Recommend me a HDD for my WHS

[JackSpadesSI]

I built a Windows Home Server last year and it now has 2 TB of storage over two hard drives. Both drives are "Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB".

However, I’m getting very nervous about the condition of the drives. Four months ago the newer HDD was reported as failed, but after a reboot it was back to healthy and has remained healthy ever since. This past weekend the original HDD reported it was failing, but after I ran the repair function it went back to healthy and didn’t even sustain any data loss (from what I can tell).

Anyway, I no longer trust these drives and I want to either replace them, or at the very least add to them to increase my redundancy. Please recommend me a HDD (I may buy one or two of them, depending on price) for my WHS. It must be a Western Digital drive and at least 1 TB in capacity.

 

[FishAk]

Caviar Black.

 

[Binky]

Caviar black is not a good choice for a server. Speed isn't important since everything will be served over a network.

OP - If you have two WD drives that you don't trust, why would you specify that the replacements must be WD drives? That seems odd.

Personally, I'd use a few 1TB 5400-5900rpm Samsung or Seagate drives. I still don't fully trust 2TB drives. Also, you should avoid the WD "advanced format" drives in a WHS box if you do go with WD (not supported).

 

[FishAk]

Speed isn't important since everything will be served over a network.

My bad. Didn't think 'bout that...

 

[zerogear]

Avoid WD EARS drive.. at least for now, since WHS is based on 2003, so it doesn't support the 4k.

Sometimes a 'unhealthy' drive simply (WHS-reported) just means it didn't boot it properly. Check SMART using CrystalDiskInfo will be much more accurate.

 

[JackSpadesSI]

Yeah, I don't need to pay for the speed of the Black in a server. That's a great drive, though (my desktop uses the Black).

Binky, you make a really good point and even I questioned myself sticking with WD after the failure. I suppose it is due to two reasons: they haven't actually failed, so I'm not 100% ready to blame the drives; and those two represent a small fraction of the WD drives I've been very happy with for a long time.

zerogear, I learned about EARS drives the almost-hard way. I found a great deal on one and ordered it a while back, but thankfully I read up on them in time to return the drive before it was too late.

So, everybody, does avoiding EARS and Caviar Black mean I must buy more Caviar Green EADS? Or, is there a better option??

 

[Griffinhart]

I had high hopes for the WD Greens, but I have stopped using them entirely. I've had way too many failures with them. Several 1TB drives and the 2TB drive I had all started failing. Every one of them the WD Green drives. On the other hand, the WD 1TB blacks I have all seem to be doing well. I get the impression that the green line of HD's are just duds.

I've started using the 1.5TB Seagate drives that can be had for $90 or so. I have two of them that haven't given me any issues so far. Of course, time will tell but $90 a drive isn't to large of an investment for storage.

 

[Binky]

Like I suggested above, the Samsung and Seagate green/slow drives are great for a WHS box. The 1TB drives can be had for $70 or less. The 2TB drives from any manufacturer seem to get more discussions about failure...

I have also had WD green drives fail. My blue/black drives from WD have all been pretty good. Samsung and Seagate have been good for me too, but I never had one of the failure-prone 1.5tb drives.