New Raid 5 array

[rett448]

The motherboard in my current file server just bit the dust so its time for an upgrade. I was using an nVidia 570 motherboard with 6 x 300GB in a Raid-5 on the nVidia controller. The array was almost full so I am looking to overhaul the entire server. Performance is not really an issue because this is a media server and I do not boot from the raid array. I was planning on moving to a highpoint pci-e card, most likely a 2300, and 3 x 1.5 TB, with the option to expand to 4 x 1.5 TB later. I currently have a Seagate 7200.11 1.5 TB drive that has been functioning as the server backup since January of this year. The drive came with the CC1G firmware which I upgraded to the CC1H. I have not had any issues with the Seagate drive, and test it weekly when I do backups.

I am wondering if I should risk getting two more of the Seagate 1.5 TB or go with the WD 1.5 TB green or the Samsung 1.5 TB 5400 RPM (the only other 1.5 TB drives on newegg.) Like I said speed is not an issue but unfortunately as a poor college student cost is. I want some of the 1 TB raid edition drives and a nice full hardware raid card but that is out of my price range at this particular time. Have the firmware issues with the Seagate drives been solved or am I better off with the Samsung or WD drive?

 

[Emulex]

better off with the WD RE3/RE4 or cheetah es/ns line.

otherwise you will see massive raid failure. i'd run non-RE versions of 1TB in JBOD

 

[rett448]

I know that I am better off with a raid edition hard drives, however they are significantly more expensive and out of my current price range. I have been using segate 7200.9/7200.10 in a six disk raid 5, 24/7 for over 2 years without any problems. I feel the current seagate 7200.11 have too many problems for raid, has anyone had experience with the WD 1.5 TB Green or the Samsung 1.5TB 5400 in a raid-5

 

[fleshconsumed]

I'm using WD10EACS in my RAID5 with no problems. I did change TLER to 7 seconds to make sure drives wouldn't be falling out of array. Sorry, no experience with WD15EADS.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: Emulex
better off with the WD RE3/RE4 or cheetah es/ns line.

Originally posted by: rett448
I know that I am better off with a raid edition hard drives, however they are significantly more expensive and out of my current price range.

The extra cost of the RE drives is minor, unless you ReDrive your RAID array once a year.
If you're building a RAID 5 array with a life expectancy of 2 years or longer...
Stick with the WD RE line :laugh: Cut some cost out of the rest of your components.

 

[jkresh]

i built a raid 5 with the wd15eads, one drive was bad from the start (showed a few errors during the build, failed rather quickly) the other 3 and the replacement have shown no errors (been about 2 months), if I were to do it again I would probably go with RE drives, but so far I haven't seen issues with the greens (the one that failed would have failed outside of the raid, just might have lasted another week or two)