recommended 2.5" disks

[djhack1639]

Hi all, in planning for the future I'm considering migrating to 2.5" disks for power/space/heat benefits.

Which 2.5" disks are typically used/recommended for NAS use?

I tried searching ehre and on the web but was unable to come up with anything.

TIA.

 

[jgreco]

Hitachi 0A70395, 500GB, the EA models (HTE54*) are rated for 24/7 use. If you pick drives not rated for 24/7 use, they are NOT RATED FOR 24/7 USE AND ARE PROBABLY DESIGNED TO BE USED IN A NOTEBOOK.

I've got some iomega IX2-NG's that take 4.9 watts with no drives. Putting two of the Travels in them makes them hover around 7 or 8 watts.

Downside? Only 500GB. And kind of slow on seeks and stuff like that.

So the question is, what are you planning to store, how much storage do you need, how fast do you need random I/O to be, and how fast do you need sequential I/O to be?

 

[tingo]

FWIW, I'm using 6 x Samsung HN-M101MBB in my current FreeNAS box. It has been running for about a year now.

 

[jgreco]

We've got some MT2 1TB's running as well, for longer than that, but I don't recall what we determined their duty cycle to be...

Also it is worth noting that power savings may not be as substantial as size increases. Half a dozen 2.5" drives are likely to soak up 10-15 watts when busy, similar to a 3.5" drive.

 

[Brand]

Since you didn't give any requirements other than 2.5" the Seagate Constellation 2 1TB 2.5" SAS Drive is a great drive.

 

[jgreco]

Yeah, the Constellation series is having some price pressures (1TB for $200? wow), they used to be able to command a significant price premium over similar SATA drives but at 2:1 the extra cost may be worth it for "server grade" drives, and 7200RPM in 2.5" is fast.

However, at $120, the 750GB Momentus XT is a hybrid SSD/7200RPM drive, giving you several GB of flash-speed storage and lower power consumption than the Constellation. I think we've seen one failure out of more than a dozen drives when abusing these poor little things in an awful way, constant dozens of transactions per second for about two years now. I expected to see them start falling over in quantity about a year ago but three of the four spares are still sitting in inventory. The new generation two XT's have more flash and go up to 750GB.

Some friends caught the OCZ 512GB Vertex 4 - VTX4-25SAT3-512G.M - going for only $299.99 just recently (priced normally around $500). Give it about two more years and I wouldn't be shocked to see price parity between SSD's and the Constellations, which basically spells end-of-line for them.

 

[jgreco]

Oh and of course the instant I say that, we have one fail. Funny, it was the one we got back from Seagate RMA.

 

[djhack1639]

Awesome, thanks for the responses. This is for a general use home NAS - media storage - iTunes & DLNA servers, centralized photo library, backups, etc. Right now I have about 1TB of data on a ZFS pool made up of several random older disks that were no longer in use. Long term I'd like to be able to support two outgoing HD video streams, a music stream, and incoming CrashPlan backups, simultaneously.