[mythtv-users] 2 TB Hard Drive Recommendations

[Andre]

On 5 Dec 2010, at 21:18, jmk wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I'm planning to merge my file server (4x250GB mdadm RAID5) with my
> MythTV backend. I'd like to buy 3 2TB drives for a RAID5 setup to house
> recordings, videos, music, and personal files. I thought this would be a
> simple purchase and the WD20EARS initially looked like a good buy.
> Unfortunately, a bit of reading suggests there are all sorts of issues
> with recent drives I should take into consideration (e.g. 4K sectors,
> TLER). 
> 
> Does anyone have some positive experience/recommendations for 2 TB (or
> at least 1.5 TB) drives and mdadm-based RAIDs?

I'm a little hesitant to suggest anything after the problems I've experienced, but...

I do have six Samsung HD154UI's (1.5TB F2) that have been running for between a year and a year and a half. 

Cue email from mdadm... nope nothing yet :-)

I have bought a lot of Samsung disks, they are very quiet, low power, run cool and very cheap but...

I bought the 1.5TB drives to upgrade some 500GB F1 (HD501LJ) drives that had been very reliable. Almost to the minute as I had ordered the second batch the 500's started failing, I have 2 out of 6 that still work, two failed in warranty, two just outside.

I also had four HD103UJ drives, two to replace Seagate 500GB's in a firewire raid box that failed outside of warranty and the other two used in a linux box. This is why I'm hesitant, the 1TB drives have been nothing but trouble, it took me a long time to discover that they have a hardware problem (see earlier threads about it) which is made worse by the linux drivers for the ICH7 sata controller in Ubuntu 9.10. I now have 4x1TB that are not reliable but the manufacturer tells me they are fine so I cannot get them refunded or replaced!


I'm following the rest of this thread with interest as I need to replace two more Seagate 500GB's in another identical firewire raid box that failed out of warranty. I was also planning to replace my raid 1 server /home drives with 2x2TB (two different manufacturers) but now I'm re-organising my storage to put this off for a while.

I think I'm now at the stage of buying enterprise grade drives, at least for important stuff. Anyone know if the Western Digital RE4 drives (WD2003FYYS) and Seagate Constellation ES 2TB (ST32000644NS) drives are worth the extra money?

Andre