2TB Hard Drives - Seagate ST2000DL003 vs Seagate 2000VX002

[Piggie]

2TB Hard Drives - Seagate ST2000DL003 vs Seagate ST2000VX002

Hi. I'm hoping some people here may be able to offer their opinions on my question re the best drive to go for in my situation.

I have a HP Proliant Microserver, which I wish to buy four 2TB discs for.

I was going to buy some Seagate ST2000DL003 drives:

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.j...210VgnVCM1000001a48090aRCRD&locale=en-US&pf=1

But I have also been recommended to consider paying a little more (approx £20 extra per drive) to get this other model. The Seagate ST2000VX002

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.j...h=en-US&pageno=12&interfaces=&reqPage=Support

The latter drive has a 5 year warranty and says it's made for 24/7 usage which all sounds good. Has the same number of Platters, Cache, 64MB Buffer etc.

But if you read the page it does say:

Applications

Video surveillance digital video recorder (SDVR)
Video surveillance network digital video recorder (NVR)
Direct-attached JBOD video storage
Network-attached JBOD video storage


The SV35 Series hard drives are engineered for rigorous 24x7 video surveillance systems, offering tuned performance, high capacities and durable reliability required for the high-write workloads of video surveillance systems


It does not say, suited for Server/NAS applications.
Should I be concerned about any of this, as it "Sounds" like a more reliable drive with a longer warranty that's built to be on all the time, as opposed to the other which is just a "normal" hard drive for PC's in general.

I didn't want to pay extra and then find they are not really suitable for a NAS device.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts on this you might have :)

 

[Piggie]

It would be nice if someone could give their views on this.

I'm frightened to place any orders until I can get a better feeling about the right thing to do.

There is "VERY LITTLE" info on the net of the Seagate ST2000VX002 drive.

I guess the cheaper model is the one that gets all the press, reviews and attention.
But I hate to order something without even seeing something about it or hearing from someone who knows what they are talking about :)

 

[Bohs Hansen]

I don't have the long time experience with the drives yet, but I'm happy with the performance and noise levels. Maybe the official Seagate forums can give you more feedback.

 

[Piggie]

I don't have the long time experience with the drives yet, but I'm happy with the performance and noise levels. Maybe the official Seagate forums can give you more feedback.

Thanks. I was almost giving up. Honestly the internet is stone cold dead regards and reviews/info on these drives.
Strange isn't it. The "home" models have floods of reviews, but I've not really even seen 1 decent review of these 5 year 24/7 models. Just about 4 small user reviews is all I have found.

I just went to the Seagate Forums and did a search. A whole mass of postings about the Seagate ST2000DL003, I then did a search for ST2000VX002 and not 1 posting !

Crazy.

 

[Bohs Hansen]

yea, I found them by pure accident as well cause my favorit online shop had them on the frontpage for some time. I've read some user/admins that use them for surveillance and they where all praise for these drives, but besides that its a blank page.

 

[Piggie]

yea, I found them by pure accident as well cause my favorit online shop had them on the frontpage for some time. I've read some user/admins that use them for surveillance and they where all praise for these drives, but besides that its a blank page.

Well, I've now posted my query to the Seagate forums and see if I get any joy there.
I was hoping to order tonight, but I feel I need to wait just to get some feedback.

They sound good. I'm unsure about them saying they are specially built and have special "commands?" or something in the firmware which makes them extra suitable for 24/7 surveillance work. Might that mean they are tuned for writing more than they are for reading? I really don't know.

It's annoying as I generally like to have a bit of a read and get a variety of opinions before I spend out over £200, but I'm nervous of just buying them and hoping.

I suppose my brain is shouting to me. If they are so much better and more reliable, then why are people not using them?

 

[nite244]

For what it's worth, I've got 6 x Seagate ST2000DL003 in my FreeNAS build (the only drives in the build). They seem to be performing well, but it's all just in a testing phase right now and not production. Once FreeNAS gets to a stable state (8.1?), then I'll go production with this box (as I say this, it's a home environment, not business) and put my data on it. But until then, I'm just playing around - I'm hoping I made the right choice in drives for my usage, but until I get into production and have real data on it, it's hard to say for sure.

 

[survive]

Hi Piggie,

Take a look at the "Specifications" tabs on the 2 Seagate links you posted & compare the 2 drives. I can tell you they are certainly different drives, there's more than just firmware tweaks between them....

A couple of things that stand out:

The Barracuda Green has a much higher aerial density per platter (422Gb/in2 vs 345Gb/in2) so it probably has 1 less platter for the same size drive.

There is an "Annual Failure Rate" listed for both drives, 0.80% for the SV35 vs, 0.34% for the Barracuda Green.

