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3TB Hitachi reliability?

L

loosh

Weaksauce
Joined
Sep 4, 2010
Messages
85
i see a lot of talk about compatibility with these drives, but nothing solid towards reliability. i'm going to be building a vm node soon and am restraining myself to 1U leaving me 4 3.5" bays. i have a sata backplane and want to get the most storage i can out of it. i am a big fan of the 2TB 5K3000s and am very happy with them. did hitachi hit another home run with these 3TBs? i'm pretty sure this is the one i've heard of going on sale lately. i'd like to use the 3TB drives (assuming they're compatible with whatever raidcard im going to use) but if they are still immature i will simply have to deal with less storage :rolleyes:
 
It is very likely that the annual failure rate (AFR) is between 1% and 10%.
 
For the 3TB 5K3000, nobody really knows long-term reliability yet since it's only been widely available for ~4-6 months. Though once you get beyond 30-45 days of heavy use, to rule out an early failure from shipping damage or a manufacturing defect, most Hitachi hard drives are pretty reliable.

Backblaze recently gave their reliability a thumbs up for use in their 135TB storage pods:
We are constantly looking at new hard drives, evaluating them for reliability and power consumption. The Hitachi 3TB drive (Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000 HDS5C3030ALA630) is our current favorite for both its low power demand and astounding reliability. The Western Digital and Seagate equivalents we tested saw much higher rates of popping out of RAID arrays and drive failure. Even the Western Digital Enterprise Hard Drives had the same high failure rates. The Hitachi drives, on the other hand, perform wonderfully.
Click to expand...

The 3TB variety is somewhat slow though @ ~115-120MB/s peak vs ~120-130MB/s peak (2TB 7K2000) and 140-150MB/s (2TB 5K3000 | 3TB 7K3000) if that matters to you.
 
yeah, i hadn't seen backblaze's latest update to their storage pods and someone enlightened me that they are using them. i had high hopes for hitachi and was pretty confident they did these well too. those bandwidth rates are ok as the vm host is just going to be my own personal node, not a lot of heavy disk io although i will be running them in raid10 (hence the desire for as much space per drive as possible).
 
Whatever you choose to do, I'd usually avoid Newegg for hard drives, since they often only sell bare drives and seem to have a reputation for the worst DOA rates from shipping and handling damage ever. The Hitachi Retail Boxes are much better protected from shipping damage.

The main reason people have been going for the 2TB 5K3000 @ $70-80 is because it's compatible with the 2TB 7K2000 in RAID while being a higher-performing lower-power drive, and the 3TB 5K3000 normally has been going double the price @ $150-160, making it a poor value. Keep your eye on Amazon.com prices for another <$110 sale on the 3TB 5K3000 Retail Box, like happened a few weeks ago. At 1.5x the cost of the 2TB 5K3000, I'd say they are definitely the way to go for a 4-drive array (which is why I bought 4 for RAID-5 during that $106.92 sale a couple weeks ago ;)). You could even buy locally at Fry's, since they now price-match internet.
 
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hmm thanks. i'll keep an eye out. i ordered all the parts for my node already but held out on the drives cause id like to try to get a deal on the 3TBs since i know some have already been offered. no frys here unfortunately.

also a note on compatibility, for the record i will be using an adaptec 2405 card which is compatible with both xen and esxi. according to adaptec, it also supports 3TB drives with a firmware update. reference
 
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I would bet that is UPS's doing and not Newegg. Not saying Newegg didn't have poor interior packing problems in that past, but exterior box damage usually isn't the retailers fault.
 
Newegg usually bubble wraps hard drives I get fairly well. Also when I order in bulk they send the hard drives in one of those multipacks.

I currently own 20x Hitachi 2tb 7200 rpm drives and only had two failures over the last year. I also have 4x 3tb 7200 drives operating with no problem.
 
i would have thought that the 2TB 5k3000 drives would be based on the same platers as the 3TB versions and as they spin at the same speed as the 3TB 5K3000 drive the reliability in theory would be about the same.

i have 8 of the 3TB 7K3000 drives and they seem rock solid in raid.
 
rive22 said:
Newegg shipping.
Click to expand...

Gotta +1 this. Just ordered 3x WD RE4 2TB drives for an array at work and they came in similar packaging (not bubble wrapped in the box, instead in those black plastic inserts that the drives are held in retail packaging. Absolutely no shake or rattle in the box, and the boxes are very thick cardboard. I am MUCH happier with newegg's new HDD packaging then their old bubble wrap method.

I also have to say that any time I have had stuff shipped by UPS it always comes scuffed or otherwise has external damage. For non fragile stuff that's fine and I don't care. Motherboards and hard drives I ALWAYS ship with FedEx as they have much better box handling.
 
the outside of things i get from newegg are usually a little scuffed. the inside of that box didn't even have packing peanuts. there were 5 drives in it, they were in some styrofoam holder wrapped in bubble wrap then thrown in the box and was only surrounded by these really long strips of paper that were kind of crumpled to give some support. no packing peanuts, if i shook the box the drives would had fallen out / banged around the inside
 
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