WD or Seagate HD's

[Majik]

Hey guys,
I curious to know some opinions of what hard drives are a better build to go with. I bought Seagate drives as they use separate platters and therefore supposedly better read-write abilities and supposedly longer life, more reliability. I have had Western Digital also and have had a few die quite early in their life so for me i was nervous to use in my NAS setup. Can't wait for the day SSD's are not only in much higher capacities but also more affordable........
What are your thoughts on this or what you use?

 

[joeschmuck]

You should do a search as this specific topic has been covered quite a few times in the recent past.

 

[joelmusicman]

Brand-wise, there's really not a huge difference between any of the manufacturers. I'd spend more time looking for things like a long warranty, spindle speed, NAS friendly firmware, etc.

As far as improving reliability, there's two things you can do:
1. Burn in the drives, to weed out "infant mortality." For the first 2-3 weeks you run Long SMART tests twice daily, etc. Preferably before you put valuable data on it. RMA if there are *ANY* errors.
2. Keep your drives below 40C AT ALL TIMES. There's a Google whitepaper about long-term failure rates going up by an order of magnitude above 40C. To check temps, type this in console: "smartctl -a /dev/ada*" (* = 0-5).

 

[Yatti420]

Brand-wise, there's really not a huge difference between any of the manufacturers. I'd spend more time looking for things like a long warranty, spindle speed, NAS friendly firmware, etc.

As far as improving reliability, there's two things you can do:
1. Burn in the drives, to weed out "infant mortality." For the first 2-3 weeks you run Long SMART tests twice daily, etc. Preferably before you put valuable data on it. RMA if there are *ANY* errors.
2. Keep your drives below 40C AT ALL TIMES. There's a Google whitepaper about long-term failure rates going up by an order of magnitude above 40C. To check temps, type this in console: "smartctl -a /dev/ada*" (* = 0-5).

I like to run my drives hard at 100% for a week or two before putting them into production.. It'll weed out any bad drives.. Even run them hot for awhile etc.. Generally burn in all parts that I can etc.. Espescially ram for freenas.. Go Memtest!..

 

[jgreco]

A week or two is insufficient for infant mortality. You need to get beyond the 1000 hour mark.

I have some discussion of burn in over at

http://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/building-burn-in-and-testing-your-freenas-system.17750/

 

[jgreco]

I bought Seagate drives as they use separate platters and therefore supposedly better read-write abilities

I would love to know what you mean by this.

 

[cyberjock]

I bought Seagate drives as they use separate platters and therefore supposedly better read-write abilities

I would love to know what you mean by this.

So would I. I just dismissed it as rubbish from a sales person since every drive has 1(or more) individual platters that make up the disk.

 

[jgreco]

It sounded sort of like maybe he meant something along the lines of the old dual actuator systems but with platters instead... couldn't quite figure it.

 

[Majik]

Hey guys thanks for the responses.
What i meant by the separate platters is that "supposedly" seagate's construction of their platers are in 1TB sections. So meaning if you have a 3TB drive there is actually 3 - 1TB platters inside it. WD uses 1 3TB platter......so they say. I have never pulled either apart, but from what I understand is that with the Seagate platter system it allows faster r-w and more consistent ability to "Serve". This is all info that I did a little research on but primarily going off a guy I know that is a commercial system admin. I have owned both and to be honest my most failed drives were Seagate.

 

[joeschmuck]

So a single platter holding 3 TBs will have a higher bit density and if it's rotating a the same speed of a stack of 3 platters, well the single platter could transfer sequential data faster. There are so many ways to analyze speed so you must keep things into perspective. Do you want throughput of sequential data, throughput of random data, large or small files? Unless you are building a high transaction NAS (like a google search engine fast) then you don't need to worry about how fast the drives are because a normal drive is fast enough. Longer life means you just look at the warranty you are purchasing because there is never a sure thing, it's mechanical. And keep the drives cool (below 40C) if you want them to last.

I purchase my drives based on overall capacity I wanted, how long I wanted to wait for resilvering, and cost/warranty, in that order.

 

[cyberjock]

Hey guys thanks for the responses.
What i meant by the separate platters is that "supposedly" seagate's construction of their platers are in 1TB sections. So meaning if you have a 3TB drive there is actually 3 - 1TB platters inside it. WD uses 1 3TB platter......so they say. I have never pulled either apart, but from what I understand is that with the Seagate platter system it allows faster r-w and more consistent ability to "Serve". This is all info that I did a little research on but primarily going off a guy I know that is a commercial system admin. I have owned both and to be honest my most failed drives were Seagate.

Sorry, but that's very wrong. I'll explain...

All of the hard drive manufacturers have the same maximum density per square inch, which translates into so much data per platter. There's a relationship between data density, number of platters, performance, reliability, power usage, and more. In some cases, you want fewer platters, on others you might want more. But, all of the manufacturers have roughly the same density per platter. No joke, some people are so hard-core into this stuff they actually shop for drives with fewer platters or more platters based on the intended use. It can and does matter to many people. So while you might want "a 4TB drive for your server" someone else may be shopping for "a 4TB drive that is more than 3 platters". I've known people that would buy 8 4-platter drives, then when the same size disk is available in 3 platters they'd "upgrade".

I think that the most platters you can put in a standard 3.5" is 4 or 5. And the biggest disks naturally have more platters and the higher/highest density. Virtually all hard drive manufacturers are at about 1TB/platter. Nobody really as a significant advantage over the others, otherwise they'd be able to make a bigger drive. Currently if you look around you'll see everyone is at 4TB.. because that's the maximum density everyone has achieved.

