Promo on drives (its a MIR so dont think you can buy mutiple and its a visa card)

 

http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Intellipower-Desktop-WD20EARS/dp/B002ZCXK0I/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1294212589&sr=8-1

 

Reed

Read the fine print on the Rebate Form.  It says:

 

"Offer is limited to five (5) rebates per customer/name/address."

even on the forum it self

 

WD Serial Number(s)

 

Plural

 

That's a pretty good deal

I'm more with keeping a good performance level. I'll always try to use the WD Black drives. The problem with that is they NEVER go on sale. DO THEY?

 

 

for unRAID and lots of storage I have no problems recommending these drives. Just install the jumper on pin 7 & 8 and run them ragged.

I'm more with keeping a good performance level. I'll always try to use the WD Black drives. The problem with that is they NEVER go on sale. DO THEY?

What do you use your server for?  I find that green drives are plenty fast for what I do (media streaming).  Combined with a WD Black cache drive, I find I get a good combo of power savings, cost, and speed (when I need it during initial transfers).

I user my server for everything. Web, email, http, my docs share, movie share, media player, ftp server, you name it. Since I have so many services running I do need it running the best it can.

I user my server for everything. Web, email, http, my docs share, movie share, media player, ftp server, you name it. Since I have so many services running I do need it running the best it can.

 

You do all this on the unRAID OS? On the same server that runs unRAID?

Wirh modifications, yes.

I user my server for everything. Web, email, http, my docs share, movie share, media player, ftp server, you name it. Since I have so many services running I do need it running the best it can.

 

You do all this on the unRAID OS? On the same server that runs unRAID?

 

No, I don't do all this with unRAID...I just a full blown Linux distro for all the other services and on that server use the WD Black drives also. I'm wondering what people are getting on the write/read speeds with the 5400 rpm drives?

 

 

Write speeds are limited by the parity update. The parity drive has to be read and the updated parity is written back. This is why people use a cache drive to speed up writing. Reads are limited by the gigabit ethernet and protocol overhead. Most new drives, even 5400, can saturate gigabit ethernet.

The WD20EARS are definitely one of the best bang-for-your-buck drives. 2TB for dirt cheap and the 64mb cache really helps for streaming. I've found these drives (I have one of the 2TB and a few 1.5TBs) are better than my Seagate 1.5TB which are 7200rpm (smaller cache though).

 

Definitely come highly recommended. They don't get hot and use very little power.

 

The WD20EARS are definitely one of the best bang-for-your-buck drives. 2TB for dirt cheap and the 64mb cache really helps for streaming. I've found these drives (I have one of the 2TB and a few 1.5TBs) are better than my Seagate 1.5TB which are 7200rpm (smaller cache though).

 

Definitely come highly recommended. They don't get hot and use very little power.

 

 

What are the average read speeds of the 5400 drives? Do they get over 100mb/sec and sustain that speed?

 

 

What are the average read speeds of the 5400 drives? Do they get over 100mb/sec and sustain that speed?

 

When I precleared a Samsung F3 2TB for a friend, it peaked at around 90MB/s and ended around 45MB/s.  When I preclear a 7200 rpm Hitachi, I get 120MB/s to 60 MB/s, which is exactly what you would expect from a 50% rotational speed difference.  The average read speed and sustained speeds will always vary based on platter position.  But if you want 100MB/s, you won't get that from a 5400 rpm drive.  And the 7200 rpm drives won't sustain that much beyond the first 25% of the disk.

What are the average read speeds of the 5400 drives? Do they get over 100mb/sec and sustain that speed?

 

All drives should be capable of sustaining 100mb/s (megabits/sec). Did you mean 100MB/s (megabytes/sec)? Yes, there is a fundamental difference between the two beyond capitalization.

What is the highest throughput people are seeing on gig-e? The highest I've heard is 70MBps using a SSD. So a drive that can sustain 70 should be all you need.

 

Sustained rate is not solely determined by rotational speed. The higher areal density of new drives makes some new 5400 RPM drives have a higher sustained rate than older 7200 RPM drives.

I mean MB/sec.

For what reason are you looking for sustained 100MB/sec, any particular applications in mind?

Just for comparison, a Bluray's bitrate would be encoded at (max) 40Mbps.. Theoretically, you would need about 5MB/s to stream that (40Mbps/8 = 5).. 5MB/s sustained is still 300MB per minute and 18GB per hour.

 

Unless you're doing a lot of file copying and need to get things over quickly, I'm not sure what kind of applications require the 100MB/s sustained you are looking for.

 

 

My applications do not require 100MB/sec, but I do. 

 

 

The network will not sustain 100MBps.

You will need to run higher grade networking than even Gigabit to sustain 100 MB/s.

My applications do not require 100MB/sec, but I do. 

 

 

Why do you require it?

 

If you're looking to break any speed records, better find a different NAS appliance/server