Hard drives for my File Server

[kopite]

Hey all,

My home file server's current hard drives are starting to fail so I am looking to replace them.

I've been looking at 4TB drives in particular the Red drives and was wondering if these are a good choice. The server hosts all my music and tv stuff which i stream from. Would the Blacks be a better option?

Cheers

[jim]

For a server, I would be looking at low power, low speed drives. Less noise, and less heat. There's no point buying a black which is designed to be high speed.

The WD Reds are designed for NAS units, so should be fine. I would consider either WD Greens, WD Reds, or another brand, e.g. Seagate at 5400/5900 rpm.

[shaithis]

I'd go with reds tbh. I'm sick of pulling Seagates at the moment and the 3 year warranty on the WD reds make them the right price IMO. Rated 24x7 operation and has the intellipoint found on the greens for low power operation.

[DanceswithUnix]

The Black is supposed to be the same hardware as the Red, but the firmware is changed to play better in a NAS. So Red is the one to go for of the two.

Greens are supposed to have problems with sometimes dropping out of a raid group as unresponsive.

Another possible would be NAS rated HGST drives, which are a little cheaper that the Red drives. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/4tb-h...-cache-8ms-ncq

[shaithis]

The blacks are 7200rpm, while the reds and greens are 5900rpm

I have seen greens dropping out in both Synology and QNAP NASes and it is a known issue.....I wasn't aware that it was a general array group issue though.

[peterb]

You might want to read this first. Green drives didn't do that well, Hitachi drives came out as best. I accept that your situation is a bit different, on the other hand, you will have less redundancy.

http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/01/21...-should-i-buy/

[kopite]

Cheers Peter.

I got put off the deskstar back in the days of the 40GB click of death drives but those figures do make them look interesting.

The warranty difference might sway it though as the WD ones have 3 years whilst the hitachi seem to be 1 year..

[peterb]

Cheers Peter.

I got put off the deskstar back in the days of the 40GB click of death drives but those figures do make them look interesting.

The warranty difference might sway it though as the WD ones have 3 years whilst the hitachi seem to be 1 year..

I was the same, but that was a while back (12 years ) and Hitachi seem to have regained their reputation.

Warranty seems to vary - two years here

http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/c...b/0s03356.html

3 years (direct to Hitachi)

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/4tb-h...-cache-8ms-ncq (retail version)

2 years for this

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/4tb-h...8ms-ncq-retail

Although if a drive fails and you can't access it to wipe anything sensitive, the RTB warranty is pretty much pointless - although you can argue that it reflects a manufacturer's confidence in the product!

[DanceswithUnix]

Cheers Peter.

I got put off the deskstar back in the days of the 40GB click of death drives but those figures do make them look interesting.

The warranty difference might sway it though as the WD ones have 3 years whilst the hitachi seem to be 1 year..

Hmm, might be worth prodding Scan about that. HGST say 3 years: http://www.hgst.com/hard-drives/inte...ktop-drive-kit

[DanceswithUnix]

I was the same, but that was a while back (12 years ) and Hitachi seem to have regained their reputation.

Deskstar was an IBM drive when they had that trouble, they sold the business to Hitachi shortly after.

although you can argue that it reflects a manufacturer's confidence in the product!

That is always my line. If they don't trust it, I won't trust it.

[Bonebreaker777]

Hitachi supporter here.

Had few Seagates sent back to retailer/manufacturer (different sizes and speeds). Recently no WD HDDs. Where I can I suggest Hitachi or SSDs (Seagate only when every £ counts, screw the data ). Funny enough, most Seagate when I received them new and had the will and time to conduct a surface test, some came back awful and those were those which failed eventually within the warranty period. Before somebody suggests, no they weren't purchased as refurbished unit, at least not to my knowledge.