There is one exception, and that is the Helium filled drive made by HGST that is 6TB. I won't even discuss how the helium increases density, but it's actually much more complex than people realize. It's sealed, and at just $800+ a disk, I'm sure you're going to buy 24 of them for your server. ;) It's an odd ball and there's a lot of talk about how sustainable a He drive industry could go since Helium is getting more expensive by the day. There's also a rapidly diminishing quantity of He on the planet since it's lighter than air and is carried away by the solar winds. One of the dollar stores here in town doesn't even carry He for their balloons anymore because its too expensive.

Anyway, you probably made up those numbers just to explain yourself, but if WD was able to make a 3TB/platter density while Seagate could only make 1TB/platter, Seagate would be in SERIOUSLY bad shape financially because WD could drop a 10TB+ drive on the market right now while Seagate would be limited to 4TB or so. Naturally, Seagate wouldn't be in business long. ;)

Generally speaking, when some company makes a new drive that is now "the biggest commercial drive ever" they did one of 3 things.. added more platters or increased platter density, or both.

 

[joeschmuck]

I think that the most platters you can put in a standard 3.5" is 4 or 5.

Thought I'd toss this in for you... 7 platters in a 3.5" hard drive. 6TB of storage. Here is the link for you to read about it. Just crazy what can be done.

 

[Majik]

Sorry, but that's very wrong. I'll explain...

All of the hard drive manufacturers have the same maximum density per square inch, which translates into so much data per platter. There's a relationship between data density, number of platters, performance, reliability, power usage, and more. In some cases, you want fewer platters, on others you might want more. But, all of the manufacturers have roughly the same density per platter. No joke, some people are so hard-core into this stuff they actually shop for drives with fewer platters or more platters based on the intended use. It can and does matter to many people. So while you might want "a 4TB drive for your server" someone else may be shopping for "a 4TB drive that is more than 3 platters". I've known people that would buy 8 4-platter drives, then when the same size disk is available in 3 platters they'd "upgrade".

I think that the most platters you can put in a standard 3.5" is 4 or 5. And the biggest disks naturally have more platters and the higher/highest density. Virtually all hard drive manufacturers are at about 1TB/platter. Nobody really as a significant advantage over the others, otherwise they'd be able to make a bigger drive. Currently if you look around you'll see everyone is at 4TB.. because that's the maximum density everyone has achieved.

There is one exception, and that is the Helium filled drive made by HGST that is 6TB. I won't even discuss how the helium increases density, but it's actually much more complex than people realize. It's sealed, and at just $800+ a disk, I'm sure you're going to buy 24 of them for your server. ;) It's an odd ball and there's a lot of talk about how sustainable a He drive industry could go since Helium is getting more expensive by the day. There's also a rapidly diminishing quantity of He on the planet since it's lighter than air and is carried away by the solar winds. One of the dollar stores here in town doesn't even carry He for their balloons anymore because its too expensive.

ouchhhhh!!

Anyway, you probably made up those numbers just to explain yourself, but if WD was able to make a 3TB/platter density while Seagate could only make 1TB/platter, Seagate would be in SERIOUSLY bad shape financially because WD could drop a 10TB+ drive on the market right now while Seagate would be limited to 4TB or so. Naturally, Seagate wouldn't be in business long. ;)

Wow awesome info! Thanks for that!
Yes agreed, I had a suspicion that it probably didn't make a huge diff unless there is some specific use for type "x" drive. For me it really didn't make any difference other then the store I bought it had gave me a great price and the size was perfect. From what I could see warranties were the same and "typical" lifecycle was similar. All-in-all both seem to be decent.

 

[cyberjock]

Thought I'd toss this in for you... 7 platters in a 3.5" hard drive. 6TB of storage. Here is the link for you to read about it. Just crazy what can be done.

I know.. but that's definitely not "standard" right now. In fact, the costs of that drive are only marginally related to the sealed helium technology and mostly the number of platters and head technology. Current technology could not achieve 7 platters in your standard 3.5" format because of space considerations and heat generation. It's not "good" when you heat up the platters enough by spinning them to cause them to lose their data. ;)

 

[Majik]

Thought I'd toss this in for you... 7 platters in a 3.5" hard drive. 6TB of storage. Here is the link for you to read about it. Just crazy what can be done.

Appreciate the read! ;) I know a lot of info is out there and each person having their "favorite", but it's also kinda nice to see what other people are using in the real world on this level with FreeNAS:D

 

[joeschmuck]

Yes, I know I won't be purchasing a 6TB helium filled drive in the near future. What if the seal leaked? No good would come from that.

 

[Majik]

Yes, I know I won't be purchasing a 6TB helium filled drive in the near future. What if the seal leaked? No good would come from that.

spark........boooooooom

 

[joeschmuck]

I've been repairing hard drives since they were on 14" aluminum platters. I even have a head in new packaging and it's just under a square inch in size. The heads moved via hydraulics and there were 20 heads, 100 cylinders, it was hard sectored and was fun. Aligning the heads were very easy for me [I have the knack] but others would spend half a day trying to get all 20 heads perfectly aligned. My title says Old Man for a reason, I damn old. Oh, those disks were not sealed, they were open to the air. We had head crashes all the time but the media was so thick it didn't matter. What did matter was when all the heads touched down on the pack at the same time, causes burn marks but the darn thing would come back to life almost every time without having to replace any component. But I'm not old enough for the rotating magnetic drum, a whole 8MB.

I don't repair hard drives any more, they are throw aways now.

 

[cyberjock]

spark........boooooooom

Helium doesn't burn like Hydrogen.. so there's no risk of it exploding. That's why Helium is used so frequently in places where you need a light gas that isn't flammable or explosive.

 

[joeschmuck]

lol, that would be a very bad design using hydrogen. I think if the seal leaked that you would hear some serious screeching.