10% off any Seagate HDD (up to $10 off)

[Rajahal]

10% or up to $10 off any Seagate HDD with promo EMCYXNR36 (expires 9/25/2010)

 

So for example the 2 TB Seagate LP comes out to $99.99 + free shipping.

[poofyhairguy]

That makes the 1.5tb super cheap as well...

[Rajahal]

The 1.5 TB is out of stock...

 

The only option is this Open Box model, which doesn't have free shipping.  Comes out to $81.65 for me...still a decent deal, but not as good as the 2 TB.

[flybynight]

They also have the Hitachi 2Tb 7200rpm drive for the same price, with a $30 off coupon code, shown here.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145298

 

Any preference in brands out there? I used to be all Seagate, then I had a string of bad luck with their 7200.11 1Tb drives failing - one was even their ES series. They were under warranty, but still a hassle. I'm sure it was just bad luck, but it kind of soured me on the brand. Plus, I would think that a 7200rpm drive would be faster and preferred.

[Rajahal]

If you want a 7200 rpm drive, the Hitachi is the best option.  Personally, I prefer green drives, so I use exclusively WD Greens, Samsung EcoGreens, and Seagate LPs (and that is the order of my preference).  Keep in mind that WD Greens need a jumper, and Seagates may need a firmware update.

[flybynight]

If you want a 7200 rpm drive, the Hitachi is the best option.  Personally, I prefer green drives, so I use exclusively WD Greens, Samsung EcoGreens, and Seagate LPs (and that is the order of my preference).  Keep in mind that WD Greens need a jumper, and Seagates may need a firmware update.

Is that just to keep your energy consumption down? Or are the green drives more reliable because of the lower spin speed? (Just a theory in my head.)

Curious if you have tested the difference in speed. Perhaps for your application or patience level, speed is not an issue?   

[Rajahal]

Yes, it is to keep energy consumption and heat production down.  I live in a hot environment (at least in the summer), so heat is an issue for me.  The few 7200 rpm drives I have (which are older Seagates and WDs, no Hitachis) consistently run in the high 30s or low 40s, whereas my green drives (WD, Samsung, and Seagate) all run in the mid to high 30s.  I feel the later is a much more comfortable temperature.  My ambient temperatures are around 26 C (which is significantly hotter than the average ambient room temperature of 20 C).

 

I haven't found green drives to be any more or less reliable than 7200 rpm drives.  They are the same as far as I can tell.  However, my oldest green drive is probably a year or less old, so I can't really comment on the time-test with green drives.  Many of my several year old 7200 rpm drives are still kicking.

 

I haven't tested the difference in speed for 2 TB drives since I don't own any Hitachi drives.  However, now that I've got unMenu installed and running, I can provide you with speed tests for my various green drives (I expect the 5900 rpm Seagate LP will be the fastest, but we'll see).

 

I also generally use a cache drive, so the speed of my parity and data drives is far less important.  Using an old 320 GB 7200 rpm 8mb cache Seagate drive as a cache drive, I generally get 60-70mb/s writes to my server.  This is at least twice as fast as the fastest you can expect to write directly to the array, even if you do use only 7200 rpm drives.

[klipsch]

I've got 2 seagates and 1 hitachi ... all are 7200 rpm ... during preclear the seagates ran 5-7 degrees hotter and continue to run 5 degrees hotter during read/write usage ...

 

 

Used the Hitachi as the partiy as it yielded 108 mB/s whereas the Seagates were low 90's (again during preclear)...

