Any compatibility sheets you see from a drive manufacturer about a particular motherboard/hba means they connected a drive and were able to see it, format it and put a filesystem on it. That is it. What I was pointing out above is that you will only ever have guaranteed end to end RAID support when you purchase vendors enterprise servers, hba's, drives and enclosures. You are only ever guaranteed to get back the exact model and version of drive if you purchase that vendors drive for that particular model server. While some drives work better for consumer and prosumer arrays, there is no guarantee. Even if the Model X drive v1 that ships today is on the RAID vendors compatibility list, there is no guarantee the Model X drive 1.1 that starts shipping next month will also be. That is one of the things that buying enterprise hardware gets you. Yeah it costs more, but nothing in life is free.
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Hitachi 2TB Harddrive Owner's Thread
- Thread starter odditory
- Start date
Come to think of it there may actually be one way to claim that functionality has been removed from WDC desktop drives that existed in Hitachi drives which could necessitate that a RMA replacement occur with a Hitachi drive or WDC enterprise counterpart.
A few years ago (around 2009) WDC intentionally disabled ERC reporting on desktop drives breaking compatibility with ATA-8 specification. If they are still disabling ERC reporting on desktop drives you could argue this point.
http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~greg/projects/erc/
http://forums.storagereview.com/index.php/topic/28333-tler-cctl/
A few years ago (around 2009) WDC intentionally disabled ERC reporting on desktop drives breaking compatibility with ATA-8 specification. If they are still disabling ERC reporting on desktop drives you could argue this point.
http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~greg/projects/erc/
http://forums.storagereview.com/index.php/topic/28333-tler-cctl/
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I understand your point and don't disagree with it at all.
Yes and then there are considerations that occur when a drive is EOL and the manufacturer no longer has backstock of a particular P/N. (you already mentioned this point too). A manufacturer may not even have sufficient quantity of enterprise drives on hand, but they will upgrade you if the drives sold promised particular functionality.
That is not true. There is no parity computation in R1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID It is a mirrored set and on rebuild the computer decides which available drive in the mirror set is the master and remirror the other (or new) drive if the mirror is broken. In all honesty, they don't care if your array degrades or the drive drops out properly. If the mirror breaks, the RAID (as per the RAID controller manufacturers claim) will fix it. That is their position. If it the second drive dies or something goes wrong, you should go to your backup. If you don't have a backup they will be glad to sell you data recovery for $1500. I know what you think it SHOULD do and I agree. If you want something that is "more full featured" for RAID arrays than the "basic RAID compatible drive" and something that will give you fewer questions about how it will act in any given circumstance, buy their "prosumer" (RE) or "enterprise" drive. I have had the same discussions in the past with Seagate and WDC. They don't care. They have more and better lawyers than you do. Maybe they will throw a better drive at someone who bitches loud enough and long enough, but they truly don't care. Their answer will always be YOU bought the wrong drive for the job.
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I'm aware, it was a typo.
The problem is consumer products shouldn't randomly drop out of RAID 1 if they're listed for RAID use. This was happening with Seagate drives and both of us will probably agree it shouldn't happen.
I'm aware of this as well even though really the difference in consumer and enterprise products usually is just firmware.
Also aware of this and the arguments I've gone through with support. Consumer drives shouldn't be listed for RAID use unless they are able to function flawlessly or unless the manufacturer specifically states which RAID level is to be used. You can argue the OEM's position which I understand, but my position is an OEM's marketing dept shouldn't advertise features or functionality which the end product doesn't contain. Sometimes you can successfully defend your position and get drives replaced if you escalate to the right people, other times you'll end up stuck with what you can get.
Guys, are the 5K3000 being completely driven out of town? This BLOWS.
Are there any similar drives out there not named WD Green or Barracuda?!
Yes 5K3000 supply is mostly gone. Last I inquired about a week ago Ingram Micro and AVN may still have some quantity but it is limited and you'll need a business account to buy from them. Retailers are out of stock and won't be re-supplied (Newegg, Amazon, Tiger Direct, etc all stopped replenishment of 5K3000 drives over the past month if not longer).
