4TB Raid 5 Array. Suggestions on Drive purchase?

[bud951]

Hi, I have an Areca 1210 controller card and I need to create a 4tb Raid 5 Array. I have been looking at 2 tb drives from WD and Seagate to build my array but I keep hearing bad things as far as running these drives in Raid config. Is anyone here running 2tb drives in Raid 5 or 6 with reliability? If so, what 2tb drives are the best for this purpose? Thanks and Happy Holidays to all!

 

[Bo$$]

i think WD are the best drives, never had a failure from them

 

[DirectorC]

Buy an extra couple drives so that you're ready in the event of a failure or two.

WDs are also my favorite as far as reliability goes.

 

[runnin17]

I have a Raid 5 array with 4x 1TB Hitachi drives. Been running perfect for two years now without any issues at all.

I know some people dislike Hitachi, but the new Hitachi drives are just as good if not better than WD and Seagate. If you can though, spring for the Samsung F3's. They are very nice drives for the price.

 

[Skywalker12345]

+1 Wd

 

[newtekie1]

The Western Digital Green drives don't work well in RAID configurations. The reason being the Green features, chaning drive RPMs and large number of head Parks, can lead RAID controllers to mark the drive as failed. This leads to a lot of rebuilds, and of course the array isn't redundant during a rebuild, so if I drive actually fails you loose all your data.

I put together a RAID aray using a Highpoint 2310 controller for a customer a few months ago, they insisted on the WD drives, though I used the 1.5TB Greens not the 2TB ones. Had nothing but issues, almost daily array rebuilds and false drive failures. Ended up switching them to the Seagate LP drives and havn't had a rebuild or false drive failure since.

The WD Greens are great drives alone, but definitely avoid them if you are building a RAID array.

 

[bud951]

I have a Raid 5 array with 4x 1TB Hitachi drives. Been running perfect for two years now without any issues at all.

I know some people dislike Hitachi, but the new Hitachi drives are just as good if not better than WD and Seagate. If you can though, spring for the Samsung F3's. They are very nice drives for the price.

So you are getting 3tb of storage on that array? I have considered Hatachi and Samsung. I built a PC for my nephew 5 years ago with a Samsung 400gb and the memory gave out before the drive. I still use it as a spare.

 

[bud951]

Forgot to ask in my post. Is it better, faster, cheaper, more reliable to have more smaller drives in the array? Say, 4 - 1tb or 1.5tb drives instead of 3 or 4 - 2tb drives? (my controller has 4 sata connections) It appears that the 1tb drives are more reliable than the 2tb drives according to reviews on Newegg.

 

[DirectorC]

Yeah. Less platters is faster too. That's why a lot of people strive for 1-platter drive arrays. I like mine

I was gonna do a RAID5 config, but I've decided the best thing for my system is to have two small drives in RAID0 for the system, two medium drives in RAID0 for incoming data, and two large drives in RAID0 for permanent storage, possibly later becoming 3 drives in RAID5, but I would need a board with 7SATA ports or a RAID controller for that (which can be had for cheap--the 'fake' ones, anyway, which is fine by me).

 

[dir_d]

1TB F3 Samsung Spinpoints

 

[bud951]

Are there any single platter 1.5gb drives?

 

[DirectorC]

Are there any single platter 1.5gb drives?

Last I heard they had just gotten into 500GB platters with 750 in the horizon.

 

[[H]@RD5TUFF]

Hi, I have an Areca 1210 controller card and I need to create a 4tb Raid 5 Array. I have been looking at 2 tb drives from WD and Seagate to build my array but I keep hearing bad things as far as running these drives in Raid config. Is anyone here running 2tb drives in Raid 5 or 6 with reliability? If so, what 2tb drives are the best for this purpose? Thanks and Happy Holidays to all!

I am currently running a raid 5 of 2 tb drives, with wonderfull reliability, haven't had a drive failure or data loss yet. I am using Seagate Barracuda LP ST32000542AS 2TB 5900 RPM, I was able to get them for $129 USD each brand new! I love them, I have not had a single problem. I know that the WD drive has better preformance, but if your considering a raid 5 your obviously more concerned about redundancy and reliability than speed. I personally despise WD, I had 3 of their hard drives die all at once in a gaming machine I owned about 3 years back, and I refuse to purchase from them again. I prefer seagate, as their RMA is speedy and efficient.
Now I would also recommend a Raid 6 in stay of a raid 5. But as my current raid card does not offer raid 6, I am using raid 5.