 

I avg 29-32 mB/s writes ... I've peaked at 42 mB/s and seen as low as 22, but generally hit just at 30 ...

my file sizes vary from 5 mB to 33 gB ... file size over the long run has little to no impact on t file transfer speed for my small array (only writing to two data drives at once)

 

After seeing the power consumption difference between green vs non-green and temps I see no reason to go green other than price ... of course, this all varies by brand ... I'll need to search for that webpage, though I know this forum had a post on amps and possibnly temps by brand and rpm model

 

 

Edit:

from another forum post by ohlwiler

 

"http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/15-2tb-hdd-roundup_18.html#sect0

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/2tb-7200rpm_18.html#sect0

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/1tb-2tb-roundup-2_16.html#sect0

 

 

Start current for 12 volts

 

5400-5900 rpm

2TB WD Green 1.41 or 1.51

2TB Samsung F3 1.46

2TB Seagate LP 2.34

 

7200 rpm

2TB WD Black 1.60

2TB Hitachi 7K2000 1.91

2TB Seagate XT 2.39

 

Drive manufacturer has more to do with current requirements than rpm. The 2 amp per drive is a good rule of thumb no matter the drive speed."

 

 

[Rajahal]

Personally, I'm less concerned with the start current and more concerned with the idle usage, since most of my drives idle most of the time.  On average, each of my drives spins up maybe once or twice a day (actually probably less).  Once it spins up, it generally stays spun up for several hours (seeding torrents, which I expect correlates to random reads).  

 

See here for some hard data:

 

Xbit Power Consumption Review (same as the middle link above)

 

You'll see that while the start current on the green drives isn't much less than the 7200 rpm drives, the idle usage is just over half what is used by the 7200 rpm drives.  The random reads are much lower as well.

 

So in the long run, you will most likely save energy (and money) by using green drives, though your server's usage patterns factor into that as well.  For example, you may be able to rearrange your data so that all your torrents seed from one or two large drives, so that your 5 or 6 small drives can stay spun down as much as possible.  Chances are this will save you even more energy/money, even if your one or two large drives are 7200 rpm and your 5 or 6 small drives are all green.

 

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/1tb-2tb-roundup-2_16.html

 

Hey look, it's my avatar    I had forgotten where I found it.

[klipsch]

So you are saving 3-5 watts per drive ... at worst with a complete 20 driver vs 20 drives system, you are looking at 80 watts on avg ... and if you leave it on 24 hours a day ... you would save around $100/year if your electricity is around 15 cents/kWh

 

in real world scenarios (again, on 24 hours a day), the longer amount of time you have to have your box on (not in sleep) to account for the loss in speed (~10-15 mB/sec) for writes and reads (for those of us that only have their boxes on during use and in S3 the remainder of time this scenario doesn't apply), I would imagine the price difference in kWh becomes $30-$50?

 

just speculating for objective informational purposes ...

 

with an avg usage scenario of maybe 2 hours a day of the box being on (out of S3 sleep) ... I would assume it all becomes negligible ... like when they tell you you can save $24/year by switching to CFL bulbs from incadescent, yet you can buy 12 incadescent bulbs for $5 and 1 CFL bulb for $18 ... how much are you really saving in total cost of ownershipt (especially when you use dimmers)

[wsume99]

klipsch, you have a good point here.  Althought I doubt that most users are reading from their array anywhere close to the max speed of the array.  You'd have to be streaming A LOT of media before you approached the max read speed.  Now writing could be a different story but probably not a big issue for most users.

 

The bottom line is that many users do not leave their servers on 24x7 but instead utilize s3 like you mention (I know I do).  This whole discussion simply reinforces just how great unRAID really is.  It is so flexible that you can take just about any conglomeration of drives and throw them together into a case and turn them into a relatively low power/cost media server and the drives don't even have to be 'green'.  By spinning down drives when not in use and utilizing s3 sleep the traditional benefit to owning green HDDs is largely minimized.  When I purchase a hard drive I look at (in order of importance to me for my unRAID server) upfront cost, reliability (via user feedback), warranty, performance, and finally operating cost.  Operating cost is last beacuse if I'm going to use it in unRAID I know that for my situation (spindown + s3) power usage is just not that important and lately I find myself spending just a few dollars more to get a drive with a longer warranty (i.e. WD Cavair Black is 5 years vs. 3 years for WD Cavair Green).

