Seagate 2TB drives - platter versions

Hi

I have carried out some searches and there seems to be a couple of ST2000DM001 drives - and the ones with more than one platter reported as less reliable maybe the China rather than Thailand ones? I am looking to replace my Seagate 1TB out of warranty unit with failed sectors and would be a good chance to upgrade too and this drive seems fast.

I would be going to Scan most probably so want to find out if they are shipping these from anyone's experience here? Obviously online doesn't allow for visual checks of the top with the larger dent in top rhs associated with the more reliable units.

On a slightly different note, if I were to run a Raid 1 with a pair of these on my current motherboard (old 870 AM3 mobo) would there be any problems reading the other drive as I also read sometimes it's hit and miss. I understand it's SB850 Southbridge provides support for up to six SATA 6 Gb/second drives with RAID 0, 1,5,10 supported and may be problematic but never used Raid before so want setting it up as easy as possible.

Why do you want a RAID1 in the first place?

Presumably, a degree of data resilience against one or other dtive failing?? Not perfect I grant, and certainly not protection against all possible problems. It's not a bad idea, IMHO, for a device that itself is a secondary data storage, like a sync'd backup. For example, data stored on a main machine or home server, sync'd to something like a RAID 1 NAS.

But geezerone, I suspect where Jim is going is that RAID 1 is not an alternative to or replacement for a proper backup regime, if you care about your data. Too many things can still cost you the data if the only copy you have is on the RAID.

RAID 1 is really about machine resilience, that is, keeping the machine up and running in the short term, even if one drive fails. Suppose you have half a dozen staff in a small office that cannot work without access to that data. RAID 1 protects you against drive failure leaving them sitting twiddling their thumbs until ypu replace that drive. It does NOT protect you against :-

- accidental, or intentional but incorrect data deletion
- theft, fire or, topically, flood
- a blown PSU destroying both RAID drives simultaneously
- a problem with the RAID controller corrupting the data on the array, perhaps irretrievably.

And so on.

If you're new to RAID, I hope you've looked carefully at what you will, and won't, get from RAID 1.

Also, personally, if I had data important enough to be worth using RAID 1, I'd buy three identical drives, not two. All three would be tested on arrival, then the third drive carefully packaged and put away in a drawer 'just in case'. Then, if needed, you have an identical drive to those in use, available and ready to go.

And remember with RAID 1 everything is mirrored, so effectively you increase the risk of failure on both drives as opposed to backing up every now and then to an additional drive.

Keep the wear and tear down (less read/writes) on your backup drives ;)

Thanks all for the detailed input. Sounds like a incremental back to a NAS/freenas box may be in order.

Any ideas about platter numbers shipped on the Seagate drives?

Thanks again :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Saracen

Also, personally, if I had data important enough to be worth using RAID 1, I'd buy three identical drives, not two. All three would be tested on arrival, then the third drive carefully packaged and put away in a drawer 'just in case'. Then, if needed, you have an identical drive to those in use, available and ready to go.

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I only bought two drives, but I did buy them from two different vendors to reduce the risk that they were from the same batch and hence would fail at the same time. Can't have too much paranoia ;)


Platters might not be the best thing to go on (though I do like to keep them to a minimum, less friction, less heads to fail).

They do a NAS drive with I believe a three year warranty and rated for 24/7 usage. If that is how you are going to use it, then that is your best bet.

Seagate data sheet for the cheap desktop drive ST2000DM001 says 3 platters 6 heads, same as the 3TB one. Doesn't make any sense to me, but that is what they say.

Couldn't find any spec for their NAS drive, guess they don't want us to know or want to be able to sell more than one drive with that label.

Edit to add: A modern take on RAID can be read here: http://arstechnica.com/information-t...n-filesystems/

Not that helpful to Windows users yet unless you are prepared to build a NAS box, but shows where things are going.

Thanks. Using as main desktop drive to replace failing 1tb and expand other PC's 500gb unit. You would think the faster few platter unit would have different model number. Maybe scan can clear it up?

Thing is, having a new model number can just make life more complicated sometimes. And if, for all intents and purposes, the product is equivalent in terms of performance, then it's possibly more hassle to launch a new model than to just keep shipping it with the same labels.

Usually Scan say that they can't promise what specification you'll get within a particular model number as suppliers can change, but you never know - perhaps you'll be lucky.

Right, bought a couple of 2TB and 1TB drives but the 2TB drives won't format in Windows 7. I get the message the format did not complete. Tried both drives in two machines.

You say you have Ubuntu on there, so try with that.

If Linux works fine, then I would look for a Windows driver update for your motherboard.

Thanks for the pointer. I tried an old version of Ubuntu which sort of worked but said misaligned partition or similar.

Tried a Live Mint 13 DVD and formatted the 2TB drive. When I rebooted with it and the bootable 1TB drive (contains windows 7 and ubuntu) the windows start screen stays on screen. I then disconnected the formatted 2TB drive and windows loaded ok?! Then shutdown and reconnected the 2TB drive (in a different controller slot) and after Windows checked the disk for a few seconds it is now visible.

Problem now is I can't boot with a cloned 1TB disc (cloned with Seagate Discwizard [Acronis]) as just a blank screen shows after BIOS flashes up and reboots again.

Tried UBCD and can boot into windows using that but not Ubuntu 11.04 even though the entry for Grub is visible using the UBCD hard drive tools.

Weird I know.

Windows is on sda1 and sda2 (split partition) and linux on sda5 and swap on sda6 from memory.

Had to reformat system partition using gparted (great little app) and let Win 7 do its thing and fix it. No dual boot still though.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Saracen

Also, personally, if I had data important enough to be worth using RAID 1, I'd buy three identical drives, not two. All three would be tested on arrival, then the third drive carefully packaged and put away in a drawer 'just in case'. Then, if needed, you have an identical drive to those in use, available and ready to go.

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Or, installed as a ready-to-go hot spare, but spun down, so that if one of the in-use drives fails, the other powers up and takes over - bearing in mind that it could take several hours for the array to re-build itself.

I do use RAID 1 n a server, but I back that up to offline media regularly. The most important thing for me are photos, so they are copied from camera to laptop, and then to the server. ?I don't delete from the camera until they are on the server, laptop and offline storage.

Got the new 1TB drive booting though not dual as Grub wiped when Windows fixed its system partition boot files (had to format system partition due to lots of errors).

Have had a go at formatting the second 2TB drive in the other PC which has an older BIOS version but the live Gparted CD stalls when formatting. Used an older version of Mint which was installed that showed misaligned sectors (512byte) or similar, and formatted though Windows 7 had to check disk etc during boot (no errors/bad sectors reported). I can now format this in Windows but always shows 147MB used for a fully formatted drive. Is there a reason for this as the other drive has about 2MB used up? Tried Seagate discwizard with the same result. Other than trying drive in other PC and updating BIOS which are my other courses of action.

I'm still not sure why RAID1 is need in first place?