bobby43

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Mar 20, 2012
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10,510
Hello

My system is made of few arrays. The Windows is on a stripped array for performance. I don't care much if the array is failing cause vital data are on protected arrays.

I am looking for increased reliability HD for the stripped array. I am tired of 70$ hard drive than die in the first 15 months.

My Mobo is Asus p6t deluxe so I guess no sata 6gb. First question if 6gb HD are used, will they simply not work or will they work in 3G compatibility?

The important question: I am looking for new hard drive for that array. Possibly 500GB or 1TB harddrive x3. I am looking for server like durability drive which is more important to me than top end speed performance.

Can I get suggestions? As I said data is not vital but rebuilding the array when a drive fails is boring. I am looking for long term steady, and extensive use HD. I was looking at Seagate Constellation drives. Have any ideas to help me make the good decision?

Thks,
 
Solution
For an array, I'd choose the WD Black Caviar HDDs. Would also choose SATA III drives, so if down the road you did upgrade to a MB with SATA III ports, you wouldn't have to be back in the market for more drives. Not much difference in price.

If I were going to purchase a fast OS drive, I'd consider a 256GB SATA III SSD. Prices have dropped markedly to less than $1 per GB. It would probably have read rates of 450 MB/s, which could saturate your SATA II controller, but not by that much. Just have the single SSD. Not 3 times the risk of going down. Then put your games and other non critical stuff on a couple RAID0 disks if they needed to be that fast.

Lots of different ways to skin this cat, but that would be my suggestion.

bobby43

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Mar 20, 2012
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10,510
All important data are on two other secured arrays. One is RAID 5, the other is mirror.

OS drives does not need to be that big but all brand new drives are at least 500GB now so I feel 3x500 GB for a RAID 0 for additional performance is good. The extra space is needed for temporary files and occasional gaming. As of now, my 1.5 TB main array is filled to 800G so I guess I need it for comfort even if non vital.

Thks

 

Maxx_Power

Distinguished


SATA III HDDs will down-spec to SATA II when used on SATA II connectors. Same thing happens when you use SATA II on SATA I, although sometimes a jumper needs to be set on the back of the drive.

I suggest WD Black. 5 years warranty to back up the good reliability. If you insist on seagate, go for the Constellation series, nothing less than this on Seagate if your priority is reliability. If your usage is more NAS-file-server like, you can consider the WD RED series. DO NOT USE GREEN series if you RAID.

A lot of modern HDDs are not rated for continuous use of long hours per year. That's why a lot of consumer drives fail in continuous duty like servers, DVR's and security camera/event recorders. You need specialized drives for that longevity (like what I mentioned above).
 

John_VanKirk

Distinguished
For an array, I'd choose the WD Black Caviar HDDs. Would also choose SATA III drives, so if down the road you did upgrade to a MB with SATA III ports, you wouldn't have to be back in the market for more drives. Not much difference in price.

If I were going to purchase a fast OS drive, I'd consider a 256GB SATA III SSD. Prices have dropped markedly to less than $1 per GB. It would probably have read rates of 450 MB/s, which could saturate your SATA II controller, but not by that much. Just have the single SSD. Not 3 times the risk of going down. Then put your games and other non critical stuff on a couple RAID0 disks if they needed to be that fast.

Lots of different ways to skin this cat, but that would be my suggestion.
 
Solution
If you're going to get 3 drives, why not opt for raid 5. Then you won't be so bored rebuilding the OS just because a hard drive fails. You will always have issues with hard drives, they're mechanical and they wear out and fail. Even with long warranties, you'll never be able to predict how long a drive will last until it dies.
 

Maxx_Power

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There is some statistical predictability. That's how warranties are usually set, at some reference standard deviation so that (I'm not sure what WD specifies) say, 90% of all drives sold will live to 5 years of service free operation. That gives you a probability of 10% that a given drive will fail if you have one being used.

Having said that, I'm not sure what WD sets this standard deviation value at. 90% is a reasonable guess, but a guess... You can certainly assume it is more than 1 standard deviation, and maybe nearly 2 (or more).

However, it allows you to predict relative reliabilities based on length of warranty. So a 5 yr warranty WD drive should generally out live a 3 yr warranty WD drive, which in turn, outlives a 2 yr warranty WD drive, etc, etc. So by this, you DO have some ability to anticipate failure by choosing a drive with a proper length warranty.
 

John_VanKirk

Distinguished


Thanks for the head's up on the HDD failure rate. Very good article for reference.

John