Are consumer drives bad for hardware raid?

RAID: redundant array of independent disks, originally redundant array of inexpensive disks

It is hard to make a claim that enterprise level drives are inexpensive. I believe that Google uses consumer grade hard drives in its databases. In a sense those databases are RAIDs.

While there might be some need for enterprise level drives, it is doubtful that we all do.
 
It's my opinion that most home users should not be using raid levels other than raid 1 or 10 using motherboard ports/raid. And even with these RAID levels most would be better served with a real backup.

However for those that have HTPCs its probably better for them to skip RAID altogether and use independent disks for their storage provided their media streaming / HTPC software is smart enough to use independent disks and more than storage folder. I have used my linux based HTPC (mythtv) this way since 2004 although I admit at first I had to use the OS union fs to achieve this. I have been told that there are ways to achieve this on windows as well.
 
GeorgeHR said:
RAID: redundant array of independent disks, originally redundant array of inexpensive disks
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This term is no longer used within the industry and hasn't been in use for almost 20 years.

While there might be some need for enterprise level drives, it is doubtful that we all do.
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Depends on the application they are needed for and how critical the data being stored is.
 
drescherjm said:
However for those that have HTPCs its probably better for them to skip RAID altogether and use independent disks for their storage provided their media streaming / HTPC software is smart enough to use independent disks and more than storage folder. I have used my linux based HTPC (mythtv) this way since 2004 although I admit at first I had to use the OS union fs to achieve this. I have been told that there are ways to achieve this on windows as well.
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Ugh. I have 10 2TB disks and I've had 2 of them die. That would have been 20% of my data lost. Sure, some stuff I could probably re-create (dvd's I ripped, etc.) - but recorded TV shows, documents, backups for the computers, etc. would all be gone.

And even for the stuff I could re-create - well, I don't want to spend my time doing that. Sure, RAID isn't a backup - but some people can't realistically backup their stuff (I have about 9TB in crashplan, but even with a 50down/25up connection (which is certainly atypical) it took quite awhile). And even for those that can it's a huge convenience/uptime win.

I also don't want to have to deal with multiple pools - I just want one volume with all the space on it.

I think it *is* reasonably to say that raid-5/single parity setups should seriously be reconsidered with 2TB + disks. But raid-6/raidz2 is very easily obtainable.

Of course if you only need 4TB of data then 2 4TB drives in a raid 1 mirror is by far the best solution, but I would say once you get past 4 drives or so a dual parity setup becomes much more attractive.
 
Red Falcon said:
This term is no longer used within the industry and hasn't been in use for almost 20 years.


Depends on the application they are needed for and how critical the data being stored is.
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Economics is certainly the driving factor for most of us. Since consumer grade drives cost much less than enterprise grade, enterprise grade is not a reasonable choice for most of us.

I would say it is not a reasonable choice for any of, but I don't have the time to defend that position.
 
GeorgeHR said:
Economics is certainly the driving factor for most of us. Since consumer grade drives cost much less than enterprise grade, enterprise grade is not a reasonable choice for most of us.

I would say it is not a reasonable choice for any of, but I don't have the time to defend that position.
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You don't think enterprise-grade drives are a reasonable choice for anything?
Why would you say such a thing?

I would never even touch a consumer-grade/desktop-class drive in an enterprise situation, especially when the drives have 24/7 usage, which desktop-class drives cannot do successfully with high usage.
Outside of enterprise situations, it would depend on the needs of the user and how critical the data is.

If the data were mission critical, using nearline-class or low-cost-server-class would be needed at a minimum.


But hey, if you want to personally use desktop-class drives for such information, be my guest. ;)
 
The "deskstar" Hitachi drives work well in just about every RAID configuration I can find. Hitachi ultrastar drives feel... heavier? I feel heavier means higher quality but I don't have a reason why.
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Read up on RAFF and you will see why nearline-class and online-class HDDs are heavier than desktop-class drives, not to mention a few other features.
 
