Hitachi Ultrastar 7k4000 questions

Rainstar

n00b
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Dec 14, 2011
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New to having anything higher than 2TB

I just purchased 5 of these, WIll be buying more for home server in the future 24/7

What is Raid?
How do I Raid?
My motherboard has only 6 slots for Sata cables to go to hard drives how do I connect a lot of drives to the motherboard
How do I have windows detect 3.7tb instead of the Two? Do i install a program or do it through Bios?

Is there any difference between HUS724040ALE640 and HUS724040ALE641 for their model number

The 640 says April 2012 and the 641's say NOV 2012 can they be used in conjuction with each other, they are the exact same drive.
 
I'm a bit puzzled as to why you spent so much on enterprise drives and are asking these kinds of questions...
 
60% off from msrp is worth while and no tax =]. Ive actually ran out of money and hoping the 50+ stock from one seller does not run out.
 
If you are buying them on ebay then you are getting a normal price.

If you don't know what raid is, then you probably shouldn't be using it. It's not the magical pure awesomeness that you might think. Yes, it can provide some advantages, but it also comes with disadvantages, and those will largely depend on your specific implementation. Unless you know what you are doing you can end up with a setup that is just more complicated than you need, while providing little to no benefit, which would be a net negative.
 
The 1 at the end means it is an encryption drive, 0 is normal. Data Sheet
I didn't see the question answered... would you be able to mix those two models in a RAID system without any detriment? I have 8 Ultrastars in RAID 6 and am looking to add 2 more. The drives I have are not encryption drives, and the best price I can find for 4TB ultrastars on ebay is for the same model except it is an encryption drive
 
Extide said it pretty good.

But to get you started, since it seems your keen to learn, here is some information.

1) What is Raid?
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

2) How Do I raid?
- Well this is a bit more complicated. There are several answers depending on what raid level you choose.
- This is one article that gets into it a bit. http://www.pcworld.com/article/132877/RAID.html
---- once you decide on your raid level you will want then search for a "How-to" on that specific setup.

If you are planning to connect up all of those drives at once then I would advise not using the on-board SATA connector's. Since only a few of them, in most motherboards, you are limited to 2 that support "hardware" raid. Sometimes a 3rd part controller is added for a couple more. Knowing more about your system spec will help.

I have found that using a Hardware Raid card usually helps make the jump into working with raid the easiest. Software raid, while cheapest, isn't always the easiest to setup and won't perform nearly as well.

One Hardware Raid Controller I would recommend is a LSI 9260-8i. These products are great! This particular one allows you to connect 8 drives out of the box with the ability to expand to 128 using SAS expanders. It's not cheap and retails for just over $500. There are cheaper ones out there or you may be able to find a Used one. This card will give you very good performance. I currently use a 9260-4i and have had zero issues.

*This is just one example of a Hardware Raid controller from a reputable company. There are tons out there.

How do I have windows detect 3.7tb instead of the Two? Do i install a program or do it through Bios?

We would need more details about your system specs to help answer this a bit better. However, if you have a system that is within the last 2-3 years and are using a modern OS (Windows 7 or higher) you should be seeing the full capacity.
 
I am not the original poster of this topic but I already have a functioning raid system with non-encyption drives (Hitachi HUS724040ALE640) and want to know if I can extend my RAID array using encyption drives (Hitachi HUS724040ALE641)

This is the third time this question has been asked in this thread, and a simple yes or no would be very helpful. I've tried googling for an answer to this and the closest thing I came to finding an answer was this thread. Thanks
 
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As far as I know, unless you enable FDE (in say the BIOS), they'll just function like any other drive.
 
I am not the original poster of this topic but I already have a functioning raid system with non-encyption drives (Hitachi HUS724040ALE640) and want to know if I can extend my RAID array using encyption drives (Hitachi HUS724040ALE641)

This is the third time this question has been asked in this thread, and a simple yes or no would be very helpful. I've tried googling for an answer to this and the closest thing I came to finding an answer was this thread. Thanks

You should be just fine. FDE is enabled by setting a drive password, I believe, so by not setting a password it should operate just like a non-encrypting drive.
 
You should be just fine. FDE is enabled by setting a drive password, I believe, so by not setting a password it should operate just like a non-encrypting drive.


Thanks for the info guys. What makes a disk capable of encryption anyway? Is there just a firmware difference between those two models or is there some extra hardware on encryption drives?
 
You might reconsider WD RED for raid ..... read about TLER benfits

if you want the Hitachi 4TB and want to save more, you might consider the external drive (by taking the HDD out) such as http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007K4HA0W?tag=intercept-kb-20

for raid i would realy look for a drive that support TLER .... mixing HDD with defrent manufacturing date is a good idea

sorry for the bad english

Best of luck
 
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Thanks for the info guys. What makes a disk capable of encryption anyway? Is there just a firmware difference between those two models or is there some extra hardware on encryption drives?
It has a chip to perform hardware encryption so your CPU isn't doing it (gets sluggish). Unless you have software that can enable it you'd never know it was there. Typically they also do instant/secure erase these days as well.
 
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