB drives. Mine are in an HTPC. I freaking love them!!!!!
Yeah I suspect pretty much every 4TB WDC (Black, Red, RE) is 5-platters, based on Hitachi design if not Hitachi platters/hardware through-and-through.
I bought 2 Seagate 3tb hard drives up here in Canada over boxing week.
It ended up costing me $250 compared to what WD would've costed to get 6tb of storage capacity ($400-$500)
I love WD and all, but until they stop gouging and gimping their hard drives I'm not buying any of them.
I'd rather go get an ocz colossus
It ended up costing me $250 compared to what WD would've costed to get 6tb of storage capacity ($400-$500)
I love WD and all, but until they stop gouging and gimping their hard drives I'm not buying any of them.
I'd rather go get an ocz colossus
That's why I was asking if it was confirmed that they were doing the same with the 3TB drives, the one I have appears to have 1 TB platters according to the HD Tune. The way you wrote it, it was as if it had been confirmed they were using a 5 platter design for them as well. Has anyone confirmed they have a 5 platter 3TB red?
$400-500!?! Huh?
From NCIX.com, you can get 3TB WD Greens for $140 each currently. 3TB Reds for $150 from their outlet store DirectCanada.com. Or less from other Canadian places. Sounds like you needed to shop around a bit.
Looks like you need to read.
3TB reds are not comparable to the seagates. If I want the same specs I have to get either the Blacks or the REs. Ncix.com? Great but I live in Canada what is the american website going to do for me??
3tb reds are on "sale" for $150 @ ncix.ca regular msrp is $170
Now think about how much a black will cost.
ncix.com/ncix.ca is the Canadian site, the US site is us.ncix.com.
Looks like the same on that end
.You didn't specify what Seagates you bought other than "3TB". Nor did you say what models you were comparing in 3TB sizes.
Looking it up now myself (yay for wasted time!), seems that yep, Barracudas in 3TB sizing only come in 7200RPM spindle speed (model 7200.14) vs 5xxx for the Reds. And Blacks don't come in 3TB size. Oh well. The Reds, though, have a 3 year warranty vs 1(!) on the Barracudas (5 year on the Blacks), an actual stated MTBF, 24/7 RAID usage design and so on. Guess what it means by "not comparable" depends on exactly what you want to look at.
You hit ncix.com from Canada, you get the Canadian page. Quibbling FTL. I do agree, though, that a cheap 7200rpm spindle speed 3TB drive from WD in the same class as the Barracuda (a Blue?) would help with overall HD pricing. And that Toshiba (most out of stock at newegg.ca, but in stock at ncix) and Hitachi (though they are now owned by WD) up in Canada need somewhat better retail hard drive distribution to assist with pricing competition. Good luck.
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Youre telling someone that they need to read and you dont even know that NCIX is Canadian? Pot yelling racial insults at the kettle much?