Hitachi 2TB Harddrive Owner's Thread

HD32000 = 7K2000 in a retail box (includes SATA cable, mounting screws, and well protected packaging)
 
Alright thanks, looks like I'll be purchasing these drives in the near future for use in a Raid 5 array. I'm dropping Western Digital (was really looking at the Green EADS) because of uncertainty with the TLER.
 
madcoder said:
These are one sale again at Fry's as well as online with Newegg, for those that might have missed it. It's time to load up the 'ol server some more. :D
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FYI...Fry's here will let you buy 4 if you ask nicely (though requires manager approval at the register).

Their 'household' detection is poor...I believe they are only aggregating based on the card you pay with. I was able to purchase 16 using a combination of my Mastercard, my wife's Mastercard (same account), my wifes Amex, and then finally my debit card. The shelf is now BARE...though I still have two more drives hidden in the store that one of my moles will be picking up later today...I hope Fry's restocks before this sale is over...guess I should go and ask for rainchecks now.

I also ordered 5 at Newegg...to get the $20 discount for EACH drive, click on the link posted in HF deals, then increase quantity to five, then click the coupon apply button. NE will only allow one deal and blocks you if you try to reorder (I tried).

I have been amasing these drives over the last couple of months...once the NE order arrives I will have 46 of these drives...which is just what I need to fill one of the two Supermicro SC847 cases I have on order (if they would only ship).

ZFS Monster hungry...need more drives.
 
I bought 4 at Fry's yesterday, no problem. The cashier just had a floor supervisor authorize it first. I am just waiting on 5 more from Fry's and then I'll just stop by to get 3 more, for a total of 12 before the sale is up. That ought to hold lots of raw camera files for a long time. :D
 
Been getting lots of timeout errors all of a sudden. Not sure what the deal is.
Reallocation count is not a problem.
Woulda been fucked if i had raid5.
 
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nitrobass24 said:
Been getting lots of timeout errors all of a sudden. Not sure what the deal is.
Reallocation count is not a problem.
Woulda been fucked if i had raid5.
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First thing that came to my mind was the oldish WD firmware issues with system uptime and the drives needing a complete system power cycle monthly or so, so maybe it's a firmware issue. Or maybe hardware's dieing /shrug
 
well i disabled all the APM options on the Areca and i havent had any errors in about 2 hours. Im hoping that it was just that.
But kinda sucks cause my array sits idle 98% of the time.
 
nitrobass24 said:
well i disabled all the APM options on the Areca and i havent had any errors in about 2 hours. Im hoping that it was just that.
But kinda sucks cause my array sits idle 98% of the time.
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I had the exact same situation happen both on an array of 2TB Hitachi disks and on an array of 750GB Seagate disks. Went away when I disabled all of the power management options. Like you I'm a bit frustrated by this because my arrays won't be used most of the time.
 
nitrobass24 said:
well i disabled all the APM options on the Areca and i havent had any errors in about 2 hours. Im hoping that it was just that.
But kinda sucks cause my array sits idle 98% of the time.
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I'll set the timer lower to check my array when I get home, but I haven't had any issues with my 5805 spinning down 8 of these drives in R6. Maybe it's just an Areca issue.
 
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novadude said:
I'll set the timer lower to check my array when I get home, but I haven't had any issues with my 5805 spinning down 8 of these drives in R6. Maybe it's just an Areca issue.
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I think it is an Areca thing as spinning down the drives in an R5 array on my Adaptec 5405 didn't cause any problems either.
 
packetboy said:
FYI...Fry's here will let you buy 4 if you ask nicely (though requires manager approval at the register).

Their 'household' detection is poor...I believe they are only aggregating based on the card you pay with. I was able to purchase 16 using a combination of my Mastercard, my wife's Mastercard (same account), my wifes Amex, and then finally my debit card. The shelf is now BARE...though I still have two more drives hidden in the store that one of my moles will be picking up later today...I hope Fry's restocks before this sale is over...guess I should go and ask for rainchecks now.

I also ordered 5 at Newegg...to get the $20 discount for EACH drive, click on the link posted in HF deals, then increase quantity to five, then click the coupon apply button. NE will only allow one deal and blocks you if you try to reorder (I tried).

I have been amasing these drives over the last couple of months...once the NE order arrives I will have 46 of these drives...which is just what I need to fill one of the two Supermicro SC847 cases I have on order (if they would only ship).

ZFS Monster hungry...need more drives.
Click to expand...

Frys were being totall sticklers about their 2 disk limit for me. I ended up just saying screw it and I got 20x2 TB disks for $125 a piece (OEM) by getting a quote. I probably should have pushed for $120 a piece though.
 
