Green Drives Suck

[f4phantom2500]

seems to me that the best combination would be an ssd for os/fast access and a raid 0 array with green drives for storage. best of both worlds; great performance where you need it, good performance for storage, and quiet.

 

[C1]

By accident just discovered something last night. I have two 2TB Hitachi externals. On is the newer XL model and the other is the older one made for Hitachi by SimpleTech. The SimpleTech version is not green (the XL version is), but also comes with a software USB accelerator (claiming 25% performance increase which it does do). The XL version does not include the acelerator software. The discovery is:

IF YOU USE THE ACCELERATOR SOFTWARE WITH THE XL VERSION, THEN THE XL ENCLOSURE NO LONGER TIMES OUT (ie, drive remains full up active)!

So looks like that's part of my fix. Mainly, that there are for me many work streams in which a mandatory 9 minute timeout is inappropriate (ie, nuisance). Effectively, green drives need a mechanism to override the green feature (and better yet, would be to allow user setting of the timeout).

Note: In the case of the WD's, it seems that this capability is built in, but I was totally unaware of this when I purchased them (admittedly long ago).

 

[Gillbot]

Why would you expect "performance" out of a green drive anyway?

 

[Arsynic]

Green everything sucks. Ever took a shower in a house with a green water heater?

 

[alaricljs]

Yeah.. I own one. Saves me a ton of money and the hot water never runs out. There's green implemented by idiots, and then there's green done right. Same time I replaced the water heater I did the furnace. They paid for themselves in saving fuel $$ in less than 2 years.

I have 4x 2TB "green" drives in my server and they more than meet my expectations.

 

[C1]

The Hitachi externals are a weird bunch. A non-green 7200 rpm five platter 2TB behemoth spindle (bitch to spin up) in a not so good enclosure (electronics).
Im sure that the individual Hitachi drives are great running off a MB SATA controller, but the external enclosure electronics has to be the issue. Besides the green feature, the external enclosures are crappy for multitasking. I have all kinds of 2.5" Iomega external 5400 rpm drives & I can watch a movie from them while Im ripping two others off them simultaneously without the movie stuttering. Completely different story with the Hitachi's (USB same interface).

Therefore, from my experience, these external Hitachi's are suitable pretty much for dedicated single thread archive storage and not projects involving asynchronous random access (not true about the 2.5" Iomegas). I can live with the somewhat slower R/W transfers, but not so much with constantly waiting for behemoth spindle spin up. It would be nice too if the multitask capability was as good as the Iomegas and maybe that will be fixed when the Hitachi enclosure electronics burn up which they are notoriously noted for (see newegg) and the enclosure upgraded.

 

[Fedaykin311]

Hmm, drives designed for capacity and low power consumption at the expense of speed aren't very fast?

Who'd a thunk it!

 

[Fedaykin311]

Green everything sucks. Ever took a shower in a house with a green water heater?

I have one. Endless hot water at temperatures up to 160F "sucks"?

 

[diehard2k9]

Hello all i am new and want to let everyone know that I have just gotten my Raid5 up and running. It is with 4 WD Grean 2TB drives EARS version. I had 4 WD RE Drives and they were not as fast in raid5. These WD Green are rea; fast I am getting 100 M/S copying from 1 WD Black 1TB. I am real happy with the speed.

Crystal disk marks

WD RE 4X 500GB ----------------------------------- WD G 4 2TB
SEQ R 150.6 W 78.68 ----------------------------SEQ R 336.8 W 335.9
512k R 20.66 W 5.694 ---------------------------512k R 650.3 W 40.61
4K R 0.401 W 0.466 -------------------------------4K R 10.01 W 4.142
4kQD R 2.547 W 0.820 ------------------------4KQD32 R 1.433 W 5.117

Not someone that really understands bench test and stuff but I like how fast they are.
I am hoping not to run into any problems with them because they are green drive but they where real cheap $85CAD each.

areca 1880ix-16 1GB
2 OCZ vertex 2 60GB RAID0 OS win 7 U
2 WD BLACK 1TB will be in RAID0
4 WF GREEN 2TB RAID5

 

[diehard2k9]

More info on my WD Green 4X 2TB Raid5

These drives are super in Raid5. I am able to copy to it from two different source one Esata and the other is the D drive which is a WD 1TB Black each with a speed of 100M/s, I dont think I have maxed out the Raid5 yet.

