Which 3 TB drive should I buy?


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I am a unRAID noobie. Bought 2 each Seagate GoFlex 3Tb USB3 external hard drives with ST3000M001 drives http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/barracuda-data-sheet-ds1737.1-1111us.pdf from Best Buy when they were on sale for $149 each last week, had a bunch of gift cards totaling $200. So 6TB for $98! Ripped the USB3 cases off and put into my second build of a budget minded unRAID server. My first build was as a learning experience and to evaluate unRAID using 3 each 250GB hard drives. Was apprehensive concerning unRAID and the motherboard recognizing the full capacity of the 3TB drives. Preclear passed! No problems so far. The 4GB of data copied over was fine. Did a parity check and no errors. Read write through put with just the 2 each 3TB drives was in the 35-40 range from the win7 dialog box. write has since slowed a little with the other drives installed. Still need to do a rebuild check.

 

Majority of parts came from boneyard or other computers on hand.

Optiplex 760 (stable, quite, fast computer but most parts are proprietary Dell)

8ram

using motherboard sata controller

stock 305w power supply

 

parity 3TB

disk1 3TB

disk2 2TB

disk3 1TB

disk4 1TB

disk 5 320GB cache (pending sil card)

 

 

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Watch that power supply, there is a good chance that it is a multi-rail model and it won't support many more drives than you currently have.

 

If you do ever decide to change out the power supply, the other thing to watch in that regard is that since it's a Dell power supply and motherboard, the connections between the two might not follow standard ATX motherboard standards and a regular power supply from another manufacturer may not be an easy replacement.  They don't use the same voltage / pin numbering on some models.  The Optiplex 760 might be OK - but it's important to check.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 3 months later...

warranty is king in my opinion, next is reliability. sure it's a pain having to RMA a faulty drive but if they have >3 years warranty I don't want to know.

 

Now, after Thailand the game has changed somewhat in this respect hasn't it? So I thought it would be useful to compile this list of drives and their warranty lengths.

 

Seagate ST3000DM001 - 2 years

Western Digital WD30EZRX - 2 years

Hitachi 5k3000 - 3 years (if you can find one)

 

I personally wouldn't trust any other brands, and I personally wouldn't trust Seagate either. With the Hitachi supply issues it looks like the WD drives are the best option for the moment sadly. With the Toshiba buy out of Hitachi is it likely that the 5k3000 series are dead?

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They are way too expensive, you might as well get the hitachi then

 

Well I would get the Hitachi 3TB if I could find it. The fact of the matter is that they just aren't available anymore (at least here). If we look at the prices for what is available on Newegg in CAN $:

 

Seagate ST3000DM001 3TB: $170

WD WD30EZRX 3TB: $180

WD WD30EURS 3TB: $200

WD WD30EFRX 3TB: $180

 

So, yeah...hopefully the prices will drop some more. The red drives are similar in price with others. I am not hopefully that they will drop to preflood levels. I think I'll get two red drives and see how they are. Then maybe get a few more.

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IMO WD Red > Hitachi

 

Just my 2c :)

 

How? Certainly not in performance or warranty.

 

Sorry that was just a "personal preference from experience with different manufacturers comment" and I didn't do any research before making it. Assuming the Hitachi's are 5YR/2MHr MTBF Enterprise drives for the same price then they do seem like a better choice. Hitachi = WD now anyway, has anyone had to deal with Hitachi's warranty procedures? I know WDs is quite good & fast by comparison to some- does this mean the drives can be sent back to WD now?

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wd green 3tb ezrx purchased 3 from local WD distributor and all 3 have been replaced.  now one is starting to throw smart errors, preclear failed.  Either I have incredibly bad luck, have no idea what Im doing, or these 6 were all from the same stock. They were purchased 3 at a time and returned 3 at a time which could be the problem. 2 months old

 

Sooo...now with hitachi gone samsung drives gone I have to choose from WD or seagate?

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wd green 3tb ezrx purchased 3 from local WD distributor and all 3 have been replaced.  now one is starting to throw smart errors, preclear failed.  Either I have incredibly bad luck, have no idea what Im doing, or these 6 were all from the same stock. They were purchased 3 at a time and returned 3 at a time which could be the problem. 2 months old

 

Sooo...now with hitachi gone samsung drives gone I have to choose from WD or seagate?

 

There is really no telling what the issue might be, but once you start returning drives, you typically are not getting "new" drives. The new WD Red drives with longer warranty might be an option.

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So I have been looking into adding a few drives...  Currently run various 8 =<2TB drives.

 

While reading customer reviews of the 3/4TB drives, I did see a lot of talk about GPT partitions and UEFI support on motherboards to use data over 2TB...  Are these concerns for unraid servers?

 

I am running a SuperMicro C2SEE board with a single M1015 8 port card...  Would I have to upgrade for <2TB?

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So I have been looking into adding a few drives...  Currently run various 8 =<2TB drives.

 

While reading customer reviews of the 3/4TB drives, I did see a lot of talk about GPT partitions and UEFI support on motherboards to use data over 2TB...  Are these concerns for unraid servers?

 

I am running a SuperMicro C2SEE board with a single M1015 8 port card...  Would I have to upgrade for <2TB?

 

You do need to verify the controller supports >2TB (M1015 does). UnRAID 5 does support >2TB.

 

So you are good for 3 and 4 TB drives.

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So I have been looking into adding a few drives...  Currently run various 8 =<2TB drives.

 

While reading customer reviews of the 3/4TB drives, I did see a lot of talk about GPT partitions and UEFI support on motherboards to use data over 2TB...  Are these concerns for unraid servers?

 

I am running a SuperMicro C2SEE board with a single M1015 8 port card...  Would I have to upgrade for <2TB?

 

You do need to verify the controller supports >2TB (M1015 does). UnRAID 5 does support >2TB.

 

So you are good for 3 and 4 TB drives.

 

Cool thanks... No only have to decide what HDDs to get, seems like there are sooo few choices compared to the past.

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