I see the WD 2TB EARS on sale now for $125 AMIR, but I'm reading so many bad reviews. 

...but I'm reading so many bad reviews.   

The transition to 4k disk sectors is hapening, and the disk manufacturers won't be going back.

All those "bad reviews" you're reading, they are revolve around the making of current systems work (better) with the new format.

 

I originally had 5 Seagate 1.5TB 7200RPM drives in my array. I was getting around 70KB/sec for the overall rate when doing a parity check.

 

I replaced ALL 5 Seagate drives with 5 WD20EARS (jumpered) and I was getting around 73KB/sec for the overall rate during a parity check.

 

I don't know if that's indicative of overall performance, but it seems to have been fine for me. I've just finished replacing the drives and the array has been in place for only a couple of days but it seems ok in the sense that I've seen other problems but I don't think they're related to the drives itself.

That's a nice test.... no other variables changed other than the drives.  Thanks!

 

Have you tested writes to the array?

That's a nice test.... no other variables changed other than the drives.  Thanks!

 

Have you tested writes to the array?

Yeah, for me they seem about the same but the peaks seem slightly higher at times using Teracopy. For example, with the Seagate 1.5TB drives, I would get anywhere from 25-38MB when writing video files around 350-700MB. With the WD20EARS drives, I seem to get around 30-40MB when writing video files. They're not the exact same files (different episodes of TV shows) so its possible I'm skewing it somewhat and its possible I'm just catching the Teracopy outputs at different stages.

 

This is without a cache drive and I get similar results writing directly to the drive or the user share. I don't see much difference.

 

This was done from the same PC.

Here is a recent roundup of 2TB drives.  Does a good job illustrating the strengths and weaknesses on sequential performance, access time and power consumption.

 

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/2tb-7200rpm.html

 

 

Yeah, for me they seem about the same but the peaks seem slightly higher at times using Teracopy.

 

Which version of unRAID?  If not 4.5.3, I'd be interested in the change you see when going to 4.5.3.

Gary,

 

Thanks for the excellent link.  I haven't seen detailed startup currents for several years.  It shows that the startup current is closely coupled with manufacturer and not rotation speed!  It gives some nice detailed data that would be very helpful in sizing power supplies.

Thanks for the excellent link.  I haven't seen detailed startup currents for several years.  It shows that the startup current is closely coupled with manufacturer and not rotation speed!  It gives some nice detailed data that would be very helpful in sizing power supplies.

 

Glad you found it useful.  I didn't point it out previously, but there is a link on the first page of the roundup that references an earlier roundup they did which compared the 5400-5900 RPM drives of similar size.  This may be useful for some here who are contemplating the tradeoffs between power consumption and performance for "green" drives vs the 7200 RPM variety.