Building NAS, running unraid. Best hard drives?
#1
Looking through many online reviews for WD Green 2tb drives I see a lot of negative reviews. Should I be worried about sticking 5 of these in my NAS? Does anyone recommend these drives or should I go with something else?
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#2
I have three of the WD 2TB EARS drives in my unraid server right now. I'd only be concerned if you bought all of them at the same time from the same vendor. Hitachi drives are pretty good as well - you'll find a lot of people on the unraid forums who like them a lot. I have two of the 5k3000 drives.
HTPC: Win 7 Home 64-bit | MB | CPU | GPU | RAM | Case | PSU | Tuner | HDDs: OS, Media | DVD Burner | Remote
Media server: unraid 4.7 | CPU | MB | RAM | Case | PSU | HDDs: Parity-2TB, Data-2x2TB
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#3
go for hitachi 5k diskars... i have 3 of them and ZERO ZERO problems... absolutely perfect drives and i'd reccomend them to anyone. packing 2TB at a very reasonable price, 2TB is where the money is for sure. 3TB is good if u can afford or you NEED expandability in the future but if ur a normal user, 2TB hitachi deskars... no wear jumping from WDEARS etc.
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#4
Right now the 2TB/3TB Hitachi's are considered the best.
Kodi: Kodi 17.4, with Transparency!
50 TB Unraid Server: Docker Apps: SABnzbd, Sickrage, mariaDB
HTPC: Win10 (cause Steam), i7, GTX 1080
Watching on: Panasonic TC65-PS64 with lowend Sony 5.1 HTIB
Other devices: rMBP 15", MBA 13", nvidia shield
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#5
Don't believe any end users who favour one brand over another for reliability. Nobody has access to those figures so all we can tell is by using far too small sample sizes - e.g. I've got 5 drives and no problems, or I've got 1 drive and it failed.

There's two things you need to know about drives for RAID.

First of all those WD green drives have a firmware which will constantly park the heads, this will mean that the drive may have a higher chance of failure later. You might want to disable that (I don't have a link handy) with the tool from WD.

Secondly WD drives don't allow you to enable the TLER feature, which can help preserve a drive in a RAID array when it meets an error, rather than having it drop out. It's not a big deal, however if I was going to go 5 drives in a NAS I'd pick drives where I could enable it.
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#6
Quartermass Wrote:Don't believe any end users who favour one brand over another for reliability. Nobody has access to those figures so all we can tell is by using far too small sample sizes - e.g. I've got 5 drives and no problems, or I've got 1 drive and it failed.

There's two things you need to know about drives for RAID.

First of all those WD green drives have a firmware which will constantly park the heads, this will mean that the drive may have a higher chance of failure later. You might want to disable that (I don't have a link handy) with the tool from WD.

Secondly WD drives don't allow you to enable the TLER feature, which can help preserve a drive in a RAID array when it meets an error, rather than having it drop out. It's not a big deal, however if I was going to go 5 drives in a NAS I'd pick drives where I could enable it.


100% on the nose here!

People poopoo Seagate all the time but the funny thing is, Seagate is the #1 used drive for Tier 1 system builders (Dell & HP) for high-end workstations, servers, and storage arrays. They would not use them if the failure rate was high. This is fact, I personally know the storage product manager for Dell globally.
I'm not an expert but I play one at work.
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#7
This company has over 9,000 HDs, they're also using the Hitachis:

http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/20/pet...e-secrets/
Kodi: Kodi 17.4, with Transparency!
50 TB Unraid Server: Docker Apps: SABnzbd, Sickrage, mariaDB
HTPC: Win10 (cause Steam), i7, GTX 1080
Watching on: Panasonic TC65-PS64 with lowend Sony 5.1 HTIB
Other devices: rMBP 15", MBA 13", nvidia shield
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#8
Hitachi's are good drives, no doubt but remember all companies copy each other and drives are 98-99% the same materials, manufacturing, technology, etc.

A few things to think about...

1) Many articles like you linked to, they are often marketing collaborations. They don't say the drives are stock (no mods, firmware tweaks, etc). Mod to firmware adn tweaks to the array controllers/software usually happens when partnering with a company to build a solution like that.

2) 9000 drives is nothing... HP & Dell ship more than that in a day.

3) in a SOHO enviro most of this makes no difference... drives running in a datacenter enviro is 1000x different than a SOHO RAID set that will likely be powered down 50% (or more) of the time or more, very low utilization when used (in comparison), and running in a low temp enviro.

What I'm saying is they are all pretty darn good... in a SOHO RAID array most of the comparisons/issues are not relevant.
I'm not an expert but I play one at work.
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#9
i suggest you read poofyhairguy's [unRAID] recommandations...
as far as i know,
he tried almost all consumer 2TB drives on the market
and he gives use his order of preference....
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=94268
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#10
Quartermass Wrote:Don't believe any end users who favour one brand over another for reliability. Nobody has access to those figures so all we can tell is by using far too small sample sizes - e.g. I've got 5 drives and no problems, or I've got 1 drive and it failed.

