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http://www.isuppli.com/Memory-and-Storage/News/Pages/Hard-Disk-Drive-Market-Revenue-Set-for-Double-Digit-Decline-This-Year.aspx one pager from smart people.

ZFS on Linux! Here is the bottom of the "external" drive with the meant to be removed adapter removed. No warranty voided to pre clear these.

4TB externals at Costco for $160, 3TB still $130, so the scale has tipped.

Hoping to get 10 more for a new raidz2 stripe. At this price they are cheaper than typical 3TBs on sale. Manufacturing lots are very large. It is likely all the drives on sale from all Costcos are one lot. But they have traveled and handled differently.

Not always true. I recently had a Hitachi that used to be external that i tore apart (no way to reassemble it afterwards). it died a few weeks later. it showed good on the warranty check. I sent it in for warranty and they emailed me back to say the drive serial number is that of an external model and they would not fix it. Seconded. Do not expect warranty if you open an enclosure. Sure, try it, but don't cry if they follow the rules and deny the claim. I recommend multiple pre clear before opening the enclosure.

Your math is correct, however, you have to also take into consideration that the hardware behind 10 vs 19 drives is quite a bit. You need a much larger case, two more controllers, and a bigger power supply. I have a 15-bay case and I cannot imagine "upgrading" to a 24-bay (or larger) case. I would prefer to upgrade my drive density than the number of drives. I will be adding one more data drive to my system for a total of 12. That gives me 48TB with 4TB drives. by the time I fill that up, Im sure 6-8TB drives will be affordable. I think on "smaller" builds, the 4TB provides even more value. If you look at incremental value of replacing 1TB drives with 2TB, 3TB, or 4TB, the cost for the increased capacity is; 2TB = $90/TB (replace 1TB with 2TB yield 1TB increase for $90) 3TB = $65/TB 4TB = $63/TB

And that makes sense for newer builds. For someone like me who started very early I don't like to get rid of drives that are still working without issue. I have a quite a few 1TB drives in my machine, along with 1 500GB and 1 750GB in my production server. I also have a 3TB i want to move into the parity location but have not been willing to move it into place... if it ain't broke don't fix it. To each their own! The next time I catch 4TB Hitachis on sale, the last couple of 1.5TB Seagates will be pulled from my unRAID. The 4TB drives are currently "on sale" at $190 for external Seagate and $194 for external WD (often called Hitachi). See your local Amazon.com.

Am I doing the math wrong? 36TB (easy size for example math) (19) 2TB drives $1710 (13) 3TB drives $1690 (10) 4TB drives. $1900

I watch the "Good Deals" section for drive purchases. I see a lot of activity for 2TB and 3TB drives ($90 and $130 currently). But I rarely see 4TB drives discussed, even though the sales typically include 4TB drives at $190 for an external. Those prices come to; 2TB = $45/TB 3TB = $43/TB 4TB = $47/TB So, why the reluctance to move to 4TB drives? A) the 10% price bump? B) the external, void warranty? C) don't need that much space? D) 4TB is too big for single parity?

They're great. You'll find this used in many of the builds with 20+ drives.

I think I followed you, but just to confirm... When the box says 5yr, you got 5yr, and when the box (same price and barcode) said 1yr, it was 1yr. So, the only place misleading was the website. Did I get that right?

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=20761.0

Yes, it is a good drive.

Yes, in the distant future only the largest, cheapest, most reliable drives will remain.

Wouldn't SSD prices dropping lead to them only needing the Red drives? What need is there for spinning disks these days besides massive storage? For the price of a 300GB raptor you can get a 240GB SSD for around the same price if you keep your eyes open and the SSD will smoke it in every aspect. SSDs, two things; 1) WD does not make them. 2) they are the highest cost/size. WD Raptor, high cost/size, high power/size, limited capacity. WD Black, good cost/size, ok good power/size, good capacity. WD Red, low cost/size, low power/size, high capacity. WD Green, lowest cost/size, low power/size, high capacity. I think WD wisely stepped up into the gap created by Seagate leaving low power drives. The use of "consumer" drives in arrays has been around a long time and the needed for online storage continues to grow, so Red should do well. Green still has a place as the lowest cost, just get me a drive. Black is "the drive", you only got one and it probably came with the CPU/video/etc. Raptor has the most limited market, and probably the highest margins.

I know the wide assumptions that the WD Red product line is intelli or 5900rpm, but none of the sheets I have so far include that detail. Have you got one with power and speed details?

Yesterday's News and thread.

You're on a good track to consider ext4. unRAID currently uses ReiserFS, but I suspect that will change over time. Within unRAID you probably wont find support for btrfs (yet), but long term the features of btrfs may force a change.

unRAID vs RAID - a file read or write requires 1 vs all drives to perform. Pretty big operation difference. unRAID reading a file or even files spins up and moves fewer disks/heads. This lowers the need for vibration compensation (3d balancing). There are articles out there on the costs of vibration ie http://storagemojo.com/2010/05/19/shock-vibe-and-awe/

The press release (that's all I have) says physical changes from Green, so I suspect loading the firmware is in the "very" bad idea column. Making a whole new product line is a huge undertaking. With Seagate announcing the end of Low Power drives, WD stepped up to take that share as RED are widely believed to be 5900rpm drives, but the release does not confirm that. The original thread is over in the "Disk Drives" section http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=21370.0

unRAID is less sensitive to the issue addressed by NASware. Hence the wide success in using desktop drives. I am not sure the NASware feature would be worth a price premium for unRAID usage. Of course there may not be a price premium, especially if warranty is different etc.

Yes, that will do a write test using 4k blocks, showing the progress and verbose messages.

Test them, but move with purpose. I put this here more for the next time, since i expect you have already brought it online. Run a smart short test for each drive Collect full report for each drive Run smart long test for each drive Online and parity check without correction (you don't want change parity if non parity has trouble) compare smart report for growing errors

1) You could boot another OS besides ESX. 2) You could test on another machine/server. Getting a baseline smart report is a good idea. Running any tool which writes every block will get sector reallocations done. badblocks -cc does double duty since it reads, then writes, does read verify, and finally re-writes the original value. It's also good to include some "randomized" movement to verify tracking. thrash does that.

Those numbers are pretty good. It would be very hard for card slot to exceed the southbridge performance. The card has a few extra connections and the same drive interface.