[Rajahal]

Good discussion here.  I agree that if you spin up your drives only 2 hours per day and use S3 sleep at all other times, then green drives aren't going to make much of a difference, you may as well enjoy the better performance of 7200 rpm drives.  However, I don't use S3 sleep since at least one of my drives is almost always spun up seeding torrents.  So the idle energy usage of all the other drives is an important factor in my server.

 

Also, I'm sorry that energy efficient light bulbs are so expensive in your area...I can buy 5 or 10 packs at home depot for around $20-$30.  Still a bit more expensive than incandescent bulbs, but nothing nearly as drastic as what you describe.

[wsume99]

It really comes down to whether or not you are going to run your server 24x7 or not.  If you are and your energy useage/cost is important to you then you should plan on using green drives.

[klipsch]

Good discussion here.  I agree that if you spin up your drives only 2 hours per day and use S3 sleep at all other times, then green drives aren't going to make much of a difference, you may as well enjoy the better performance of 7200 rpm drives.  However, I don't use S3 sleep since at least one of my drives is almost always spun up seeding torrents.  So the idle energy usage of all the other drives is an important factor in my server.

 

Also, I'm sorry that energy efficient light bulbs are so expensive in your area...I can buy 5 or 10 packs at home depot for around $20-$30.  Still a bit more expensive than incandescent bulbs, but nothing nearly as drastic as what you describe.

 

Using unRAID with torrents ... no wonder you have like 4 unRAID boxes!

 

It is ok about the bulbs ... I use the excess heat during the winter from my incadescents to heat the house 

[klipsch]

It really comes down to whether or not you are going to run your server 24x7 or not.  If you are and your energy useage/cost is important to you then you should plan on using green drives.

 

agreed. 

 

I'm still just a small fry in the world of unRAID.  only using a 3 disk setup, but am going to need to add another 2 TB drive or so quickly ... just seeing if I can hold out until black friday (hoping to see 2 TB for under $90)

 

thus far I've opted for the 7200rpm variety which has come in handy when copying ripped blu-rays and photo-editing ... I've only got 5 consumers (usually on 3 simultaneously: my HTPC, lady friend's PC and HTPC) ... usually have at least 1 ripped blu-ray or ripped DVD and photography editing, exporting etc going on while the  (girlfriend puts on movies/tv shows while working on her side business of photography)

 

that probably hardly touches the read speed and I dunno if I'd notice the few extra minutes during the whole rip and copy process of my movie collection

 

thanks for sharing your experiences and opinions

[wsume99]

You might see them under $90 before then.  You can catch them on a deal for around $93-94 now and it's been trending down over the past few months.

[sbukolt]

If you want a 7200 rpm drive, the Hitachi is the best option.  Personally, I prefer green drives, so I use exclusively WD Greens, Samsung EcoGreens, and Seagate LPs (and that is the order of my preference).  Keep in mind that WD Greens need a jumper, and Seagates may need a firmware update.

 

I'm running several of the WD20EADS models (green drive) and they have been working fine without any jumpers.

[wsume99]

The WD EADS drives are actually an older vintage than the EARS drives.  The EARS drives are a new advanced format drive using 4Kb sectors instead of the standard of 512 bytes used on the EADS drives.  In order to achieve the best performance with unRAID you need to be using a drive with 512 byte sectors.  If you install a jumper across pins 7&8 on any WD EARS drive it forces the drive to act like it has 512 byte sectors.  Since the EADS drives natively have 512 byte sectors you don't need the jumper.  Bottom line, EADS and EARS (w/ jumper on pins 7 & can be used in unRAID without any problems.

[justme]

Hi, been lurking for a while. Great product and site. Anyway...

 

If anyone's interested the Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB 5900 RPM(ST32000542AS) was/is a shell shocker early this morning. It comes to $94.99 with free shipping. It's the same one Rajahal linked to in the first post of this thread. I just checked and the deal is still good of as this post.

 

Now hopefully NewEgg will get the Hitachi back in stock before the price goes back up. :'( I want one for my Parity drive.