If I put two of these in RAID 1, would I need to use a dedicated RAID adapter or would software RAID do?
 
nitrobass24 said:
well i disabled all the APM options on the Areca and i havent had any errors in about 2 hours. Im hoping that it was just that.
But kinda sucks cause my array sits idle 98% of the time.
Click to expand...

novadude said:
I'll set the timer lower to check my array when I get home, but I haven't had any issues with my 5805 spinning down 8 of these drives in R6. Maybe it's just an Areca issue.
Click to expand...

GMcDonnell said:
I think it is an Areca thing as spinning down the drives in an R5 array on my Adaptec 5405 didn't cause any problems either.
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I hope its not an Areca thing cuz I'm in process of testing 12 of these drives and I'm about to put them in raid6 on 1280ML. Would be nice to be able to use the APM
 
axan said:
I hope its not an Areca thing cuz I'm in process of testing 12 of these drives and I'm about to put them in raid6 on 1280ML. Would be nice to be able to use the APM
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Well I have six drives in a RAID6, and used the APM features, worked fine. Then I realized I hate waiting for drives to spin up (after a few weeks of using it), and just disabled it.
 
I never enabled it. I probably spend an additional $30 a year just leaving it enabled. that I'm OK with.
 
I have 20 of them on my 1680i and haven't had a single issue in the three months my array has been up, though I have all power saving features turned off.
 
Ruroni said:
Well I have six drives in a RAID6, and used the APM features, worked fine. Then I realized I hate waiting for drives to spin up (after a few weeks of using it), and just disabled it.
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I use spindown on my current seagate drives(15 min idle) and I don't mind waiting for the drives to come online, it only takes like 10 seconds.
 
packetboy said:
FYI...Fry's here will let you buy 4 if you ask nicely (though requires manager approval at the register).

Their 'household' detection is poor...I believe they are only aggregating based on the card you pay with. I was able to purchase 16 using a combination of my Mastercard, my wife's Mastercard (same account), my wifes Amex, and then finally my debit card. The shelf is now BARE...though I still have two more drives hidden in the store that one of my moles will be picking up later today...I hope Fry's restocks before this sale is over...guess I should go and ask for rainchecks now.

I also ordered 5 at Newegg...to get the $20 discount for EACH drive, click on the link posted in HF deals, then increase quantity to five, then click the coupon apply button. NE will only allow one deal and blocks you if you try to reorder (I tried).

I have been amasing these drives over the last couple of months...once the NE order arrives I will have 46 of these drives...which is just what I need to fill one of the two Supermicro SC847 cases I have on order (if they would only ship).

ZFS Monster hungry...need more drives.
Click to expand...

thats actually being greedy.
 
I just picked up 2 of these disks...
Do these stats seem right to you guys? This is for a SINGLE drive with just one 1.81TB partition. I thought the 512k read seemed low...

37839544.jpg



and then here is my other disk
82645778.jpg


Both disks are connected to the same ICH10 SATA controller, JBOD
 
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if anything your other disk seems odly high.

Think about it. The average 12-13ms response HD means it does 70-80 seeks per second. Lets just assume for the sake of argument that its 80. Well if its 80 seeks per second and doing 512 KB reads (lets just assume doing 512 KB reads doesn't take any more time than 4 KB and thus you can do 80 512Kb random reads in a second. Well that would be around 40 megabytes/sec and odds are its gonna be a bit lower than that so somewhere in the 20-30 MB/sec seems normal to me and 50 seems pretty high.
 
hrmm what could cause that disk to be so much faster? Only difference is one was made in november (the slower one) and one in december. The firmware is slightly off according to the label as well.

I just partitioned the disks exactly the same just in case but I got the same results. I also tried them in another machine and same results.
I ran both hitachi utilities in the OP before installing the disks, everything checked out OK (with the quick test)
 
odditory said:
If you haven't yet downloaded the "Hitachi Feature Tool", you may want to. It's a DOS based utility for changing various features of Hitachi drives, things like APM settings, SATA speed (SATA150 / SATA300), etc. It's available on the Hitachi downloads and utilities page here (the page also has tools like the DFT - Drive Fitness Test, etc):

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#FeatureTool

Now I've read reports that HDS722020ALA330 drives manufactured prior to a certain date were set to "SATA 150" from the factory. Among other features, the Hitachi Feature Tool allows you to set the mode to "SATA 300". If you haven't bothered to check your drive for which mode it's set to, it might be a good idea. I'm verifying my drives now because in a raid array I wouldn't want some of them at SATA150 while others are at SATA300.

EDIT: Verified all my drives (manufactured October, November and December 2009) and all were already at SATA 300.
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I just built a ZFS system with these drives, i wasn't aware of this utility.