Based on those 2 bit of information, if I had to choose a Seagate, I would go with the Barracuda Green.

-Will

 

[headconnect]

Just a purely unscientific bit of info - got 6x barracuda greens, one of them died within two weeks (just recently). That's why i got 6 disks for a raid-z1 - so no damage done, redundancy still intact while the drive is out for replacement.. though i'm not feeling super-happy knowing that if one more disk dies i'll be running on a reduced state until i get my new disk back :)

 

[Bohs Hansen]

There is an "Annual Failure Rate" listed for both drives, 0.80% for the SV35 vs, 0.34% for the Barracuda Green.

I've noticed this too, the question is just if they calculated the Barracuda's % from a 24/7 perspective as well, or rather from a 8-10hour workday.

Another thing that leads me to think that the % isn't calculated from the same source numbers is the warranty. Why would they give an almost double warranty on a drive that is expected to fail more the twice as often according to the percent, this is not company-thinking.

But I'm just speculating.

 

[Brand]

Just a purely unscientific bit of info - got 6x barracuda greens, one of them died within two weeks (just recently). That's why i got 6 disks for a raid-z1 - so no damage done, redundancy still intact while the drive is out for replacement.. though i'm not feeling super-happy knowing that if one more disk dies i'll be running on a reduced state until i get my new disk back :)

If you can loose 2 hard drives and still maintain data integrity then that would be a RAIDz2.

 

[Piggie]

Hi Piggie,

Take a look at the "Specifications" tabs on the 2 Seagate links you posted & compare the 2 drives. I can tell you they are certainly different drives, there's more than just firmware tweaks between them....

A couple of things that stand out:

The Barracuda Green has a much higher aerial density per platter (422Gb/in2 vs 345Gb/in2) so it probably has 1 less platter for the same size drive.

There is an "Annual Failure Rate" listed for both drives, 0.80% for the SV35 vs, 0.34% for the Barracuda Green.

Based on those 2 bit of information, if I had to choose a Seagate, I would go with the Barracuda Green.

-Will

Hi, yes I noticed the aerial density difference, but I checked the detailed spec sheets and both drives have 3 platters and 6 heads they say.

I also noticed the failure rate and that does seem back to front. They are giving the VX a 5 year warranty as opposed to 3 and saying it's built to be able to run 24/7 with a theoretical 1 million hour failure rate. (144 years!) LOL.....

Does seem odd them then saying the other cheaper drive is better in this respect.

 

[Piggie]

Here is something you may find interesting: http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/marketing/st_model_number_cheat_sheet.pdf

It shows that Seagate rate the ST2000DL003 as only an "Entry Level Drive"
Not that it means anything bas as such, but it's the lowest rating on their system, which I suppose could make some people consider it as the best selection for a long life reliable NAS/Server drive.

The VX is rated as a "Surveillance Drive"
I'm still not 100% sure what this really means, other than perhaps it's built with long 24/7 running in mind?

Indeed they do themselves say:

Reliability
Backed by the Seagate®
Five-Year Limited Warranty and
designed to operate under 24×7 workloads, surveillance
engineers can be sure that SV35 Series drives will measure
up to their expectations.

 

[headconnect]

If you can loose 2 hard drives and still maintain data integrity then that would be a RAIDz2.

Yup - I wasn't clear enough to specify that i have 5 drives in raid-z1 and one cold spare (totalling 6). Until i get my cold spare back, i'll be running fine in raid-z1, which will survive one disk dying, and then running fine as degraded - and that's what i'm hoping will not happen ;)

 

[SamR]

I know this is a very old post but I felt the need to comment to clear this up.

In a RAID environment, you should be using Nearline SATA or SAS drives from Seagate.
Current part codes are:

ST1000NM0011 1TB Nearline SATA 7200RPM
ST2000NM0011 2TB Nearline SATA 7200RPM
ST1000NM0001 1TB Nearline SAS 7200RPM
ST2000NM0001 2TB Nearline SAS 7200RPM

The VX drives are designed for CCTV / Surveillance and wont neccisarily perform well in a RAID. They are designed to be written to much more often that read from as this is the usual application for DVR's

The Nearline SATA/SAS are designed for 24/7 usage and have Rotational Vibration resistance which the VX drives do not have. This is important because when you have multiple drives sat next to or on top of eachother, the spindles will cause the HDD to vibrate against eachother which could lead to failures if using normal desktop class / AV drives. Nearline drives are also designed to be written to / read from an equal amount which is usually the case in a RAID environment.

I work for an IT Hardware distributor called Hammer PLC and we are experts in storage products. If you are a business user you are welcome to speak to me about HDD if ever you have questions like this. Just call through on our main phone line and ask to speak to Sam in Storage Products.

I hope that this helps!