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HITACHI 2TB 7200 RPM on sale 99.99 ends 09/30/2010


Tight_wad

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Do these Hitachi drives do well in the UnRaid?  Looks like a good deal   http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145298&nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL092410&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL092410-_-EMC-092410-Index-_-InternalHardDrives-_-22145298-L0A

 

Use code EMCYXNR28  and they are on 99.99 each. plus free shipping

They do very well...  I've got three in one of my servers.  They are fast... (but not green)
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Unlike most promo code specials that only apply to the first item ordered - this one applies to any quantity (up to 5 on these droves!).  Although says special through 9/30, my guess is they will sell out sooner.

 

These Hitachi drives are at the top of my list right now.  No advanced formatting nor complaints on the forum to indicate quality issues.  For a 7200 RPM drive, temperature is well controlled (cooler than my 750G 7200RPM Seagates).  With one of these as parity and another as data, performance to the write protected array would be maximized -good for drives that are frequently written to  (like disks for backups, digital photos, and personal files). 

 

Seagate LP is my current choice for "green" drives.  Firmware issues are a PITA, but drives seem solid after updates.

 

WD, with the advanced format drives issues of the EARS have scared me off.  Price would have to be low for me to test these waters.  Too bad, because the 1T EACS and EADS were awesome for unRAID.

 

Never gone Samsung - reported issues with accurate temperature reporting and they are also moving to advanced formatting (although at least these come with large sectors disabled OOTB).

 

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A review for the experts to debate.

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

I'm ordering one now.

The review was an interesting read.  For me the fact that the Hitachi was in the middle of the pack is not a issue.  The fact that is uses more heads, and more platter surfaces is a plus in unRAID when read->write operations are needed.

 

One statistic I did not see was the idle current when spun down.  The Hitachi 5 Volt supply current was quite a bit less than the "green" drive, so it is theoretically possible for it to be more "green" when spun down than the drive advertised as "green"

 

The older, less dense data on more platters might help to explain why we see less un-readable sectors than on more densely packed platters.  (The technology is more mature)

 

I think I might order one or two more myself.

 

Joe L.

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A review for the experts to debate.

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

I'm ordering one now.

 

I don't get the articles conclusion.  It basically sounds like they put the Hitachi at the bottom of their list,  "utterly hopeless under loads typical of desktop PCs".

 

Yet in almost all their benchmarks, the only drives beating the Hitachi (even in 4k, 512k random typical in desktops) are the RE4's and Caviar Blacks, and  sometimes the Barracuda XT.  And usually when one of them was faster, it was only about 10% faster.  I'll gladly trade 10% for $75-$150 less money.  At the Hitachi price point, that would mean I could double my storage for a 10% performance hit.  Good trade off for a server!

 

It's reviews like this that had me marking Hitachi off my list.  Other benchmarking sites also scored it as the worst 2TB drive on the market, even below the WD and Samsung Green drives.  At the insistence of others, I disregarded reviews like this and other benchmarks and bought one to put through my own tests.  And I'm glad I did because it is one of my favorite drives out there for storage and streaming video operations.

 

I use this drive as my parity drive, because on my benchmarking platform, it outperformed every other drive I own, including 1TB Caviar Blacks.  I had never tested multi-threading performance (guess I wasn't thinking about that), but it would be very important for your parity drive (writing to multiple drives at the same time).  Nice to know it blows everything else out of the water in multi-threading.

 

This is what I hate about all these drive deals...  I would have much rather had the Hitachi than the Samsung drive.  I'm not worried about being green or power consumption, and the Hitachi performance would have been superior.

 

I may order another one anyway....

 

I also see lots of reviews that say the Hitachi's run really hot, but mine has never went above 35C, and is usually 33-34C.  My 1TB Caviar Black is usually 37C, so I don't see the Hitachi as hot at all.  Maybe I just got lucky with my one.   Hmm... maybe I need to buy another for comparisons sake.

 

How much unused space do you need to have before spending to buy more is a sign of a problem?  :)

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I have this drive as my parity drive also. Very happy with it. Temps in line with my WD20EADS drives 29-31C. My Seagate always shows about 3C cooler but since it'll read 3C cooler after initial bootup than the other drives, I just use that as a differential.

 

Also wish I saw this before yesterday's Samsung 2TB else I would be getting one of these.

 

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Well that figures - I just bought a Seagate 2TB yesterday! My one and only WD 2TB is giving me drive errors when I try to write to it and I need to swap it out. I skipped the Samsung - no trust there. I have ordered up TWO of these Hitachi though, I need a couple of drives around. Running with an injusred drive makes me nervous!

 

Appreciate the tip off on this and the comments about it. Thankfully I don't need super high speed just reliability and I sure wish my WD had provided that - I guess I get to see what their return policy is like here soon...

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Thanks for all the info on these drives.  I put my order in for 2 of them today.  Should get here about the time I get done switching 2 drives out for new Seagate 1.5tbs that I just purchased on sale.

 

  Hopefully the won't be to much warmer then my other drives, but I was planning on purchasing more case fans for my CM 590 any way.  I run at an average of 39c with my drives right now, and that is 2c less than I was doing before I blocked off the extra fan ports last night.

 

  If I could get rid of my son's xbox 360 (wow they put out alot of heat) I could probably drop a few more!

 

 

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The Xbox 360 Slim or the Xbox 360 Jasper models barely put out any heat at all. They've improved them a lot over the years. IIRC, launch models were upto 205 watts, with Slims being under 100 watts. http://www.anandtech.com/show/3774/welcome-to-valhalla-inside-the-new-250gb-xbox-360-slim/3

 

I've got a slim, and it still pumps out quite a bit of heat.  I don't know how it compares to my old launch model, but it is hot to the touch around the top vents.  My slim is in my main entertainment center (wood), which has all the components in four large compartments (each is 5U rack mount sized).Two doors with lexan windows cover the compartments.  There is a common false back with holes for cabling and air circulation.  Behind the false back is an open area for cable management.  Because of my Dish HD DVR (which pumps out tons of heat), and my launch Xbox 360 (another ton of heat), I had to install two 120 mm Scythe silent fans and a fan controller with thermostat inside the false back to circulate air and remove some heat.  The 360 launch (and now the 360 slim that replaced it) sit in one compartment with nothing else other than a Wii and a controller charger.

 

Anyway, the thermostat was set to 40C (104F).  With everything off (but the controller charger), the fans never turn on.  With only my receiver and Oppo on watching a movie, the fans will kick on and off (about a 70/30 duty cycle) unless I just really crank it.  With only the Dish DVR on, they run constantly.  With only the launch 360 on, they would run constantly.  Now, with only the new slim on, they will still run constantly.  It may be an improvement, by my opinion is that the slim is still too hot (probably at least 120F top surface temp).  Its still easily the 2nd hottest piece of gear in my entertainment center, and gets hotter than my receiver.  Only my Dish DVR runs hotter (and it was hotter than the 360 launch too).

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