It ends up that the drive vendor will always blame the controller vendor, and vice versa. Its not that I am arguing for the position of the drive vendor, you are preaching to the choir here. I am not saying that the marketing department should advertise what they do either. What I am telling you is how things really are, right or wrong. Like I said, they have more and better lawyers. If you can deal with the lack of guarantees and possible unpredictability, then by all means buy consumer equipment. If you want more of a guarantee and piece of mind then buy the enterprise equipment. As to the only difference being the firmware, sometimes that is true and sometimes not. But just a firmware difference (or a single blown fuse in a controller) can be the difference between a $200 part and a $10,000 part. Look at the Nvidia Consumer and Pro cards, sometimes just a different BIOS or a different binning can up the cost 10x.
Yes sometimes there are minor internal differences in components but with mechanical platter based storage most components tend to be the same. As you're aware features which enable RAID compatibility like ERC timeouts are the result of software, not hardware.
I think you're probably already aware of this, but if not it's worth mentioning anyways. WDC is notorious for making hardware changes in their desktop products and not differentiating changes with new models or P/N. Even within a particular model WDC has removed features or functionality (this happened back in 2009, when new drives in the WD15EADS model line stopped responding to the WDTLER Tool. ) .The EARS successor to EADS continued this trend by not responding to WDTLER. WDC released RE4 firmware update a few years ago, and someone was able to flash WD20EADS drives with this firmware and gain the full use of RE4 firmware features. It might be possible to flash EARS drives with 04.05G05 RE4 firmware, but I can't comment personally on whether or not this is possible.
http://kb.lsi.com/KnowledgebaseArticle15592.aspx?Keywords=WD+RE4
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With the proper byte check hex edits, it is often possible to cross flash drives if you know exactly what to change. Unfortunately, you do so at your own peril and there are often HUGE gotchas that will come back and bite you down the line (I have personal experience with this from way back when.) As to feature changes within same model revisions, it has even been worse in the past. There was a short time with Seagate that one factory had one version of the firmware and another factory had another version (which enabled different features, but had the exact same firmware version). This was an enterprise product which actually made it easier to trace and get fixed, because they will actually kick something like this up to engineering for review with even a single reproducible instance. With the consumer drives, like the 7200.11 fiasco it was hundreds and thousands of complaints before they actually kicked the problems upstairs.
Sgt_Strider
Gawd
- Joined
- Oct 29, 2003
- Messages
- 945
That's a good question and I would like to know too. It's going to be difficult for him to buy replacement drives going forward.
I am lucky, I have 2 new extras at home sitting on the shelf. We also have 100+ in arrays at the office. Even if I didn't have the drives available, I could always buy 1 or 2 drives used or otherwise if I didn't have a choice. I generally don't expand single arrays in RAID6 past 14 drives including spares, so I have no problem here. I also have complete backups to LTO5 and the most important 20TB of my primary array is synced on another box sitting next to my workstation. When I replace this array in about 18 months, I will most likely build a new workstation with 7K4000 4TBs (a little more heat) or even 5TB or 6TB drives based on availability, what looks most compatible and my storage needs at the time. I will then take my existing workstation box and retask it as my Backup/File/VMServer and then part out the current Backup/File/VMServer. I will have to see what looks good when I am ready, and what kind of coin I have at the time.
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Now I'm going to hate WD so much that I may be forced to reconsider Seagate Barracuda drives. I've stayed away from them completely the last few generations, because of all the negative reports on NewEgg.
There is a cardinal rule of business that WD seems to want to challenge. You don't piss off your loyal customers. In this case, the "loyal customers" have been happy with Hitachi Deskstar drives.
So if this proceeds, then WD management is going to have a lot of explaining to do to their shareholders about how they wasted so much money on the Hitachi acquistion.
Hi, a bystander on this thread, I do not have preference currently for any brand, but the reality of hard disk products today is, "Warranty duration"
1. For entry level consumer drives, many are already down to one or two-year warranty.
2. I was researching 2TB drive to purchase these few days so came across the warranty duration issue earlier. I think WD has the two-year scenario. More expensive models are longer. Most inexpensive Seagate consumer models are down to one-year warranty.
