2 TB Seagate LP - $75

Seagate Barracuda LP ST32000542AS 2TB 5900 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive

$74.99 after promo EMCKHJJ37 (expires 02/17/2011)

I can't say these are my favorite drives, but this is still a pretty good price.  I've had one of these running firmware CC34 for a few months as my parity drive, it has been fine.  I have another newer one that I upgraded to CC35 and it has started clicking after just a few weeks of use.  I'll be RMAing it soon.

I have to admit that my drives were much quieter with CC34 as well.  Are you sure the clicking you hear isn't just on spin up and spin down?  Do you actually hear it when the drive is idle or transferring files?

I've been using the drive to burn in client builds, so I've never actually put any data on it, I've just run it through many, many passes of preclear.  It clicks a lot while starting up, and I've noticed it is getting much slower to respond and pass preclear.  It seems pretty clear that it is going downhill, even though I haven't seen any SMART errors to indicate that.

I've been using the drive to burn in client builds, so I've never actually put any data on it, I've just run it through many, many passes of preclear.  It clicks a lot while starting up, and I've noticed it is getting much slower to respond and pass preclear.  It seems pretty clear that it is going downhill, even though I haven't seen any SMART errors to indicate that.

My one (Parity drive) worked for a day or two, and has been clicking like crazy. I wasn't sure which disk was clicking, but since disabling the parity, no more clicks and everything is MUCH faster (to be expected without any parity drive, let alone a faulty one). Parity syncs/checks would crawl along at as low as 100 kBps. I'll be RMAing it too, I guess. Sadly, I bought a second one before I used the first one. I think I'm just going to sell that one without opening it.

These drives need really solid power and also need to be screwed down tight to prevent vibration. 

Picked one of these up at Fry's today (retail box) for $78 to replace a red-ball'ed Western Digital WD20EADS.  Firmware reports as CC95.

Picked one of these up at Fry's today (retail box) for $78 to replace a red-ball'ed Western Digital WD20EADS.  Firmware reports as CC95.

I flashed my CC95 drives to CC35, otherwise the Start_Stop_Count on the CC95's was increasing by a thousand every day. They just kept spinning up and down on CC95, CC35 fixed that problem. YMMV.

Do you mean CC34?  I've never heard of CC95.

Do you mean CC34?  I've never heard of CC95.

I've had two (retail boxes from Fry's) come with CC95.

Just for anyone interested, I've been running a new unRAID machine (version 4.7, fwiw) using 4 of these drives for a few weeks now, all of which are on CC34, with zero problems or noises, etc.  So far, so good.