Red Falcon said:
That's crap. Enterprise-grade drives, especially in the 15K RPM, online-server-class, are very necessary for reliability and performance
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If i remember well google & friends use consumer drives for their storage farms.
I think we need to make a distinction between "storage" and "entreprise".

Entreprise drives are at least two times more expensive and thats for "basic 3.5 drives".
(HITACHI Ultrastar 2TB 500$ vs HITACHI Deskstar 2TB 200$)

Assuming you make a Mirrored Z2 (aka Raid61) with a 1000$ (24 slot) controller.
Consumer : 9 Drives + 3 hot Spares x 2 + Card => 5800$ Total (14TB Usable)
Entreprise : 9 Drives + 3 hot Spares x 2 + Card => 13000$ Total (14TB Usable)

So for the price of ONE server with mirrored Z2 Entreprise Array you can have TWO servers with mirrored Z2 Entreprise arrays...
This scales even higher as the number of drives increases, hence google's choice making sense.
(Obviously the TCO will not scale that easily but this is just a quick & dirty example).

Now for business critical stuff, there are more issues (rebuild times, availability, I/O perf)...
I would be very surprised if YoutubeFarms do not use consumer drives.
Just as i would be even more surprised if IBM/EMC mainframes used consumer.

But honestly for a "Media Server" you're probably better off just buying Consumer and doing Raid1 than buying Entreprise.
(Thats why Flexraid & Unraid are quite appealing for Home Servers)
 
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^ Depends on the enterprise/consumer situation.
But Google's logic does make sense, but not necessarily for everyone else.
 
Red Falcon said:
You don't think enterprise-grade drives are a reasonable choice for anything?
Why would you say such a thing?

I would never even touch a consumer-grade/desktop-class drive in an enterprise situation, especially when the drives have 24/7 usage, which desktop-class drives cannot do successfully with high usage.
Outside of enterprise situations, it would depend on the needs of the user and how critical the data is.

If the data were mission critical, using nearline-class or low-cost-server-class would be needed at a minimum.


But hey, if you want to personally use desktop-class drives for such information, be my guest. ;)
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I would say it is not a reasonable choice for any one, but I don't have the time to defend that position.
 
I have not had any issues with Green drives on a Raid configuration. I have never had a HDD dropped or anything. The only issue i had was a hard drive failure because of a power loss and the UPS did not work. I think the dropping problem is more of a hardware Raid thing that a software.
 
CubanBlood said:
I have not had any issues with Green drives on a Raid configuration. I have never had a HDD dropped or anything. The only issue i had was a hard drive failure because of a power loss and the UPS did not work. I think the dropping problem is more of a hardware Raid thing that a software.
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You should have specified that you were using software RAID, which Green drives do work perfectly in.

This was a thread about hardware RAID, not software, they are two very different animals.
 
Red Falcon said:
This was a thread about hardware RAID, not software, they are two very different animals.
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While I understand the differences between hardware and software, they are the same animals. Firmware on one is software on the other.

It is a unfortunate that the hardware implementations of RAID do not offer the same options as software RAID.
 
Now you are quibbling about semantics. Yes, firmware is software that runs on the HW raid card. The point was that for your average Joe who is going to use a typical HW raid card, green drives are a bad idea.
 
danswartz said:
Now you are quibbling about semantics. Yes, firmware is software that runs on the HW raid card. The point was that for your average Joe who is going to use a typical HW raid card, green drives are a bad idea.
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It is only a bad idea if the hardware card and hard drives are not compatable. For some combinations they are not compatable. I think most RAID card manufacturers have a list of compatable HDs.

This thread is about consumer hard drives and hardware RAID. Green drives are an important part of that class. I am sure over time that the RAID card makers will resolve the issues. Or they wont.
 
GeorgeHR said:
This thread is about consumer hard drives and hardware RAID. Green drives are an important part of that class. I am sure over time that the RAID card makers will resolve the issues. Or they wont.
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WD Green drives have other issues besides whatever hardware raid incompatabilities there are though.

I have a larger drive ZFS box, and setup one for a friend also. He had 5 2TB Green drives from a previous WHS setup (running ZFS now). So a total of 15 Hitachi 5k3000 drives and 5 WD Green drives between us.

