WD 1.5TB & 2TB Drives

WD officially launched their 1.5 and 2TB drives today:

http://westerndigital.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=576

Hopefully it will hit newegg soon.

Thanks for the info.  Now we have alternatives to the Seagates...

Regards,  Peter

HotHardware preview here:

http://hothardware.com/News/WD-2TB-Caviar-Green-Monster-Drive-Preview/

Comes up on froogle with a few vendors, but none in stock yet.

2TB niiice

I wonder if the euro/GB is close to 1.5TB (which is in turn very close to 1TB which is the current sweetspot)...

One of the few bummers of unRAID is that when these new big drives come out you have to buy 2 of them to get any benefit.

Buying one would not yield any more space than had you bought another drive the same size as your existing parity.

So if you had a system based on 1T parity, and bough 2 2G drives, you'd net 3G of extra space. 

Since the 2G will likely cost ~$250 at release, you'd be spending $500 for 3G of space.  Not exactly great.  And if you have to retire some disks to add these, the results are even worse.  (Of course it puts you into position to grow to add more 2G drives over time).

It's at times like these that we start to see requests to be able to use multiple smaller drives for parity that, in total, are greater than your largest data drive.  This has been requested but not provided yet.  Although you still wouldn't get any more space, psychologically you'd at least feel that you were using your "premium investment" for real data.

FYI - I read that there would be 4G, make that 4T, drives available in 2009.

 

 

FYI - I read that there would be 4G drives available in 2009.

4? !!

:-)

One of the few bummers of unRAID is that when these new big drives come out you have to buy 2 of them to get any benefit.

Yeah, I was pondering just that while driving to lunch yesterday.  (Not sure why.  )

Anyway, in my case, I'd probably use the 2TB to replace a 750GB (or two ) in my workstation then put the 750GB into the unRAID server since I'm nowhere near maxed out in device terms.  Of course, I also question my own philosophy of putting the older, crappier hard drives into the unRAID server where I value my data from an archival perspective and the newer, shiny hard drives in my workstation where the data is more transient. 

FYI - I read that there would be 4G drives available in 2009.

Back in late 2007, Hitachi had said they'd have the technology in shipping products in 2009, but the full potential (4TB) wouldn't be reached until 2011.

e.g. http://www.gizmag.com/go/8180/

Which seems about right, pacing-wise.  But I dunno if things have changed for better or worse lately, either due to tech acceleration or slowdowns (e.g. due to the economy).

Nice news.

It would be interesting to see a timeline of capacity vs. release date vs cost per GB of historical date for the last few years. I too would like to buy these drives but buying 2 is alot of cash... especailly since i have perhaps 6 TB worth of 500GB that have been expired already just sitting there and 4 slots i cant use in my 20 slot Norco

One of the few bummers of unRAID is that when these new big drives come out you have to buy 2 of them to get any benefit.

Not really.

Say your parity is now 1TB.  Buy 1, 2GB drive, and use it as parity... so you get 1TB of more storage, for buying a 2GB drive -- not optimal, but it is far from nothing.  What you are really buying is preparation to add a second 2GB on the next purchase.

One of the few bummers of unRAID is that when these new big drives come out you have to buy 2 of them to get any benefit.

 

Not really.

 

Say your parity is now 1TB.  Buy 1, 2GB drive, and use it as parity... so you get 1TB of more storage, for buying a 2GB drive -- not optimal, but it is far from nothing.  What you are really buying is preparation to add a second 2GB on the next purchase.

Did you get to the second line?   

Buying one would not yield any more space than had you bought another drive the same size as your existing parity.

It's at times like these that we start to see requests to be able to use multiple smaller drives for parity that, in total, are greater than your largest data drive.  This has been requested but not provided yet.  Although you still wouldn't get any more space, psychologically you'd at least feel that you were using your "premium investment" for real data.

There are hardware alternatives to create a RAID0 array from two drives. It does work with the Silicon Image Steelvine processors.

I've done it with success. The downside is the two drives do not spin down.

The best approach is a RAID0 ability for the parity drive in software, yet for the people who want to jump into this arena.

There is a hardware answer.

The 2TB can be ordered from NewEgg now, but methinks I'll wait a bit before paying full MSRP + tax...

There are hardware alternatives to create a RAID0 array from two drives. It does work with the Silicon Image Steelvine processors.

I've done it with success. The downside is the two drives do not spin down.

 

The best approach is a RAID0 ability for the parity drive in software, yet for the people who want to jump into this arena.

There is a hardware answer

Which raid 0 controllers are working for unriad?

I was thinking of using raid 0 for the cache and parity drives. Would that not speed up the box??

I know someone somewhere said they had raid 0 working on the stock unraid.

I was thinking of using raid 0 for the cache and parity drives. Would that not speed up the box??

No.  You'd have to go to RAID5 to get a throughput boost.... but you are still bottlenecked by GigE... even GigEx2.

And no, 10GigE won't help because of latency an the window size.

 

There are hardware alternatives to create a RAID0 array from two drives. It does work with the Silicon Image Steelvine processors.

