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View Full Version : Hard Drive Recommendations for a Raid


Scott Brown
10-13-2009, 10:29 AM
Hi Folks

I'm putting together a new raid system for one of our FCP suites and so far I've purchased a Proavio EB8MS 8 drive unit + a Highpoint 3522 raid card.

Next part is selecting hard drives and I'm looking for advice here please. In the past I always used Seagate drives and thus far I've had few problems with these and therefore I've looked at the 7200.12 drives and also the ES2 Enterprise drives which are more expensive - are they worth the extra?

Other options would be Hitachi or WD.

I'm also not sure whether to go above 1TB? I know that Seagate's 1.5TB drives have had MAJOR problems and I'm not sure if the latest 2TB drives have really been tested yet under fast video raid environments?

Anyone care to give some advice here on drive choices?

All thoughts appreciated :thumbsup:

Best wishes

Scott
Simon Blackledge
10-13-2009, 11:08 AM
Hitachi Ultrastars (Enterprise) 2TB are out now.

2TB are expensive but consider how much longer they will last you storage wise as your ProAvio chassis is not expandable. We have a few. and some 4x bay ones.. never had any issues with them.

I run seagate enterprise in all raids but even some of those have had FW issues.

Sticking to Hitachi enterprise for now. I'd say they are worth it... larger heads etc..

For nearline with many disks such as a backblaze pod some are using non enterprise though and Seagates also.
Scott Brown
10-13-2009, 12:36 PM
Thanks Simon

Plan is to run raid 6 which will allow us to have 2 drives fail with no loss of data and allow me to sleep better at night :laugh:

I'll have a look at the Hitachi Ultrastars - the 2TB drives all seem to carry a premium price at the moment as they are only just coming out. The sweet spot price wise is 1TB which I can purchase here in the UK for circa £50 each or £120 for the enterprise versions, so perhaps I will go with the 1TB's now and switch over to the 2TB's when prices drop as they surely will.

Thanks again for your input, much appreciated.

Best wishes

Scott
Simon Blackledge
10-13-2009, 01:27 PM
No worries dude. Try Span, nice chaps.

Though they seem to have the 1TB Ultra's off at the mo.. give em a call.. very helpful and always give a good price.

Bear in mind that R6 will lower ya capacity quite alot. So depends what you really need storage wise and how you backup..

Also what speeds your needing..

Gotta love R3d at 38MBs :)

s