Help selecting hard drive

[speedemn]

I am planning on building a system and going for a RAID 10 configuration (striped set of mirrors) or perhaps RAID 0/1 (haven't decided yet). Which of these two HDDs would be best for my application? I will be getting 4 of these...

- Western Digital Caviar (WD5000YS) Raid Edition 2 500GB
- Seagate (ST3500630AS) Baracuda 7200.10 500GB

Thank you.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

What is this system going to be used for? The Western Digital RE2 drives aren't necessarily recommended for normal systems, as they are more geared toward server setups. That said, I love my RE2 400's.

 

[speedemn]

This is for a home PC...
It will mostly be used for massive amounts of storage and multi media... who knows, I might get in to a bit of gaming. But I mostly multi-task - downloading, burning, browsing, listening to music or possibly watching videos... all at the same time, potentially.

So does that mean that the Seagate would be a better option for me?

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: speedemn
This is for a home PC...
It will mostly be used for massive amounts of storage and multi media... who knows, I might get in to a bit of gaming. But I mostly multi-task - downloading, burning, browsing, listening to music or possibly watching videos... all at the same time, potentially.

So does that mean that the Seagate would be a better option for me?

After reading the info about the "time-limited error recovery" on the WD RE2 info page, it seems that it depends upon your choice of RAID controllers. If you are using a dedicated RAID controller, the RE2 drives would be a good choice. If you are not using a dedicated RAID controller, then they might not be a good choice...

 

[Roguestar]

http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage.html :thumbsup:

 

[Blain]

The Seagate 7200.10's and WD RE2's are both really nice drives for your RAID array.
If you're serious about your array, you will be using a dedicated controller, so I vote for the WD RE2's. :laugh:

No matter which brand you go with...
Order your drives from different vendors. A couple of bucks here or there won't make any difference in the long run.

I'll spell it out...
1. Brand X HD maker produces good solid drives.
2. Brand X has a production run with a flaw that makes it past QC and gets shipped to vendors.
3. Buying identical HDs from a single vendor increases the chances of getting HD's from the same production run.
4. Therefore, a greater risk to the end user.

 

[speedemn]

Originally posted by: Roguestar
http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage.html :thumbsup:

I already looked there before I posted this thread. There are no Seagate Baracuda 7200.10 drives there (of any size) and the WD5000YS isn't there either... the closest is the WD5000KS which isn't RAID Edition 2.

So that link was not at all helpful to me... maybe the drives are too new and it has not been updated yet... ?

 

[speedemn]

Originally posted by: Blain
The Seagate 7200.10's and WD RE2's are both really nice drives for your RAID array.
If you're serious about your array, you will be using a dedicated controller, so I vote for the WD RE2's. :laugh:

No matter which brand you go with...
Order your drives from different vendors. A couple of bucks here or there won't make any difference in the long run.

I'll spell it out...
1. Brand X HD maker produces good solid drives.
2. Brand X has a production run with a flaw that makes it past QC and gets shipped to vendors.
3. Buying identical HDs from a single vendor increases the chances of getting HD's from the same production run.
4. Therefore, a greater risk to the end user.

So the consensus on this forum seems to be the WD5000YS over the Seagate 7200.10, if I use a hardware RAID controller card... because this HDD is a Raid Edition 2...

As for your suggestion of buying from different vendors... that is an excellent theory. I wonder if it would be okay to buy from the same vendor but from a location in a different city... I work between cities so this would be easy for me to do. I guess I would have to find out how their distribution cycle works. But I might spend the extra couple of bucks and buy from entirely different vendors (AND in different cities)


As for hardware RAID controllers for 4 SATA drives, what are my options? I have looked at Adaptec and Promise and it seems like there is ONLY ONE card that will do it... the 2410SA from Adaptec: http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/products/sata_prod/sataraid/AAR-2410SA/

Is there anything else out there at a better price that could do my RAID 10 configuration (or Raid 0/1)?