2TB drives for 5805

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MustRotate

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 24, 2007
Messages
227
Hello all,
I bought a 5805 Adaptec controller and now I am looking for 2TB harddrives for my seedbox.
I have heard many good things about the Hitachis, I also own one so this is for now my top candidate.
But what about the other 2TB drives. Which ones could be used in a RAID6 array 24/7:
-WD20EARS 5400/7200rpm
-WD20EADS 5400/7200rpm
-HD203WI 5400rpm
-ST32000542AS 5900rpm
Volkom is using the Seagate with that controller and has no problems. Is someone using the Samsung model? I have 3 HD103UJ running for over 1year 24/7 and they play nice. I am particularly worried about parking head sounds from the low rpm drives when running them 24/7. Also the WD could not be fun to use because of the TLER issue.
 
I have an array of 8 WD 2tb drives (RE4-GP) on an Adaptec 5085 in an external JBOD. Other than having to jumper the drives to 150mb, I haven't had a problem. The newer firmware for the drives supposedly lets them run at 300mb.
 
Thanks for the feedback. One minor disadvantage: the RE4-GP is almost double the price of the Hitachi :( . Is it really worth that much?
 
Absolutely not. Right now *thee* choice for 24x7 RAID6 without wasting money on enterprise drives is Hitachi 2Tb. They've been bulletproof for me, and everyone I've recommended them to. I know because I've tested everything else, and ran into issues with everything else.

There are many threads here that discuss not only the Hitachi 2Tb, but which 2Tb drives people are running in RAID arrays. If you were just going to plug the drive into WHS, then I'd say who cares and go WD or Seagate *if* you could find them for cheaper than Hitachi (unlikely), but for hardware based raid, the choice narrows down to one.
 
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That good, eh?... I'm highly tempted by a drive that works in RAID but is 50% the price of the WD. Have you seen anyone using them on a PERC?
 
So hitachi doesn't have the "TLER" issues on HW controllers like others might develop?

How much is their power consumption?
 
@XS Janus: as far as I know this is the most compatible harddrive in regards of RAID capability with controllers.

Hitachi HDS722020ALA330(2TB) idle 7.5W
WD WD2001FASS(2TB Caviar Black) idle 8.2W
WD WD2003FYYS(2TB RE4 Enterprise) idle 8.1W
Seagate Constellation(2TB ES Enterprise) idle 7W

green drives:
WD WD2002FYPS(2TB RE4-GP Enterprise) idle 3.7W
WD WD20EARS(2TB Caviar Green) idle 3.7W
Seagate ST32000542AS(2TB LP) idle 4.3W
Samsung HD203WI(2TB) idle 5.4W
 
I'll continue to harp on the fact that I find it useless to worry about a few watts difference in power consumption. The whole "green" moniker is pure marketing. The difference between a bunch of drives pulling 7.5W versus 3.7W is trivial - its not going to make any significant real world difference to a power bill - and yet people get amazingly hung up on it, usually without having analyzed the much bigger power offenders in a household.

That aside, the difference becomes moot if you configure a raid array for spindown. Getting a 7200RPM 2Tb is the best of both worlds for me -- high performance when I need it, and spin down after 60 minutes of inactivity. And if I decide to use the drives somewhere outside the raid array some day, like moving a few into a desktop PC, I much rather have a 7200RPM drive instead of a 5400.
 
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But Hitachi has Deskstar and Ultrastar drives.
Ultrastar 2TB uses less power and is "built" for 24/7, BUT costs a fair bit more.
However, if ultrastar is the only one that supports "TLER" like function than using cheap Deskstar could prove just as dangerous as using consumer green drives from WD in HW Raid5/6.
Am I missing something in my logic here?
 
No, they have just worked for some people *so far*. These 2TB drives haven't been on the market very long.
 
You are missing the fact that a lot of WD models(desktop class) are not compatible or have serious issues with a wide variety of controllers.
 
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