I've done it with success. The downside is the two drives do not spin down.

 

The best approach is a RAID0 ability for the parity drive in software, yet for the people who want to jump into this arena.

There is a hardware answer

 

Which raid 0 controllers are working for unriad?

I was thinking of using raid 0 for the cache and parity drives. Would that not speed up the box??

I know someone somewhere said they had raid 0 working on the stock unraid.

I used an external SATA case with a Steelvine Processor.

It was something similar to this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111044

 

I was thinking of using raid 0 for the cache and parity drives. Would that not speed up the box??

 

No.  You'd have to go to RAID5 to get a throughput boost.... but you are still bottlenecked by GigE... even GigEx2.

 

And no, 10GigE won't help because of latency an the window size.

RAID0 would speed up the box, but only slightly. as in other posts you are limited by GigE speed.

However, I've read that using Jumbo Frames on GigE provides a boost.

Not sure how to do this on unRAID.

I've read that all machines on the network need to be set to the same frame size.

Is anyone actually using the 2TB drives yet in Unraid?

Anyooooooone?

Please provide some feedback...

Yes.  They work fine.  Do you have a specific question?

Regards,  Peter

Thanks for your reply Pete.

I have read of many problems with the 1.5 TB disks from Seagate and Western Digital.

Mainly they seem to fall in two categories

- Dead on Arrival drives (which does not worry me as I just get them replaced)

- Unraid freezing due to drives misbehaving in the array (which does worry me as I do not want to add instability to unraid, it took me so long to troubleshoot my previous problem, which was unraid dropping off the network, due to a faulty network component in the motherboard).

I was wondering if you have experienced any erratic behaviour since you got the drive(s) in your unraid array.

Thanks for your help in advanced.

I had major problems with my two 1.5TB Seagates. They turned out to be cabling or power problems.

I replaced all my SATA cables with new locking ones and got a new Corsair TX850 PSU and all is fine.

I also needed to upgrade the firmware on one drive.

I did extensive tests on both drives before trusting them enough to put back in my array.

It may be that these drives are a little more sensitive to power and SATA signaling issues than other drives.

Seagate definitely had major issues with firmware, but they seem to be fixed with firmware upgrades. Fingers crossed.

I used to have the Seagate 1.5TB in my system.  I had purchased about 6 of them in January and dealt with the various firmware issues.  After monitoring the SMART data, I was very uncomfortable with the increasing errors reported.  Eventually I started getting sync errors.  I replaced all of them with WD 2TB drives (no experience with the WD 1.5TB).  So far the only issues I have experienced have been those due to cabling that I recently resolved.  There has been some minor hesistation (not freezing) but I had that issue before introducing the 2TB units. This showed up after moving to the 4.5 betas.  It is only a minor annoyance so I have not bothered to determine the cause.

I purchased my WD 2TBs either locally (in retail pack) or via Amazon.  In both cases, the drives were well packed.  I have heared complaints regaring New Egg's packaging being insufficient.

My specs are Norco 4202 case with rev 2 backplane, Intel D975XBX2 motherboard, 3 Adaptec 1430SA PCI-e adapters, 1 Syba PCI adapter, and all Western Digital Green Power Drives (2TB and 1TB).

Regards,  Peter

I used to have 1.5TB Seagate (7200.11) drives in my unRAID system.  I would get spurious "exception Emask"... "frozen" errors.  I upgraded to the latest firmware, installed a Corsair single-rail power supply, and replaced cables, but the errors persisted.  While the array worked most of the time, the random errors meant there was always a slim, but real, chance that video playback would halt and freeze until the system did a link hard reset.  Additionally, the drives did run about 5 to 8 deg C hotter than what I've seen with my WD's since.

I gradually swapped the drives with those in my workstation, replacing each 1.5TB with two older 750GB drives (Seagate 7200.10's).  No problems since.  The 1.5TB drives generally work OK under Windows, so now everyone's happy.

The Seagate 7200.12's may be better, but I haven't tried any.

I also have 2 of the WD 2TB drives, purchased from PC Connection and Fry's (B&M).  Working great, low temps.

Thanks for the review nyago123, glad to hear good things about the WD 2TB's since anything greater than 750 seagate makes now is awful.  So sad I've been a loyal customer of there's since my first 100meg hard drive in 1992.

Nate

All 13 drives in my PC are Seagate 500GB, I guess from now on I will switch to WD.

Thanks for the feedback guys. I asked Tom as well weeks ago but I did not get any response...

He must be busy I guess.

For the record, I did install a 1TB Seagate 7200.12 (not 7200.11) into my unRAID server the other day following a drive failure (an ancient WD 400GB drive finally bit the dust).

This new Seagate drive has been running for several days without issues and has even lower temps than the WD 2TB drives I have in the system... around 31C whereas the WD 2TBs are around 36C... my Seagate 7200.10 750GB drives run around 39-41C.

I guess I've just been lucky. I have 3 of the 1.5 TB Seagates & 2 of the 1 TB drives. I have had zero problems.

It might also matter what kind of controller cards & brand of cables people are using. It may not only be the drives problems. Could be a combination of things..