Best 2 tb drives?

[bacon]

Opinions, data, your favorite psychic readings, links appreciated. Will be in a home server, not sure of the OS yet, but I am really surprised at the customer reviews on so many sites and failure rates.

Want them to be green so speed isn't the goal, but reliability is! Will most likely be up 24/7 and running bittorrent protocol for all these linux iso's I host.

Was thinking about 4 seagate ST32000542AS. I have one, no issues so far, its just been a backup only drive, but daum so many people claiming dead drives after weeks or months. Really want to avoid the $300 price of the RE WD drives even thou I know they would most certainly be the best.

 

[jordan12]

I have several of the green WD 2 Tb drives. I run nothing else but them. And no issues. Run great. Work well, and I believe that these are bvest to get.

The model I have are the WD20EADS

 

[Dad_of_Three]

As for the WD Greens.........
Be careful as if this is the route you decide to go.....the WD20EARS-###### models do not align correctly for WHS without doing a special format alignment due to their 4kb cluster size. If you do not align corectly they can cause very slow performance problems or data corruption at the worst. Don't get me wrong, they are good drives, but do require extra preparation for WHS or Win XP.

If you can find the WD20EADS-###### models, they are best for WHS.

 

[bexamous]

Data corruption? How?

BTW 4K clusters, if anything, reduce likelihood of data corruption as they have better ECC protection.

 

[bexamous]

Oh yeah for OP question: WD GP drives and Hitatchi are 'the best'.

Low power = GP
Low noise = GP
Low cost = Hitatchi
High performance = Hitatchi
Good compatibility with hardware raid controllers = Hitatchi
Reliable = Both


As for WD's EADS vs EARS:
EADS = just works
EADS = requires special formating, has larger cache

 

[Neb]

As for the WD Greens.........
Be careful as if this is the route you decide to go.....the WD20EARS-###### models do not align correctly for WHS without doing a special format alignment due to their 4kb cluster size. If you do not align corectly they can cause very slow performance problems or data corruption at the worst. Don't get me wrong, they are good drives, but do require extra preparation for WHS or Win XP.

If you can find the WD20EADS-###### models, they are best for WHS.

As an alternative you can set a jumper to align the clusters. I'm still not convinced that not properly aligning the drive will cause data corruption; though I can see it happening in a worst case scenario I think it's much more likely to only cause poor performance. For my WHS I just put the jumper on it and it works fine.

As for WD's EADS vs EARS:
EADS = just works
EADS = requires special formating, has larger cache

Say wha?

 

[bacon]

Data corruption? How?

BTW 4K clusters, if anything, reduce likelihood of data corruption as they have better ECC protection.

Not by what I have read about WHS I am afraid, and I assume the same would be for XP and server 03 as well. I am gonna be testing WHS2 (built off 08 r2) which should be in RC next month, and from the leaked builds it looks to be a great media server/htpc platform.

Thanks for the input so far guys.

As an alternative you can set a jumper to align the clusters. I'm still not convinced that not properly aligning the drive will cause data corruption; though I can see it happening in a worst case scenario I think it's much more likely to only cause poor performance. For my WHS I just put the jumper on it and it works fine.

Hopefully this won't be an issue with whs2.

 

[Butcher9_9]

I have 4 X Samsung f3 greens and they seem to be running fine in raid 5 on my 31605

they are pretty cheap too

 

[lizardking009]

As for the WD Greens.........
Be careful as if this is the route you decide to go.....the WD20EARS-###### models do not align correctly for WHS without doing a special format alignment due to their 4kb cluster size. If you do not align corectly they can cause very slow performance problems or data corruption at the worst. Don't get me wrong, they are good drives, but do require extra preparation for WHS or Win XP.

If you can find the WD20EADS-###### models, they are best for WHS.

Not aligning the 4K drives is the same as not aligning a RAID array - bad performance. Will it cause corruption? No.