Recommend Hard Drive for Raid 5

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Ry4n

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Hi,

Im looking at buying 4x Western Digital WD1003FBYX Caviar RE4 Raid Edition 1TB 32MB Cache SATA 3G 7200RPM for a Raid5 config for my home PC to store mainly media but also games thats wont fit on my SSD. The mentioned drive would be perfect but they are a little pricey 1.2k a shot. Can anyone recommend another possibly cheaper drive that wont give me any issues on a raid5 - anything form 1TB to 2TB & R700 to R1200?

Cheers & have a awesome weekend :D
 
They are labeled RAID Edition drives for a reason, but you can use any drive you like, but if your raid keeps failing with cheaper disks you know why...
 
Elvis007 said:
They are labeled RAID Edition drives for a reason, but you can use any drive you like, but if your raid keeps failing with cheaper disks you know why...
Click to expand...

Exactly. You get what you pay for. If you're using them in RAID 5 and one fails then it shouldn't be a problem, you can RMA the faulty one and put a replacement drive in to rebuild.
 
Well with Raid0 most drives work but I read around and drives with variable rpm and some others have had issues on raid5 configurations.
I wouldn't want to spend around 3k on drives if it's gonna give me headaches.
I'll keep looking around.
 
Best to do is get 4x1TB drives and configure 3 for RAID5 and 1 as a hot spare.

This would obviously depend on what controller you're going to use
 
1) Do you already have a computer that you will be placing the RAID 5 into?
2) Why RAID 5?
3) Which RAID 5 (Software? Hardware?)
4) The computer you're going to put RAID 5 into, will it be a dedicated system or are you going to put it in your day to day computer?

I'm running RAID-z1 (essentially RAID 5 but without any of the flaws of RAID 5, software only tho). Running it with 6x2TB Seagate LP drives (from Esquire they are around R700ea, ST32000542AS). Bought them 13/10/2010 and the SMART reports total power on hours (eg. how many hours the drives have been on) as ~2600 that is +- 108 days. So they've been pretty much running non-stop since I set them up (didn't use them the first two weeks I think but since then it's been 24/7, system never goes down).

So let me break it down: Forget RAID edition drives for home use. The only time you need RAID edition drives is if you need TLER (Time Limited Error Recovery). Essentially all software based RAID 5 worth considering doesn't rely on TLER. Nothing else makes those drives better IMHO. Those that tell you otherwise won't have any proof that the RE drives are better and only buy them based on what the corporations trying to punt them claims.

If you have ever been in the IT industry you'd understand the reason for RE drives to exist. My opinion is that very few parts would differ (if any) from a desktop drive but I'm certainly not going to buy one and dissect it to prove my point.
 
LOL. I see it says that. My bad, should have read better.

Anyway, to the OP: Unless you are using a hardware based RAID 5 card you might as well forget about this pipe dream. Windows based RAID 5, which I have tested, is less reliable than a 3 legged rocking horse. And in case you were thinking of getting a hardware based RAID 5 card, they easily cost R4K and more, might as well build a dedicated computer and use that as a NAS instead.

Btw. I've tested "fake" RAID 5 also. Specifically ICH10R based RAID-5 (arguable the "best" when it comes to fake RAID). It was just as bad as Windows RAID 5. "Fake" RAID is easy to spot, they usually say they have RAID 5 but have no onboard RAID controller and also cost less than R4K so shouldn't be hard to determine. They basically use software proprietary, closed source software with a low end budget, bad bad bad...

Anyway during my tests both those "RAID 5" setups dump a drive from the array if they don't have TLER (time limited error recovery) and both of them dumped a drive from the array if it was powered down using the power management (eg. Windows power management, turn of HD after X minutes settings). The only way you could potentially use those RAID 5 setups is if you buy RAID Edition drives or WD drives and use their proprietary TLER tool and disable any type of HD power down. Even I personally would say it is a false sense of security.

Last but not least, both those RAIDs had bad performance. Lowest when compared to the other solutions I tested.
 
Umm... Thanks for your input Gnome.
I'm thinking its going to be easier to just get 2x Western Digital Caviar Black WD2002FAEX 2TB Sata 6G 7200RPM 64MB Cache and put them in a Raid 0
 
Was thinking of going RAID 5 as well.

