Choices for a NAS drive (4x1TB drives in RAID5)

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syee
Posts: 12
Joined: Sun May 09, 2010 9:44 am
Location: Vancouver BC

Choices for a NAS drive (4x1TB drives in RAID5)

Post by syee » Thu Jun 10, 2010 11:39 pm

I'm looking for some opinions on what people would recommend for a NAS setup.

I'm picking up a QNAP TS410 NAS tomorrow (4 bay) and I'm having a bit of dilemma on what drives to pick. It seems like every single drive out there has some fault and short of forking out big money for the RAID editions of the drives, I'm not sure what the best choice is.

I've chosen the 1TB drives since they seem to offer the best value for money price point at this time. I could go 2TB as well, but from reading reviews on Newegg, etc, it seems that maybe 2TB drives aren't quite mature yet and seem to have an unusually high failure rate no matter what drive you look at so I'd like to keep away from those for the time being.

The options I've found locally (in Vancouver BC) at NCIX that were reasonably priced:

Seagate ST31000528AS ($69.99) 1TB/7200rpm
Western Digital WD10EARS ($69.99) 1TB/5400rpm
Western Digital WD1001FALS ($85.99) 1TB/7200rpm
Seagate ST32000542AS ($109.99) 2TB/5900rpm

The 2TB Seagate I just put in for comparison sake so you can see the pricing.

From the research I've done, it seems that the WD10EARS has the ability to change the head park time with WDIDLE so that clears up the excessive 8 second head park issue. No TLER option is available for this drive as far as I can see.

The next one on my short list is the Seagate ST31000528AS. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I won't see any difference between 5400rpm vs 7200rpm because the NIC will be the bottleneck. (although I do have a GigE network) Is it fair to not even consider the rpm difference as a factor? 7200rpm drive will probably run hotter so that's a negative there. The only plus side is that I have a few 7200rpm drives in my machine already and I can probably salvage at least one drive from my PC to put in the NAS. Saves me having to buy one extra drive. Apparently, ERC cannot be disabled on this drive either (Seagates implementation of TLER).

If rpm makes no difference, then the WD1001FALS is definitely out since it wouldn't make sense to pay an extra $15 for not much performance benefit.

The 2TB Seagate comes in a little cheaper than 2 1TB drives. I guess I just don't feel comfortable after reading reviews on any of the 2TB models. There seems to be a lot of complaints about clicking and failures. 2TB is a lot to lose. Not sure I want to risk it but if my assumptions are incorrect, then I can get over this fact.

So what are people's thoughts on this? What do you think my best option is? Go with the WD Green drive, or get the Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 drive? (or take the Seagate 2TB drive and go all out?)

awolfe63
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Post by awolfe63 » Sun Jun 13, 2010 8:26 am

I've been running two of the WD 2GB in a RAID 1 for 6 months and another in a standalone HTPC 24/7 for over a year. No problems at all. I'd go for them.

I am using the EADS - not the newer EARS - but QNAP supports both.

silence_seeker
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Joined: Sat Oct 22, 2005 12:12 pm

Post by silence_seeker » Fri Jun 18, 2010 3:57 pm

A utility called WDTLER should enable TLER on those WD drives, or so several websites say.

However, I've read that since late 2009, all WD green drives have had their firmware disable user-changes to both Intellipark (the drive automatically parks its heads every 8 seconds after inactivity causing more wear and waiting for the drive to respond) and of course TLER. I've been considering the WD green drives myself, but since hearing the above I'm trying to see what else is out there.

Das_Saunamies
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Post by Das_Saunamies » Mon Jun 21, 2010 2:49 pm

Upgraded my storage drive to a WD10EARS and have not had to regret it. Completely silent, blisteringly quick for mass transfers and streams HD video effortlessly. Start-up is as snappy as my 6400AAKS, as is resuming from standby.

That huge cache does pay off when it comes to mass transfers such as backups and moving large video files around.

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