 

[smashr]

When I was building my new system, I thought long and hard about getting 2TB 7200rpm drives for my new RAID, but I am now very glad that I went with 'green' drives. My 4 samsung 2tb green drives do about 300MB/sec in my Areca RAID5:

Perfect for media, backup, and other long term storage. And once I get my SSD, transfers between them should be near the SSD's limit.

Oh, and when I open the case, the drives are cool to the touch. (Much better than my old 7200rpm drives, with the same airflow)

 

[diehard2k9]

Hey are you spinning down your drives with the areca controller?

I have two WD blacks 1TB and I dont know if i should raid0 them or sell them.
I also notice that sometime when i have to reboot one of my SSD get set to SATA 1 @ 150, any way to fix that?

my controller is Areca 1880ix-16 1GB

 

[Emulex]

don't spin down - sector scrub!!!

 

[diehard2k9]

don't spin down - sector scrub!!!

hi thx for the reply, not sure what you mean by sector scrub?
I was thinking to have it spin down and i can leave it up 24/7.
I have a 1880ix-16 with firmware 148 anyone running firmware 149?

 

[Blain]

I had 4 WD RE Drives and they were not as fast in raid5.

Which "RE" version were those drives... RE, RE2, RE3, RE4, RE4-GP?

 

[Campy]

my green drives work fine. they're storage space. if i want performance i'll get an ssd or some sort of raid setup. it all depends on what you need, and for a lot of people who only need a lot of space for long term storage performance isnt important and i for one dont want to pay a premium for it.

 

[diehard2k9]

my green drives work fine. they're storage space. if i want performance i'll get an ssd or some sort of raid setup. it all depends on what you need, and for a lot of people who only need a lot of space for long term storage performance isnt important and i for one dont want to pay a premium for it.

Well I for one think that there storage performance is great and 250M/s and counting. Faster than my RE drives that I dropped large for. It was a paon to backup all my files from the old raid5 but restoring them was nothing but awe. That was only less than half my array, will be adding another 5 2TB WD Green for a total of 8 plus one hot spare. The speed will only go up when its complete.

 

[deimos3428]

I like my WD15EARS. It stores data. It's not quite as fast, sure.

But more importantly it doesn't gurgle like a drunken lemur whenever you access the disk like my old Seagate 7200.12 did. I wanted a storage drive I couldn't hear over my very low noise floor, and this one does the job.

 

[tweakboy]

Green is for the activist or people that are very concerned about their electricity bill or consumers.

IMO . Your right, green is not what you want if your the power user. thx gg and gb

 

[Voo]

thx gg and gb

You know the rule that says only post something if you know what it means? Obviously not.

Though if I think about it that characterises not just that but almost all of your posts :/

 

[tweakboy]

You know the rule that says only post something if you know what it means? Obviously not.

Though if I think about it that characterises not just that but almost all of your posts :/

Sorry didn't know that. I just have a COCD about saying that in my message.

 

[BTA]

Every WD green drive I've had has died. (Anywhere from a bit older 640gig, to a couple 1.5tb drives, to a 2tb drive). Thankfully WD is easy to deal with on RMA's.

Oh and my buddy's two 1tb greens just died recently as well.

No issues with WD's blue and black lines though, or any older non-green drives.

 

[Old Hippie]

You know the rule that says only post something if you know what it means? Obviously not.

Though if I think about it that characterises not just that but almost all of your posts :/

I just quit reading them.

I always have this stupid feeling in the back of my mind that the forums here have the best quality advice with the most intelligent/educated responses but some of his posts/solutions made me cringe.

I can only but hope that his comments are not what some visitors feel represents the type of advice given here.

 

[Voo]

I just quit reading them.

I always have this stupid feeling in the back of my mind that the forums here have the best quality advice with the most intelligent/educated responses but some of his posts/solutions made me cringe.

I can only but hope that his comments are not what some visitors feel represents the type of advice given here.

Yeah the problem is you can't even ignore him in good conscience - remember the time he started advising people to defrag their SSDs? :/

Someone has to debunk his fallacies or who knows what he'll tell new people..

 

[Old Hippie]

Yeah the problem is you can't even ignore him in good conscience - remember the time he started advising people to defrag their SSDs? :/

Someone has to debunk his fallacies or who knows what he'll tell new people..

I think he got several warnings about the SSD Defrag issue.

You hafta question the intelligence of a being that needs more than one warning about the same thing. Then again, I'm not the fastest learner around.

But I'm almost 59. It's not my turn to watch him anymore.