4 of the WD drives have had to be RMA'd, 2 of the Hitachi drives. So 80% of the WD drives, and 13% of the Hitachi drives. This is over a 1-1.5 year period.

Yes, there are other sampling bias issues, small sample set, etc. And it is completely anecdotal. But I am firmly convinced that WD Green drives are just asking for trouble. Not green drives in general, but the WD Green specifically.
 
GeorgeHR said:
It is only a bad idea if the hardware card and hard drives are not compatable. For some combinations they are not compatable. I think most RAID card manufacturers have a list of compatable HDs.

This thread is about consumer hard drives and hardware RAID. Green drives are an important part of that class. I am sure over time that the RAID card makers will resolve the issues. Or they wont.
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I wasn't intending to make assertions about the badness of green drives and HW raid - that was the original poster(s). The point was that since it is apparently not uncommon for the firmware in hw raid controllers to not play well with (some) green drives, there is a basic difference, even though firmware is still software.
 
GeorgeHR said:
It is only a bad idea if the hardware card and hard drives are not compatable. For some combinations they are not compatable. I think most RAID card manufacturers have a list of compatable HDs.
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First of all, why would Green drives not be compatible with RAID? That makes no sense.
All they are is a 5400RPM drive with some added features such as the head parking mechanism, that doesn't mean they "aren't compatible." :rolleyes:

Second of all, you have three primary types of RAID: Fake/mobo/onboard, hardware, and software.

FakeRAID and hardware RAID are very similar in functionality, except FakeRAID's data is processed by the CPU, where as hardware RAID has a dedicated CPU and memory.
Software RAID is managed by a daemon/app within the OS and is not only processed by the CPU, but also manages the RAID arrays very differently than hardware RAID controllers do, even though they are both "run by software" as you say.

Yes, software and hardware RAID are very different animals, completely.
FakeRAID and hardware RAID however, are very similar to one another.

This thread is about consumer hard drives and hardware RAID. Green drives are an important part of that class. I am sure over time that the RAID card makers will resolve the issues. Or they wont.
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The issues will not be resolved, as makers of hardware RAID cards do not support the head parking issues.

But another point, why would someone invest $800 into a hardware RAID card to support cheap 5400RPM Green drives?
That in itself would be a poor decision of the buyer.
 
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The issues will not be resolved, as makers of hardware RAID cards do not support the head parking issues.
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Head parking is not an issue anyway, all you have to do is flash the drive...
(i don't have the link but you can google a post on WD Forums with all the details).

Yes, software and hardware RAID are very different animals, completely.
FakeRAID and hardware RAID however, are very similar to one another.
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Well most of this is due to the extra twists hardware vendors add to their drives or even more cards.
(and example would be the tolerance for read error retry/recovery & delay).

So the answer should be "consumer drives are not ideal for any type of raid, specially hardware raid".

Still taking google as an example, i can see them demanding special firmware from WD/Samsung
to disable some "functions" and using thousands of consumer drives for their data centers.
 
I notice a lot of people in this thread saying that using green drives in RAID is a bad idea but I've had 8x1TB Samsungs in RAID5 on a HighPoint HW RAID card for over 3 years with no issues. It started off as just 4x1TB then I added 2 drives, did online capacity expansion. Then a few years later I added 2 more. All the same model but different revisions. No issues at all. Never had the array freeze, lockup, crash the system or lose a disk due to parking or whatever.

I then added 8x2TB about 1.5 years ago. Also Samsung Eco Greens just like the 1TB disks. Again on another HighPoint RAID card. No issues there either.

So from my experience which in drive years spans almost 5 years of use between both arrays combined (with overlap) I'd say green drives are fine to use, or at-least the Samsung ones are.

Also I just wanted to add to this that when buying disks for your controller if you wan't to be assured of compatibility look at the controllers HD Compatibility list. The lists for my HighPoint cards had over 80 hard disks listed including the Samsungs I purchased and as I just said they work fine.
 
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