There's two things you need to know about drives for RAID.

First of all those WD green drives have a firmware which will constantly park the heads, this will mean that the drive may have a higher chance of failure later. You might want to disable that (I don't have a link handy) with the tool from WD.

Secondly WD drives don't allow you to enable the TLER feature, which can help preserve a drive in a RAID array when it meets an error, rather than having it drop out. It's not a big deal, however if I was going to go 5 drives in a NAS I'd pick drives where I could enable it.
All good points but kind of irrelevant to the OP's situation. If he is using unraid on his NAS then he need not worry about the TLER issue and, like you said, the head parking issue (which I believe would impact any linux based server) can be disabled. But I do agree that there is not much difference between all the major HDD OEMs and the online reviews can sometimes be misleading. So get whatever drive you want just don't buy them all at the same time from the same supplier. If you do and that lot has a defect/problem then all your drives could fail at about the same time.
HTPC: Win 7 Home 64-bit | MB | CPU | GPU | RAM | Case | PSU | Tuner | HDDs: OS, Media | DVD Burner | Remote
Media server: unraid 4.7 | CPU | MB | RAM | Case | PSU | HDDs: Parity-2TB, Data-2x2TB
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#11
eskro Wrote:i suggest you read poofyhairguy's [unRAID] recommandations...
as far as i know,
he tried almost all consumer 2TB drives on the market
and he gives use his order of preference....
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=94268
I'm sure this will be controversial but what the hell...
By no means am I doubting poofy's knowledge, but he is just one person. I don't know what the yearly global production numbers are on HDDs but I'm sure it's really big. So should we decide how to purchase hardware based on a single person's recommendation? How likely is it that his experiences with the few drives that he has purchased are representative of the total worldwide population of HDDs? It's nice to hear what others have experienced but you have to be careful to not go too far.
HTPC: Win 7 Home 64-bit | MB | CPU | GPU | RAM | Case | PSU | Tuner | HDDs: OS, Media | DVD Burner | Remote
Media server: unraid 4.7 | CPU | MB | RAM | Case | PSU | HDDs: Parity-2TB, Data-2x2TB
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#12
Dont't forget to use the preclear script available from the Unraid forums to break in or stress-test your new drives. Many Unraid users recommend running multiple cycles on each drive before adding it to your array.
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#13
wsume99 Wrote:I'm sure this will be controversial but what the hell...
By no means am I doubting poofy's knowledge, but he is just one person. I don't know what the yearly global production numbers are on HDDs but I'm sure it's really big. So should we decide how to purchase hardware based on a single person's recommendation? How likely is it that his experiences with the few drives that he has purchased are representative of the total worldwide population of HDDs? It's nice to hear what others have experienced but you have to be careful to not go too far.

His recommendations are all based on facts rather than perceived reliability.

His recommendations are to go for normal, non-WD drives. He then suggests WD green drives (and says not for RAID) and then the other two. He justifies it clearly too. I can't find fault with his recommendations.
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#14
I tried software Raid on a Win2008R2 server running 4x1.5Tb WD Green drives.

FAIL. (after 12 weeks)

All was going well until one disc got a bad block and couldnt resync the parity.


Moved all of the drives to an unraid setup and it has been going for over a year with just two reboots (due to adding a cache drive and renovations).

Suggest that you go without a Cache drive, as mine failed and caused a my heart to skip a few beats until I realised that my data was ok.
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#15
wsume99 Wrote:By no means am I doubting poofy's knowledge, but he is just one person. I don't know what the yearly global production numbers are on HDDs but I'm sure it's really big. So should we decide how to purchase hardware based on a single person's recommendation? How likely is it that his experiences with the few drives that he has purchased are representative of the total worldwide population of HDDs? It's nice to hear what others have experienced but you have to be careful to not go too far.

I have two Unraid servers with over twenty drives between them. In my second Unraid server I have almost EVERY consumer 1.5TB and 2TB drive on the market (missing 1.5TB & 2TB WD Black) and I have tested them extensively. I have checked all over the internet and the Unraid forum and I think I am the only person that has such an array.

Proof:

Image

So yes I am a single person, but I think I have relevant experience that allows me to help the community. Please note I try not to make claims about reliability (unless there is software problems **Samsung***), just about general performance and compatibility. I have had every brand crap up on me at least once with how many drives I have. Google says Hitachi drives are most reliable, and they buy way more drives than me so I believe them (Hitachi's RMA service is the worst though, WD's is best).

Same thing with HTPCs- I have more HTPCs than anyone I bet (I have more HTPCs than I have TVs) all made with different parts and vendors so I can test and comment on them all.

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Building NAS, running unraid. Best hard drives?0