Hitatchi 5K3000 3TB - two questions (temperature/lifecycle)

grambo

[H]ard|Gawd
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Hi guys,

Long-time lurker, first time poster. Realized HF has a much more active storage forum than where I usually post so here I am.

Recently purchased 2x Hitatchi 5K3000 3TB 5400rpm SATA3 drives. Using one in a 2-bay external eSATA enclosure (with an older 1TB) and another in my PC with another 1TB (so I have 4TB in tower, 4TB eSATA for back-up).

1) is 50c a safe operating temperature for the drive? I think the spec is 55c but that seems high. The reason it is running at 50c is the eSATA enclosure fan is broken and not spinning. The drives in my tower (7200RPM) run at 40-41c. One thing here is the enclosure will only be powered on for back-up on a weekly basis once I have everything setup the way I want.

2) Anyone know the approx. commercial lifecycle planned for the 5K3000 3TB? What I mean is, will they still be selling this drive 1-2 years from now? Hard to say I know, but I ask because I will likely buy 2 to 4 more of these down the road when I need more space and put them all in a NAS in a RAID config and of course I'd like to have identical drives for that. They were just introduced in the past few months so I imagine I will be able to buy them for a while.

Thanks!
 
I figured out that the 20mm fan in the enclosure is in fact spinning (and probably moving about 5cfm haha), so this will be the normal operating temperature (49-50c). Seems hot, but I'm not too worried since it will be off most of the time.
 
Here are my thoughts:

Keeping a drive cool and stable (no high-vibration/impact environment) will go a long way towards the lifespan of said drive. If it does not arrive damaged (due to shipping, or poor manufacture), and survives some benchmarks and read/write testing, it'll probably be functional for quite a while.

Since you're essentially mirroring your data with 4TB in your case and 4 external, I'd say you're ahead of the curve.

You may consider hacking your enclosure (cut a large(er) hole) say 80mm, and use the existing 12v wiring to power a more effective fan.

Drive model lifespan is extremely short these days in the consumer realm. Of course, you'll be able to get 3TB drives in 1-2 years from now, but they will almost certainly have a different platter count, different RPM, possibly even a different SATA interface.

I don't think that's a problem in your case. RAID is not always the best solution for data storage. I'd look into all the linux-based file storage builds available (many are featured and discussed on this forum), and consider using zfs instead of hardware or software based RAID. These solutions do not require identical drives. If you are counting on identical drives, you should order them all at the same time.

For the record, I bet the model lifespan is 8-10 months.
 
Thanks for the detailed reply. Because of the enclosure design, I'm not sure it's wide enough for anything bigger than a 25mm fan, maybe 40 would fit though I will measure the space where the fan is.

Thanks for the tip on ZFS, I've been reading about people using it here but have never researched it well. I liked WHS v1's drive extender idea, but for some reason WHS v2 doesn't have it, so maybe ZFS is similar in use. I've worked with Linux before so the setup wouldn't be too bad.
 
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