Dead drive - What drive should I buy?

[tyrindor]

See my sig for full server specs. I like to keep the same brand/type of drives in my servers. Call me OCD. I just had the oldest drive in my system die (An old and slow 2TB Green EADS model). I'm just not sure what to replace it with.

 

3TB WD Red?

3TB WD Green?

4TB Seagate?

Move files off, rebuild parity, and wait for the 5TB drives apparently coming in December?

 

Part of me wants to start buying red drives, however it would be a decade until I'd actually replace all these greens.. so speed benefits would be null. I'd be paying more for warranty and features I don't need (I spin down drives after 1 hr). The Seagate is pretty fast, but I am also worried about it being too hot if I start buying those, and again the speed benefits would be null with all the green drives slowing down parity syncs.

 

I'm leaning towards just transferring the files off, waiting for the 4-5TB greens, and staying on my current path.

[garycase]

The EADS drives were 500GB/platter drives ... that's why they're so slow.    A modern 2TB EZRX is 1TB/platter, as are all the WD Reds ... so any of these will be significantly faster => and the higher capacity (3 or 4 TB units) won't be any faster.    The forthcoming 5TB units MAY be a bit faster ... it's not clear whether these will have 5 1TB platters or 4 1.25TB platters -- obviously if it's the latter they'll be a bit faster.

 

As for what to do now ... that's entirely your choice.    As long as you ensure you only buy 1TB/platter drives, I'm sure you'll be fine performance wise.

 

[Harpz]

As for what to do now ... that's entirely your choice.    As long as you ensure you only buy 1TB/platter drives, I'm sure you'll be fine performance wise.

 

 

Where would you look to find out which of the current drives about have the 1TB platters, is there a wiki or a site somewhere?

[tyrindor]

I googled to figure out mine.. I have 3 drives with 500GB platters, 9 with 667GB platters, 3 with 750GB platters, and then 16 with 1TB platters. That sucks. Big time. It would cost me roughly $1250-$1500 to replace all the older drives while keeping the same amount of space.  That's just not something that will ever be worth it to me until I actually run out of drive bays. 

 

Looks like i'm just going to move data off the failed drive, redo parity, and wait for bigger drives. I don't want to go down the Seagate route, and WD's 4TB models are rumored to be very soon with 5TB models by end of the year.

[garycase]

I googled to figure out mine.. I have 3 drives with 500GB platters, 9 with 667GB platters, 3 with 750GB platters, and then 16 with 1TB platters. That sucks. Big time. It would cost me roughly $1250-$1500 to replace all the older drives while keeping the same amount of space.  That's just not something that will ever be worth it to me until I actually run out of drive bays. 

 

No reason to replace them ... my point was simply that you don't want to buy any additional drives that aren't 1TB/platter (or higher).

 

Except for slower parity checks, the lower areal density drives are unlikely to really matter in terms of streaming data from your server.

 

[garycase]

Where would you look to find out which of the current drives about have the 1TB platters, is there a wiki or a site somewhere?

 

I googled to figure out mine..

 

Just doing a Google search isn't necessarily all you need to do.  Some models were manufactured with DIFFERENT platter densities during their manufacturing runs (often depending on which factory made them).  For example, a 2TB EARS drive could have 4 500TB platters, or 3 667GB platters, depending on the specific version.

 

The best site I've found to check this on is here:  http://rml527.blogspot.com/

 

[tyrindor]

Where would you look to find out which of the current drives about have the 1TB platters, is there a wiki or a site somewhere?

 

I googled to figure out mine..

 

Just doing a Google search isn't necessarily all you need to do.  Some models were manufactured with DIFFERENT platter densities during their manufacturing runs (often depending on which factory made them).  For example, a 2TB EARS drive could have 4 500TB platters, or 3 667GB platters, depending on the specific version.

 

The best site I've found to check this on is here:  http://rml527.blogspot.com/

 

According to that almost all my drives are 750GB platters, including all 16 of my WD30EZRX models. It seems only the "WD30EZRX-00DC0B0" version is the 1TB model. That really makes me sad, I thought I was buying 1TB platters when buying these, I even confirmed it with WD support before I purchased 20 of them.

 

My main concern is future parity checks, as my secondary server takes 12-14 hours to sync (even with tunables adjusted) because of the slower 2TB EADS. My main server with all WD30EZRX drives takes about 8 hours on the same hardware. I plan on upgrading both servers to 5TB parity and some 5TB drives when they come out later this year/early next tier. If the speed is still that slow on the second server, it'd take a full day to check parity which just isn't reasonable.