Probably software RAID. Just to use for storage. Using a Maximus III Gene board. Don't know what to do now...
 
Ry4n said:
I'm thinking its going to be easier to just get 2x Western Digital Caviar Black WD2002FAEX 2TB Sata 6G 7200RPM 64MB Cache and put them in a Raid 0
Click to expand...

You're going from wanting RAID 5 (redundancy) to RAID 0 which has no redundancy, and is in fact twice as risky as using just one sole drive as when one of them dies you lose the data on both. Why the sudden shift in choice?
 
Kuga said:
Was thinking of going RAID 5 as well.

Probably software RAID. Just to use for storage. Using a Maximus III Gene board. Don't know what to do now...
Click to expand...

How do you mean? Is that also your gaming rig? Or dedicated NAS?
 
Gnome said:
How do you mean? Is that also your gaming rig? Or dedicated NAS?
Click to expand...

Yeah. Gaming Rig.

I have a SSD for OS, and I want 5 drives to run some sort of RAID 5 for storage and redundancy. I will get another SSD later on and stripe them. Will be getting a 2 port SATA card for my DVD-RW and docking station (CM 692 ADV Chassis). My board has 7 SATA ports.

Was thinking of getting 5 x 1.5 TB with RAID 5 = 6TB, or 5 x 1 TB with RAID 5 = 4TB.. But at the moment the 1TB is looking a bit more promising. I can get Seagate 1TB for R500 new so yeah.
 
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These are awesome drives at about R900:

Western Digital caviar blacK WD1002FAEX , 1Tb/1000gb , Sata6G , dual processors unit with 64mb cache , 7200rpm - 5 years warranty
 
Kuga said:
Lol yeah.. You seem quite clued up with RAID. What would you suggest?
Click to expand...

Dedicated box or hardware RAID for you current box. Hardware RAID cards alone, starts at ~R4K which is about what you would pay for a very good dedicated box. Windows and software RAID don't mix, not during my own testing. It isn't just about performance, RAID actually needs to keep your data safe and without RAID edition drives Windows RAID is false security. Dedicated box on the other hand will safely run with off the shelf drives. Hardware RAID card depends on the card. Fastest of these options is between the hardware RAID card and dedicated box, Windows software RAID 5 is very slow.

If I were to build a dedicated box today I'd get:
Sandy Bridge Intel 2100T CPU - Low power CPU, not the normal 2100.
Intel "Burrage Flat" DP67BG motherboard. Or any suitable socket 1155 motherboard with an INTEL NIC, not Realtek, especially not the RealTek RTL8111E (terrible NIC with buggy drivers that constantly causes crashes in every OS except Windows)
4GB of memory at least, more is better.
430Watt Corsair PSU
Cooler Master Centurion 590 case (specifically the Centurion 590 because you can fit 3 fans in the front for the hard-drives).

However with the current Intel Chipset issue I'd wait about 4 months, then get one.
 
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Would be ideal but yeah. Don't have funds to make another box or a 6+ port RAID controller card.

Wouldn't it be viable to use the onboard controller and create an array in the BIOS? I know the board would then be a single point of failure, but surely you could move the array to another machine with the same RAID controller and retrieve your data?
 
Kuga said:
Would be ideal but yeah. Don't have funds to make another box or a 6+ port RAID controller card.

Wouldn't it be viable to use the onboard controller and create an array in the BIOS? I know the board would then be a single point of failure, but surely you could move the array to another machine with the same RAID controller and retrieve your data?
Click to expand...

Your motherboard has the ICH10R chipset. If you see above you'll see I mention that I have that on my NAS motherboard also (Gigabyte GA-P45-UD3R). Intel Matrix RAID (the RAID used by ICH10R) does not support 4KB sector drives (even though they say it does, it didn't went I tested it). And it also doesn't support non-RAID edition drives. The array will be created, and work perfectly. Then I had it go over a bad sector, I'm not going to explain to you how bad sectory recovery works, you can do the research yourself. But a non-RAID drive is chucked from the array as soon as it hits a bad sector because the non-RAID drive doesn't use TLER (google). The reason it is chucked is reported by the array as the drive being unavailable.

Hence the RAID is actually less reliable than no RAID. Do your research! Do testing!
 
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