In Switzerland the EcoGreen finally ships, at the same price as the venerable GreenPower.
I have 3 GreenPower in a RAID5 in my HTPC and I am looking to add another drive. Now I'm wondering which one is better, the GreenPower or the EcoGreen? It's software RAID, so the drives do not need to match, no problem there.
I'm only concerned about noise/vibration and power consumption/heat as well as obviously reliability but that's hard to judge for either drive anyhow, so far my GreenPowers do not seem to suffer of excessive load cycles so I'm not fussed about that particular issue.
I have Googled for a while but I am having a hard time deciding between the two. Has anyone who used both some perspective to offer?
GreenPower vs EcoGreen
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee
EcoGreen has recently appeared in some Finnish retailers/e-tailers as well. I'm tempted to buy one out of curiousity but then again, I would want to update to 2TB HDDs soon after they become available and my terabyters would become back-up media / nuisance after that. I have duplicates of non-critical files, so by giving up unnecessary back-ups, I could probably survive until 2TB comes. But I have to admit I'm tempted to buy an EcoGreen out of curiousity... but then again, I'd like to see how EcoGreen F2 fares... I might take longer to become available than WD20EADS, though.
I have no first-hand experience of EcoGreen but what I've read of them:
- WD has quieter seeks (so I've heard).
- WD has load/unload clicks louder than seeks. Occur after 8 secs of idling. It may be possibly to disable the feature.
- WD has lower power consumption due to unload feature. If it's disabled, though, the difference to Samsung would be smaller.
I can't give any clear recommendation of which one is better. Both would be practically inaudible in most computer systems, easily masked by any other noise source. Four terabytes would be audible, especially in a HTPC but I don't think you'd notice difference whether the fourth is GP or EG. It'd be masked by the other three.
If your three WDs are of the same generation, you could get a fourth of same generation. If they are a mix of 4 and 3 -platter variants, you might as well buy the Samsung. And like you said, it's not critical to software RAID... or is it even meaningful in a non-critical way, will the speed be limited by the slowest, or do software RAID use variable stripe sizes or other methods for different drives to not degrade to level of the slowest.
If there's no comparative review, you could make one yourself. I'd like to read a direct comparison of WD 1st gen vs WD 2nd gen vs Samsung 1st gen (= EG F1).
I have no first-hand experience of EcoGreen but what I've read of them:
- WD has quieter seeks (so I've heard).
- WD has load/unload clicks louder than seeks. Occur after 8 secs of idling. It may be possibly to disable the feature.
- WD has lower power consumption due to unload feature. If it's disabled, though, the difference to Samsung would be smaller.
I can't give any clear recommendation of which one is better. Both would be practically inaudible in most computer systems, easily masked by any other noise source. Four terabytes would be audible, especially in a HTPC but I don't think you'd notice difference whether the fourth is GP or EG. It'd be masked by the other three.
If your three WDs are of the same generation, you could get a fourth of same generation. If they are a mix of 4 and 3 -platter variants, you might as well buy the Samsung. And like you said, it's not critical to software RAID... or is it even meaningful in a non-critical way, will the speed be limited by the slowest, or do software RAID use variable stripe sizes or other methods for different drives to not degrade to level of the slowest.
If there's no comparative review, you could make one yourself. I'd like to read a direct comparison of WD 1st gen vs WD 2nd gen vs Samsung 1st gen (= EG F1).
As a matter of fact, I have 3 and 4 platter GPs, but I cannot easily review them because taking apart the RAID array is a major hassle... It could be done but it is risky.
So far, the 2TB GP are way too expensive. What I believe I will do is mix 1TB and 2TB in RAID5 once they get to similar price levels...
So far, the 2TB GP are way too expensive. What I believe I will do is mix 1TB and 2TB in RAID5 once they get to similar price levels...
"As a matter of fact, I have 3 and 4 platter GPs, but I cannot easily review them because taking apart the RAID array is a major hassle... It could be done but it is risky."
There's probably not much risk involved if you power it down before removal and don't power up until you have replaced the drives to same ports... just to be certain. And never mounting the drive to an OS: when benchmarking, using power connector only.
Thus, I don't think that there's any more risk of HDD dropping from array involved than in any normal reboot of the system. But I have to admit it is a hazzle that would mean some extra downtime.
"So far, the 2TB GP are way too expensive."
And even worse, not even available. Those way too expensive prices are preorders for a drive that doesn't necessarily start shipping in next 6 months.
There's probably not much risk involved if you power it down before removal and don't power up until you have replaced the drives to same ports... just to be certain. And never mounting the drive to an OS: when benchmarking, using power connector only.
Thus, I don't think that there's any more risk of HDD dropping from array involved than in any normal reboot of the system. But I have to admit it is a hazzle that would mean some extra downtime.
"So far, the 2TB GP are way too expensive."
And even worse, not even available. Those way too expensive prices are preorders for a drive that doesn't necessarily start shipping in next 6 months.
I have 1TB EcoGreen and 1TB Greenpower (4 platters). They are in the HTPC as data drives. I cannot really hear either of them, because the pc is far from the couch. What I can say is that the Samsung idles usually 23C and WD at 35C. It is possible that there are different power management options active for the drives. I don't want to make real speed comparisons as they have different filesystems on them, but "hdparm -t" shows average read for WD to be 80 MB/s and for Samsung 87 MB/s. For file storage both of these drives seem fine IMO.zendragon wrote:So what about now, does anyone have experience with this, ecogreen (2) vs greenpower?
Samsung ecogreenf2 500 is a bit cheaper.
Hope this helps.
