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which 2tb harddisk?

T

technobuzzo

Junior Member
hi all,

i'm gonna buy 2 x 2tb harddisk for mirroring.

while seagate got into technical problems that could even result in data loss; and western digital green series're just 5400rpm drives; that pretty much leaves me to hitachi, with the hitachi 2tb being the cheapest but seems like it performs very well. only thing is it easily gets very hot.

anyone got any other recommendations?

cheers!
 
You pretty much summed it up and thus answered your own question. 😉

There is the WD Black but at a much higher cost. Samsung and WD 5400 drives are as peppy as 7200 drives from a few years ago plus of course are more efficient and run cooler with less noise. But if the highest disk performance is required (in this price range), then the only option is Hitachi -which are at least reliable.
 
technobuzzo said:
only thing is it easily gets very hot.
Click to expand...

You just need a minimum amount of airflow over the 2TB hitachi's. They don't consume THAT much power nor do they generate THAT much heat. If you give them zero airflow, they will heat up, but with even a low speed 120mm fan blowing over 3 of them they are fine temperature wise.
 
Im thinking about using them for Raid 5 in one of those Intel NAS servers. Do you think they would have enough airflow?
 
My guess is they may run "hot" but will be fine. Have you tried a Google search yet? Odds are that it has been done already.
 
does the wd black's performance & reliability justify it's 2x price tag compared to the hitachi?

the hitachi's price/performance's simply unbeatable..

but, some ppl believe it's particularly unreliable? any comments on this front?
 
HGST 2TBs are awesome.
They sound good too. No wimpy dull tin can sounds like other drives. (WDC)
They just plug along and work and don't become something you'd smear cement on when building a wall. 😉
 
technobuzzo said:
but, some ppl believe it's particularly unreliable? any comments on this front?
Click to expand...

Who would those people be? I'm not aware of anyone who has 6+ of them that has this opinion. Sure there are people that get early failures (happens with all drives) but when you have 1-2 drives, you have a really small sample size. Not saying 6+ is big, but it weeds out all of the single drive early failure reports.
 
Guess I mixed in jacc1234 talking about Hitachis :$

Still, I don't understand the idea behind a Black ed. 2TB drive.
I assume the speed is needed somewhere, but usually a BiG back-up drive is better off moving along at 5400rpm.
 
Sorry for derailing the thread but thanks for the answers. I have been looking for info about 2Tb drives being used with the Intel SS4200-E NAS but I still have questions. The NAS does not officially support 2TB drives but there are people using them without problems.

Some key issues I have been looking into are:

Compatibility with 2TB drives: People are using them so they should work fine.

4Kb Sectors with the SS4200-E: All new drives will start using 4KB sectors instead of 512b. This is an issue for some OS's like XP. From what I can tell the default NAS os uses the ext-3 file system which supposedly works fine with 4KB sectors.

Best 2TB drives for RAID :This has been hard to nail down. I don't have the cash to drop on enterprise drives so I hope to fine a "regular" drive that would work. Some reports to stay away from WD Green. Hitachi seem to raid well but are hot and very loud.


I would really like some feedback and personal experiences!
 
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jacc1234 said:
Some reports to stay away from WD Green. Hitachi seem to raid well but are hot and very loud.
Click to expand...

In raid 1, the Greens are probably OK. I lost 3 of the first 8 I bought (1.5TB size). That is probably just a fluke though. The Hitachi's aren't THAT much louder than other 7200rpm drives. They are hotter than greens, but with the price and how well they work in raid 6, they are hard to pass up.
 
I've been using the 2TB WD Greens in my QNAP TS-639 Pro and my TS-809 Pro with great success for several months without any issue in RAID 6 on both appliances. The 809 serves SMB for file services, and also NFS for VMWare ESX server over GB Ethernet. Eight VMs on 24/7 without a hiccup for 6 months.
 
jacc1234 said:

4Kb Sectors with the SS4200-E: All new drives will start using 4KB sectors instead of 512b. This is an issue for some OS's like XP. From what I can tell the default NAS os uses the ext-3 file system which supposedly works fine with 4KB sectors.
Click to expand...

A problem with that is that all drives are currently trying to be XP compatible by presenting themselves as 512B sectors even if they have 4kb sectors. This can cause alignment issues. AFAIK none of the current drives have the ability to turn this emulation off. So even if you don't personally use a 10 year old OS, you will still have problems because of it.
 
taltamir said:
A problem with that is that all drives are currently trying to be XP compatible by presenting themselves as 512B sectors even if they have 4kb sectors. This can cause alignment issues. AFAIK none of the current drives have the ability to turn this emulation off. So even if you don't personally use a 10 year old OS, you will still have problems because of it.
Click to expand...

So what does that mean exactly? I have read that people have used drives with 4KB sectors in this nas but don't know if they had any issues.

Also, I plan I doing raid 5 with 4 2TB drives if that makes a difference.
 
jacc1234 said:
So what does that mean exactly? I have read that people have used drives with 4KB sectors in this nas but don't know if they had any issues.

Also, I plan I doing raid 5 with 4 2TB drives if that makes a difference.
Click to expand...

the issues are purely performance issues; it will work, it will just be much slower then it should be. Unless everything is aligned correctly in which case it wouldn't be slower.
 
taltamir said:
the issues are purely performance issues; it will work, it will just be much slower then it should be. Unless everything is aligned correctly in which case it wouldn't be slower.
Click to expand...

So what is my best option? I would like to get decent performance if im spending the money. Do you have any suggestions?

Thanks
 
you could learn more about these drives and alignment issues and make sure you configure it properly for optimal performance. or wait until a better "out of the box" solution is implemented in the future.
 
taltamir said:
the issues are purely performance issues; it will work, it will just be much slower then it should be. Unless everything is aligned correctly in which case it wouldn't be slower.
Click to expand...

Can you elaborate? You mean the FW in the drive will be the bottleneck if you write lots of small (less than 4kB) files to the drive? This wouldn't be an issue if one were to exclusively use it store media. Or do I have this wrong?
 
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