 

The most realistic thing I think can do is upgrade my 2 remaining WD20EADS to get up to 667GB platter sizes, they have over 30k power on hours anyway. I really thought all those WD20EARS were 750GB platters though...

 

 

[neilt0]

If you can find them, I recommend 4TB Hitachis.

 

A parity check on my rig (4TB drives) takes 9 hours. The new drives, even the Seagate NAS drives, are fast.

[garycase]

Where would you look to find out which of the current drives about have the 1TB platters, is there a wiki or a site somewhere?

 

I googled to figure out mine..

 

Just doing a Google search isn't necessarily all you need to do.  Some models were manufactured with DIFFERENT platter densities during their manufacturing runs (often depending on which factory made them).  For example, a 2TB EARS drive could have 4 500TB platters, or 3 667GB platters, depending on the specific version.

 

The best site I've found to check this on is here:  http://rml527.blogspot.com/

 

According to that almost all my drives are 750GB platters, including all 16 of my WD30EZRX models. It seems only the "WD30EZRX-00DC0B0" version is the 1TB model. That really makes me sad, I thought I was buying 1TB platters when buying these, I even confirmed it with WD support before I purchased 20 of them. Looks like it really doesn't matter what I buy at this point, it will be a decade before I replace all these.

 

My main concern is future parity checks, as my secondary server takes 12-14 hours to sync (with tunables adjusted) because of the slower 2TB EADS, or so I thought. My first server with all WD30EZRX drives takes about 7 hours on the same hardware. I plan on upgrading both servers to 5TB parity and some 5TB drives when they come out. If the speed is still that slow, it'd take nearly a full day to sync parity.

 

Adding a 5TB parity and a few 5TB drives won't be as bad as you've suggested -- these will be either 1TB/platter or possibly even 1.25TB/platter drives ... so they won't slow down the checks at all for the part of the check that includes the other drives => and once you get past all those, the checks will run notably faster, since only the 5TB drives will still be involved in the check.

 

[garycase]

If you can find them, I recommend 4TB Hitachis.

 

A parity check on my rig (4TB drives) takes 9 hours. The new drives, even the Seagate NAS drives, are fast.

 

Any of the 1TB/platter drives will work quite nicely.  I recently built a system for someone else using all 4TB Seagate NAS drives.  Parity checks take 8:11 on that system.

 

[Harpz]

I brought a Toshiba 2TB DT Series Internal Hard Drive, seemed a nice price.

 

http://www.ebuyer.com/461602-toshiba-2tb-dt-series-internal-hard-drive-pa4292e-1hl0

 

In the server it shows up as a Hitachi HDS5C3020BLE630 and after a bit of googling it turns out its a Toshiba DT01ABA200 and according to the site linked it has 1TB Platters.

 

I will probably get a few more now as have had zero issues with this one and replace my older 1TB

 

Thanks for the link to that blog its a great resource, ill check the rest of my drives when i get home now.

 

Should i be aiming for 1TB platters on all my drives if i can?

[tyrindor]

Thanks guys. I'm just going to ensure that my new drives are 1TB platters. Ultimately, I think i'll just replace the 2x 2TB EADS drives with a single 4TB drive and deal with one server being on 667GB platters for the first 2TB of parity checks. They have over 30K power on hours, so I feel like it's only a matter of time before they die on me. I'd rather it not be when another drive has failed. 

 

Double thanks for the link by the way. That site will be incredibly helpful for future purchases.

[garycase]

Should i be aiming for 1TB platters on all my drives if i can?

 

I certainly would 

 

... at least until 1.25 or 1.5 TB platter drives come out 

 

There's speculation -- but not confirmed -- that the 5TB WD Reds coming out in a few months may be 4 1.25TB platters ... but they also may simply be 5 platter drives using 1TB platters.

 

[Harpz]

Should i be aiming for 1TB platters on all my drives if i can?

 

I certainly would 

 

... at least until 1.25 or 1.5 TB platter drives come out 

 

There's speculation -- but not confirmed -- that the 5TB WD Reds coming out in a few months may be 4 1.25TB platters ... but they also may simply be 5 platter drives using 1TB platters.

 

Thanks for the feedback, cant really afford REDS but that's one of the things i love about Unraid, I can use anything could stretch to 1 maybe 2 of the Toshiba (Hitachi)  got 3 slots left to fill

[Harpz]

Decide to check on the drives in my server to see what the platter densities were, was quite surprised, all the drives were old apart from the 3TB and the 2TB Toshiba.

 

Gives me an idea of what ones to replace if i want 1TB / Platter.