Hitachi Ultrastar vs WD Reds

[katit]

I wanted to get new WD Reds for my new build. 4x 3Tb drives would cost about $600 and give me 6Tb of storage.

While reading other build topics I found reference to this
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hitachi-Ult...142?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1a005f6b86

And it looks very good price-wise. I can get 4 of them for $200. Yes, it will give me little less space then I wanted, but at $400 savings..

Other than that, what is the difference between drives? Anybody familiar with both? What about energy efficiency, can I setup Hitachis to spin-down?

P.S. I 'm getting 3U case with 24 drive spaces, so it's not an issue as I will have only 8 drives initially..

 

[Darren Myers]

I would much rather have these http://www.ebay.com/itm/Western-Dig...662?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4198a110c6 then the Hitachi's. But i like my Reds....i just wish they were 7200 some days but theyre plenty fast.

 

[katit]

Well, to me it's even better (cheaper) :)
At this price it's very hard to buy new RED's. Especially that I have plenty of slots for drives. Why RED's will be better than any of the above eBay drives?

 

[Darren Myers]

For my main pool id rather have larger drives, but I do own 14 2Tb RE4 drives because they were cheap and plentiful. My idea is to soon change out each 2Tb drive with either 4s or 6s and then make a new storage array with all the 2s I removed (if they all survive). If you're ok with picking up a crap ton of 2s and working with that until larger drives become cheaper then be my guest there's no harm in that, it just takes up drive space and power. It might be cost effective power wise to have the larger drives then possibly double the number of drives.

 

[katit]

Thanks! I did think about 4 drives no matter what, without specific size in mind. 4x 2TB drives will give me 4TB of storage and that is going to cover me.

P.S. Going to start separate topic to see why people need tons of storage :)