2 TB drives for a RAID array

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truffle00

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I'm running a 5 x 750 GB array of Seagates right now on a Dell Perc 5i, but am running out of space. I told myself that I would upgrade when 2 TB drives really started dropping in price, and at the $140 level that we're seeing with holiday sales I'm ready to bite. However, it seems that people are complaining about each kind of drive out there.

WD - Problems with RAID
Seagate - Questions coming from the 1.5 TB series and potentially problems with RAID
Hitachi - Deathstar (I owned two of those, wow, what a pain), but I wouldn't hold that against the company now

So what is actually the safest bet? 5900 vs. 7200 RPM doesn't matter to me because I only need to be able to max out Gb ethernet; in fact, the 5900 RPM drives running cooler would be a good thing. Many people seem to complain about a brand because of reputation, so if I could get opinions from actual owners that would be preferable. Actually, I suppose the real reason I am making this thread is to weed out opinions from what people are actually seeing.

Thanks.
 
WD's problems are more of a TLER issue. If your RAID controller has an option to control how long until the controller drops the drive, there's no issue. Sucks that they disabled the TLER tool...
 
yeah i have 3 RE2 1TB drives that i got at a great deal otherwise they are too expensive
 
I have 5x Hitachi 1TB 32MB 7200RPM drives, along with 6x WD Green 1TB drives in a ZFS RAIDZ2 configuration on FreeBSD. So far, I'm running good.

The Deathstar drives were sold under IBM, until Hitachi bought out that division (if I'm not mistaken). Not sure what changes they have made (if any)
 
I'm so sorry WD disabled TLER utility. I to was hoping to get their 2TB greens.
You mention Seagates 5900.12 problems with raid? What specifically have you heard?
 
I didn't really dig into the complaints. Newegg people are complaining about them clicking then dying. I know Newegg reveiwers might not be the best source but that's an issue that is hard to be user-caused. Wasn't there also some problem with the 7200.11 1.5 TB drives in RAID arrays?

As for the WD, can I still grab the tool online somewhere, or is the softward not compatible with the 2 TB drives?
 
I'm sure most people here could send you a copy. They made it so the tool doesn't work somehow. You could always try though. As long as the drives don't crap out, you should be good.
 
I have a few of the 1.5TB Seagate 7200.11 drives---been running without any problems. The 7200.12 drives should be more than okay. When going with 2TB drives, you may want to consider RAID 6 or a hot spare... Think about the time it will take the controller to replicate 2TB worth of data. Then think about what could happen during that time period.
 
Go for Seagate, yes they had the firmware issue but that is now gone. With Western Digital there is TLER which you now can't disable so you would need to spend a lot more for RE3 drives. I have only been in contact with 1x Hitachi drive and it runs stupidly hot, I would never trust my data with one. So get a Seagate but make sure your card supports it.
 
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