3. Anyhow, I am not 100% sure, please double-check.
Cheers
Nevermind... found this:
http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product...d-drive-stbd3000100-stbd3000100/10182911.aspx
THANK YOU!
Will look into this for sure.
http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product...d-drive-stbd3000100-stbd3000100/10182911.aspx
THANK YOU!
Will look into this for sure.
The cardinal rule of business is to make money. If you can take out one of your competitors, and gain an extra 30% manufacturing space for your own drives that is a good thing if you can do it for the right price. As to pissing off your customers, they don't give a shit. If you want a drive that is generally stable in an enterprise environment (Large arrays) buy an enterprise drive. That's their position, and they have no problems pushing people there. We here on this forum (and other forums like this) are not the normal end users, and they couldn't care less.
Only some Seagate enterprise drives have 5 year warranties anymore. Their retail-boxed consumer models have between 1 and 3 years (almost all the internal consumer drives, retail or not are just 1 year), depending on model. Also, good luck finding out what the real warranties are on Seagates site unless you have the actual drive serial number in advance.
http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/17/2641569/seagate-wd-hdd-one-year-warranty-reduction-2012
Definitely not. Best Buy will also find a way to weasel out with their TOS that say everything is subject to change on their site and they are not responsible for mistypes. Seagate will also trell you it is your responsibility to check the warranty term by serial number the day you take possession of the drive.
Their Enterprise drives (Constellation ES.2, Cheetah and Saavio) have some models that have 3 and some that have 5 year warranties. For example, the Seagate barracuda ST3000DM001 (1 year warranty) can be had for ~170. The equivalent 3TB SATA in the constellation es line (5 year warranty) is about 350. Is double the price for your storage for a much longer warranty and the enterprise RAID stability worth it to you? Only you can make that decision.
Want even more ambigious news? Don't use google to search for Seagate warranty info. For example, google points to http://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/desktop-hard-drives/barracuda-xt/ which says 5 year warranty for the Barracuda XT (which they aren't pushing anymore). That is an old page which is not linked to by Seagates current pages from their home page. They just didn't delete the old ones. It only has a 1 year warranty now. More info here http://www.tweaktown.com/news/21940...arranty_cuts_goes_one_step_further/index.html
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If they say something that doesn't jive with what you read elsewhere, get someone to sign a written statement that Best Buy will honor the length of warranty that you are being quoted. Otherwise it never happened (and sometimes even if it does happen, they will tell you salesman xyz had no authorization to sign that.
Just to confirm.
Best Buy pulled up the box of the 3TB; 5 year limited warranty. Confirmed.
I asked to double-check and I asked to speak with a supervisor in computers.
$179.99 for a 3TB Baracudda with a 5 year warranty!
This is AWESOME.
EDIT: I agree with that... before I buy 12 of these I'll definitely have to get more confirmation and authetification.
Best Buy pulled up the box of the 3TB; 5 year limited warranty. Confirmed.
I asked to double-check and I asked to speak with a supervisor in computers.
$179.99 for a 3TB Baracudda with a 5 year warranty!
This is AWESOME.
EDIT: I agree with that... before I buy 12 of these I'll definitely have to get more confirmation and authetification.
The only problem with that is the drive/box could have been manufactured a year ago depending on their stock rotation. Just because it says 5 on the box doesn't mean you get 5. Buried in the EULA/TOS that by pluggin the drive in you agree to is some legalese to that point. Ask the guy at BB for the serial number of the drive. Plug the model and serial into the seagate warranty check. That will conclusively say what you get. Read the changes (5 to 1 for example for barracuda) at www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/16/seagate_cutting_warranties/
And they will tell you that unless you purchased a best buy extension (or are outside their 10-14 day return window), that they do not warranty the drives, only the original manufacturer (Seagate) does. And Seagate will tell you that you can read their warranty statement here http://www.seagate.com/support/warranty-and-returns/limited-consumer-warranty/ and that you should have checked their online system for the warranty length when you got the drive and it is now too late. I know people who got screwed by the 5 to 1 year haircut (they bought drives made in mid-2010 in Feb 2011) and they were told the exact same thing.
