Server Building > Hard Drives and Controllers

Which 3 TB drive should I buy?

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Rajahal:
Buy whichever one you want, but none of them will work with unRAID yet. :)

NOTE: Support for drives larger than 2TB are on The RoadMap and listed under the 5.0-beta4 section here.

bjp999:
Not quite true.  3T drives DO work with unRAID.  But you have to follow special procedures to configure them to be only 2.2T.  When unRAID is enhanced to support 3T drives, you will be able to restore the drives to their full size.

With the price of these drives falling to under $170 US (that is $113 dollar adjusted for a 2T drive size), and knowing that it will make your remaining disk slots go 50% further, it might be worth considering.

So, for example, if you only have 3 more slots before you have to start swapping out your smaller disks, you'd be able to grow by 9T vs 6T with 2T drives.

And when you start replacing smaller disks with larger ones, your money doesn't go nearly as far.  Upgrading 3 1T drives to 3 2T drives (which gives you 3T extra space) would cost you $210 (with very cheap $70 2T drives)

See THIS THREAD

Update, since this was written the sale price of 3T drive has falled to $129 from Newegg and $109 from Microcenter.

bjp999:
As of 5.0b7, 3T drives are supported by unRAID.

I recommend the Hitachi "Coolspin" (5400 RPM) Green Drives.

And the Hitachi Deskstar 7200 RPM for non-Green Drives.

I have no experience with any other 3T drives, good or bad.

Rob_Dingen:
Hi

I just install a Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000 3TB and it works.

Rob

bjp999:
The Hitachi compatibility guide lists a wide variety of motherboards and controllers that are compatible with the 3T drives.  Some promise models are listed.

It does NOT list things known to be incompatible - so if it is not on this list, you can't assume it doesn't work.

http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/EA3C2532A751C279882577DF0059E290/$file/Deskstar_7K3000_CompatGuide_final.pdf

(Users might want to save a copy of this PDF file, as these Hitachi resources may get pulled after the WD acquisition is complete)


Also, here is a limited set of motherboards and controllers that I have personally tested that appear compatible with 3T drives.

SEE THIS POST for details.

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