Is it safe/possible to make changes to drives which are already in use or do you need to do this before yu do anything?

thanks
 
Ok so from what I've googled (the only reviews i could find were in japanese) http://blog.yuhisa.com/archives/571

it seems that my drive with 21.41 512k reads is actually not the norm? and it should be in the ~50 MB/s range.
It is FW 20N vs FW 28A on the disk with higher reads

So a bad drive to be sent back? Or am I missing something here
 
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VulcaN said:
Ok so from what I've googled (the only reviews i could find were in japanese) http://blog.yuhisa.com/archives/571

it seems that my drive with 21.41 512k reads is actually not the norm? and it should be in the ~50 MB/s range.
It is FW 20N vs FW 28A on the disk with higher reads

So a bad drive to be sent back? Or am I missing something here
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I'd send it back. I got 2 DOA with this drive....(it was a really big order though) and newegg was kind enough to next day air me 2 drives.


but before you do that, check the cable and the controller.

A bad cable or controller can EASILY cause the same issue
 
ended up getting another one before i sent the old one back, all is well now. Never had a drive that "kind-of" worked before, it was either DOA or great!
 
nicholasfarmer said:
I saw this performance post about the Hitachi drives:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/2tb-7200rpm_7.html#sect0

Are the 2TB Hitachi drives really the slowest non-green drive?
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Makes sense, the other drives use a 4 platter design, which inherently makes them faster due to bit density.

Although if you read the full article you will notice that the Hitachi excels at multithreaded IO where the most of the others seem to falter.

It is also much cheaper than the alternatives and works with most RAID controllers, where with Seagate and WD you need to use their "Enterprise" Drives which cost nearly 3x as much.
 
Who cares if they are the slowest non-green drive? They are the best non-WD Raid Edition/ Seagate ES drive on the market for raid applications... and are just about the lowest cost 2TB drives around.

The purpose of these Hitachis is not to be the fastest single drive by any means. 3x 2TB WD Blacks are $690. Or you can buy 6+ Hitachi 2TB's. 3x WD Blacks in Raid 5 versus 6x Hitachi's in Raid 6... There's little question which is the capacity/ performance leader.
 
I agree that Hitachi drives are the best storage drives around (in the current market.)
I wouldnt have a home server full of them if I thought otherwise.

I was only interested in comments generated by the article.
Some users in the last 236 posts are using the drives as an OS drive or in a WHS non raid build. No real speed gain without a raid.

Great for bit storage.....
 
Just an FYI, Hitachi does make firmware upgrade tools available via support request if they determine your issues are firmware related or you make a case for it otherwise.

If you believe you are having issues with the older 7K2000 firmware(s) (some of the older firmware do indeed have issues of varying degrees, the worst performer being the initial 20N firmware tested in the Xbit article above), or you just want to sync up all your drives to the same firmware, I would highly recommend considering making the request for a firmware update (latest as of April 2010 is 3EA). Personally, the last thing I would want to do is RMA a drive, just to get an updated firmware on a refurbished drive in return.

Here is a more recent Xbit article which compares the similar 7K1000.C's (the 7K2000's 1TB little brother) older 25C firmware with the newest 3EA firmware. In some benchmarks the difference is quite dramatic.
 
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Never put much stock in the "sky is green" spouting of the original Xbit article anyway - since my experience with many of these drives was opposite to their screwball analyses.
 
Fry's has these on sale again for 119.99 each, limit 2.
Now, the question I have is this. I have a 2T Seagate(ST32000542AS/5400rpm) drive. I'm going to pick up 2 of the Hitachi's for a software raid 5. Can I add the Seagate drive without a problem? I just make sure they area all the same size when I partition/format them right?
 
A pair of these are in my HTPC. One for the content and the second just mirrors the first. I was a tad worried at first (Hitatchi sort of inherited the Deathstars, at least in my mind heh), however I haven't had any issues so far. Great drives in my experience.
 
JeffBlair said:
Fry's has these on sale again for 119.99 each, limit 2.
Now, the question I have is this. I have a 2T Seagate(ST32000542AS/5400rpm) drive. I'm going to pick up 2 of the Hitachi's for a software raid 5. Can I add the Seagate drive without a problem? I just make sure they area all the same size when I partition/format them right?
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When I was originally thinking about setting up my RAID with a mixed set of drives (same size, different manufacturers), I asked the same question you did.

I received a LOT of very strong opinions saying mixing/matching drives was a very bad idea if I valued the integrity of the RAID long-term. I decided it wasn't worth the risk and bought all new Hitachis and sold the other 2TB drives I had. It wasn't hard to sell them, and in the end, the peace of mind was more than worth the small amount of money I lost reselling the existing HDDs. It's up to you of course. :)
 
I have 16 of these now to hook up to my 1680ix-24. I already have 20x2TB WD TLER that have been going strong for almost a year now on the same controller. I have an external SAS JBOD for the 16 Hitachi's. I hope everything plays nicely.

I have run each of the Hitachi's through the advanced test and they're all good. None are making any noises either.

Any tips for the 1680ix config on the drives?

I'm going to make sure all of the drives have the same firmware since mine date back from Dec 2009 to now and I have a couple from earlier in 2009. Does anyone have the 3EA firmware they can send me?


Paul
 
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