And here is one more bit of bad news. Sometimes 1 drive (Same manufacturing date, lot, warehouse) still says 5 years and then the next drive just says 1. Seagates warranty system can also be all over the place, showing that drives you just bought are already out of warranty (mostly because they actually base the warranty by manufacture date and they glean from that an anticipated sale date) The final determination will be your date of purchase and the Seagate TOS at that point. If there is any disagreement they will demand to see the original sales receipt and will base all decisions off that. The best way to make sure is check the Serial against their system and that will seal the deal.
Here is another example, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...2148844&AID=10440897&PID=1796839&SID=19962422 a 3TB Seagate Barracuda from newegg. They show 1 year on the warranty.
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I can't get through now... convenient.
Honestly, I cannot see any company not honouring what is written on a box. Not only can I not see a company honouring it, the avenues a consumer has either with BBB or some sort of consumer protection act would be unending, I would imagine... If I have a box that explictly states "5 year warranty" and two parties saying otherwise... I just cannot see the just in that.
Reading Seagate's warranty page I see no indication that they wouldn't honour it...
http://www.seagate.com/support/warranty-and-returns/limited-consumer-warranty/
Where have you heard of people's warranties not being honoured? I see a few offshoots of reports but I don't see a huge outcry. BB have certainly restocked these items since Seagate has revised their warranty durations, so it's not like it's old boxes representing void warranties...
Honestly, I cannot see any company not honouring what is written on a box. Not only can I not see a company honouring it, the avenues a consumer has either with BBB or some sort of consumer protection act would be unending, I would imagine... If I have a box that explictly states "5 year warranty" and two parties saying otherwise... I just cannot see the just in that.
Reading Seagate's warranty page I see no indication that they wouldn't honour it...
http://www.seagate.com/support/warranty-and-returns/limited-consumer-warranty/
Where have you heard of people's warranties not being honoured? I see a few offshoots of reports but I don't see a huge outcry. BB have certainly restocked these items since Seagate has revised their warranty durations, so it's not like it's old boxes representing void warranties...
This is why the legalese includes "subject to change without notice" in the EULA you tacitly agree to by opening and installing the drive. As to who i know that got caught by the change, I know 5 people personally who it has happened to. Seagate requested their original sale receipts and then denied the claims based on the date of purchase and Seagates warranty in force at the time.
That is an OEM drive though! The ones from Best Buy are retail...
Also... are you in America?
Yes. As I understand it the EU requires 2 years so again, whatever warranty is in effect as per Seagate is what you are left with.
roach9,
You're welcome; and thank you for proving my point.
In case anyone thinks that is a Canuck-only deal, the 2TB version of that (retail) product STBD2000101 is in U.S. BestBuy's with 5 year warranty. And, this is not just old stock left over. The drives inside are the ST2000DM001 (the newest/fastest model), with manufacturing dates of March/April 2012. Seagate's warranty checker shows April-May 2017.
In addition to the screws (but not the screwing), you get a Sata (data) cable and a Molex-Sata power adapter/cable.
You're welcome; and thank you for proving my point.
In case anyone thinks that is a Canuck-only deal, the 2TB version of that (retail) product STBD2000101 is in U.S. BestBuy's with 5 year warranty. And, this is not just old stock left over. The drives inside are the ST2000DM001 (the newest/fastest model), with manufacturing dates of March/April 2012. Seagate's warranty checker shows April-May 2017.
In addition to the screws (but not the screwing
), you get a Sata (data) cable and a Molex-Sata power adapter/cable.All this is customer-hostile. In contrast, I have had to RMA two Hitachi laptop drives at different times. No BS, just fill out the web form, get the RMA, send in the old drive, and then wait for the UPS truck to deliver the replacement.
I used to be a Seagate-only guy, for years and years, until either the .10 or .11 generation of Barracudas, when I started to read all these negative reviews on NewEgg. Then I switched over to Hitachi, and have been happy ever since. But now?