hitachi 2tb in raid - bad idea?

[getho]

I'm currently using onboard intel raid (which sucks) with 4x 1.5 TB WD greens (which suck for raid) in a raid 10. Used for storing shed loads of BIG psds and video. Need the speed for the video want the data redundancy for those precious images (backup to a windows home server every few days).

I'm loathe to spend $1000 AUD on a better solution but thats my top limit so just wondering whether I should

a) get a HighPoint RocketRAID 2680 controller and 4x2tb hitachi 7K2000 (=$1000 exactly)
b) get the 4 channel controller and 4x 1tb hitachi and live with a smaller raid (=$540)
b) as above with WD blacks (=$720)
c) get 2xwd 2tb RE drives in a raid 0 and backup religiously. (=$660 or $860 with controller)

Anyone with any experience of these drives or others in raid - I'm all ears!!
I'm loathe to get seagates, lost 5 in the last 4 years.

 

[pjkenned]

The Hitachis are awesome. I run over a dozen in my main server off an Areca 1680LP at this point. I would, however, suggest moving away from Highpoint and to a better Raid controller (Areca, Adaptec, LSI/3ware.)

 

[getho]

thanks for replying. You're running the 2Tb hitachis? No problems with heat?

thanks for the heads up on the card - that one was one of the cheaper 8 port ones I could find (so I could expend the raid in future).

In my price range I've found

Asus PIKE 1068E 8-port
Intel 8-Port Internal SAS/SATA RAID,Low Profile,PCIEx4 SASMF8I
LSI Logic SAS3442X-R RAID Controller

And the last 2 are twice the cost of the highpoint. Guess I could always start off with them on the onboard intel.

 

[Idontcare]

thanks for replying. You're running the 2Tb hitachis? No problems with heat?

I've got two of those 2tb hitachi drives and they aren't really all that warm/hot. Definitely warmer than the 1tb ones, but not disconcertingly so.

My 150gb raptor-x's, now those ran hot!

 

[getho]

just found there are 2 flavours of the hitachi, desktar and ultrastar

I was looking at the cheaper one Deskstar 7K2000
not the Ultrastar A7K2000

just wanted to check we're talking about the same drives 🙂

 

[C1]

Ultrastar is the enterprise variant. It is specified as having more rigorous testing, better manufacturing tolerances, order of magnitude lower error rate, five year warranty & a zillion hours MTBF. I wouldnt think there would be a thermal difference between the two variants, but the Ultrastar is specified for 24/7 operation whereas Hitachi specifies Deskstar as a home/office environment intended for limited daily hours of continuous operation (typically 8 -10 hours).

 

[Idontcare]

just found there are 2 flavours of the hitachi, desktar and ultrastar

I was looking at the cheaper one Deskstar 7K2000
not the Ultrastar A7K2000

just wanted to check we're talking about the same drives 🙂

The el'cheapo $120/2TB deskstar is what I'm talking about.

Mind you I keep them powered on 24x7 but I might only be reading/writing 20-30GB a day...certainly nothing like 24x7 accessing that would probably heat them up a lot.

 

[getho]

The el'cheapo $120/2TB deskstar is what I'm talking about.

Mind you I keep them powered on 24x7 but I might only be reading/writing 20-30GB a day...certainly nothing like 24x7 accessing that would probably heat them up a lot.

that would be me pretty much - occasionally I'd be reading/writing video which would give them a workout, but I'd also shutdown most days.

its either 4 of them in raid 10 or 2 of the others in raid 0

 

[Blain]

I'm currently using onboard intel raid (which sucks) with 4x 1.5 TB WD greens (which suck for raid) in a raid 10. Used for storing shed loads of BIG psds and video. Need the speed for the video want the data redundancy for those precious images (backup to a windows home server every few days).

Anyone with any experience of these drives or others in raid - I'm all ears!!

Onboard based Intel RAID shouldn't suck, if it's been setup properly.
Current Intel controllers are quite respectable for what they are.
WD Green's wouldn't be my picks for a RAID 10 configuration.
I would opt for 4 x WD Black's in a RAID 10 or even RAID 5 array (taking into account how you're using the drives).

Remember that RAID 0 gives you absolutely no redundancy... NONE.

 

[Emulex]

intel matrix raid is actually best for raid-0 imo. anything else it sucks ballz. raid-1 is marginal but hitting the reset button or having the power go out (ups runs out) and having to do a rebuild sucks (raid-1 two 250gb) - think how bad that would be time wise raid-5 with 4 x 1.5TB. days.

plus intel matrix raid does not scrub - real raid controllers scrub proactively for remaps - you can manually tell it to verify and fix - i do this every other week and it usually picks up an error or two every month. that statement alone is scarey as heck.

 

[pjkenned]

thanks for replying. You're running the 2Tb hitachis? No problems with heat?

No problem with heat and the hitachis.

Raid 5 is really bad on Intel because no battery backed write cache. You can get "ok" reads but writes on the ICH10R are terrible in Raid 5. No raid 6 support makes it a bit suboptimal.

Raid 1 and 0 are great with the ICH10R though. Only after 3 current Gen SSD's in raid 0 do you start seeing the ICH10R's bandwith bottleneck.

 

[getho]

I do nightly backups to a windows home server. Once I put the wd greens in it I'll be able to mirror the backup as well. 4x wd blacks are a bit out of my budget and to be honest if I was paying that much I'd fork out the extra $$ for the RE drive.

The reason I said the intel raid sucks is because of issues with the 8.9 driver and dropping drives all the time. (Which I guess was partly the drives fault with hindsight). Hoping I can remove the WD drives, swap in the hitachis and create a new raid without having to do a clean install.

I got put off raid 5 after reading someones issues trying to rebuild an array. Rebuilding 1.5TB on the intel takes about 5 hours. The raid 5 was taking days.

So looks like the hitachis as the way to go. I'll post back my experience.