Sorry a little off topic but I've always been against Synology prices. You pay a premium for what something that you can DIY or get at a fraction of the cost.

What MB/s throughput are you getting from those drives?

Anyway, during the long holidays, I dusted and resurrected out my old Q6600 workhorse desktop with 3 x 750GB Samsung F1 hardisk which has not been used for 2 years.

Anyway, did a quick bench on the RAID 0 150GB partition from the 3 drives.



Not too shabby in the midst of SSD drives and furthermore with my mobo still on SATA 2.

Yes, thanks for the reminder. I am fully aware of this and one of the primary reasons why I run M4 SSDs on my notebooks.

Notice you posted this before a while back... But it's still not available here.

Are you running critical data that you require RAID 5?

Put the 3 drives in a separate NAS box and run it as eSATA or as Gigabit.

If you don't know what's critical data means you don't have any important files that you cannot afford to loose lah...

RAID 5 can be designated as one single drive letter. Why does it need to be D E F?

I think this is going round and round in circles... I thought Shufflerz's problem was because he's using SSD, he wants to set all SATA ports to AHCI and therefore cannot do "hardware" RAID for his other 3 normal hardisk.

My suggestion to him was to take out the 3 hardisk, find a 3 or 4 bay enclosure and connect the PC with eSATA (cheap ones) or the connect via Gigabit switch (more expensive type). The eSATA NAS enclosures can run RAID 5 via a separate SATA RAID controller card installed in the PC or a real standlalone NAS enclosure having it's own RAID 5 controller and connects via Gigabit network. In either case, the RAID 5 volume can be set as a single drive.

After that he says he does not want to take out the hardisk because it will become D E F drives?

I don't understand what's all the fuss about the RMA... Pay the USD 7.50. That's less than RM 25 ! They'll call you up and come to pick the drive up from you. They will send email updates when the drive is expected to be returned to you. When they return the drive, it will be nicely packed and sealed in a anti-static bag and will be delivered right to your doorstep. Don't need to go anywhere to the post office and pack the drive yourself. Don't even need to go to LYP and brave the traffic to send have Viewnet to send it for you.

Yup.

http://forum.lowyat.net/index.php?showtopi...&#entry37288886

You sent in your VW Polo and you got back a Vios?

USB 3 port aside, I believe the USB 3 cable itself is physically different on one end. So if steventan85 intends to use a USB 3 cable on his USB 2 WD element SE, it's simply not going to work. His WD element SE needs to be USB 3 in order to use a USB 3 cable.

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Added on August 7, 2012, 10:51 pmHow many DVD-R would be required to backup 2TB worth of anime?

Cheaper and faster to buy another hardisk to backup and store it away.

This post has been edited by jchue73: Aug 7 2012, 10:51 PM

For smaller files, yes, backup to DVDs make sense. I would at least use BR for backup for larger files if I wanted to avoid backing up to hardisk. But even then, I would be very pissed with the speed

We hear lots of people backing up BRs and DVDs to hardisk. So that is a silly thing to do eh?

+1 Speed is king in this case.

I don't see it as a problem if after backup, you disconnect the drive and put it away for safekeeping. Putting the drive online just subjects it to wear and tear.

4TB are already out. Just not available here yet.

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Added on August 10, 2012, 5:18 pmDon't know if anybody noticed but apparently Toshiba will start making 3.5" drives of 1.5Tb, 2TB and 3TB using Hitachi's manufacturing facility in Shenzen that was acquired from WDC after WDC took over HGST. What you're getting is basically a Hitachi drive.

This is hell of a good news for storage consumers after a long while. Don't have to rely on crappy WD and SG drives.

http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2012_08/pr0801.htm

This is the current Toshiba 1TB available in the market if I'm not mistaken;



This post has been edited by jchue73: Aug 10 2012, 05:18 PM

The Red is anytime better than the Green. For NAS usage, I'll avoid it like a plague.

Actually, I'm also in a dilemma. Initially looking at 3TB drives but I heard that there will be some incompatibility problems with the Microserver. So now looking at 2TB variants. For the same price, I can either get the Hitachi 2TB or the WD Red. I believe warranty wise both are the same. The only thing that is pulling me back is the Red is 5400rpm while the Hitachi is 7200rpm.

Not required. The Red is already built for NAS environment albeit only for home and small office/home office usage.

It used to be Hitachi but at the moment there's only Seagate and WD with very little involvement from Toshiba to carry on what's left off Hitachi. If you want Seagate's reliable line of drives, look at their Constellation series. For WD, it's their Black series or their RE4 series. Both are expensive but reliable.

But then again if you're looking at storing and keeping the hardisk locked away after one time use, any decent brand would be fine.

Hardisk would be fine for long term storage if you take into consideration the price per GB and the speed. Tape is expensive while still slow.

If the data is very important, make an exact copy of your backup in another hardisk and keep it somewhere else. From time to time, take the hardisk out and check the files at random to see if the hardisk is ok.

This post has been edited by jchue73: Aug 14 2012, 10:44 PM

People are actually backing up their Blurays onto hardisk. What does that tell you?

Actually, the choice to use RE4 or Black depends on whether you use it with RAID or standalone. The RE4 is specifically for use with RAID array and if you're not going to use RAID, Black series is better. If you use the RE4 as a standalone drive, they have very short write recovery times (TLER = 7 seconds), which can result in data corruption if they not used with a write caching RAID controller. The short write recovery times also ensure that the drives would never get into a lock up for long time for the RAID controller to register an error and subsequently drop them out of the array.

Black series is RE4 with longer TLER (approx 180 seconds). Having said that, a lot od people use the Black series in RAID arrays and don't encounter problems.

Yeah, I'm aware that current geenration 5400 rpm drives are speedy. I'm actually using 8 x 2TB Samsung HD204UI and I love them because it's silent and they are as fast as (if not faster than) other 7200 rpm drives. The thing is I plan to go beyond 1Gb/s in the near future and it would be nice if the drives could cope. Having said that, I think the Red in a RAID array would still able to cope beyond Gigabit. Aiming for 300 to 400 MB/s transfer speeds in a RAID array.

Agreed. But I think it's not exactly 2 times the price. Black series is generally about 40% more expensive than Red. 5 years vs 3 years warranty makes the difference too.

Sorry. No idea. I'm guessing it's much shorter like the RE4 (TLER = 7 seconds).

I'm no expert. Just a serious enthusiast.

For budget, you may want to look at Hitachi drives. I think you can only get 1TB and 2TB drives and they are slightly more pricey than the normal Seagate / WD drives. You would probably have to settle for WD drives as warranty replacement if you happen to claim warranty for the Hitachi drive.

I was told that when you send back a Samsung drive for warranty, you get a Seagate. You sure you got a Samsung back?

Benchmarks not too shabby but I'm not too fond of the Green drives. I think I'm going to try my luck with the 3TB Red.

For long term, try and get something with the longest warranty and also one that fits your budget. For NAS usage, the 3TB WD Red drives seem like a good balance of price, speed and 3 year warranty to boot. Buy two of them and put them in RAID 1 mode.

Happy to hear this. It's one freaking fast drive but the only thing pulling me back is the 1 year warranty.

Did you put an AC adaptor to power up the unit?

You mention only some part numbers are 2 years and some are 1 year? If all the new ones are now 2 years, I might be tempted with the Barracudas.

Thanks for the tip. I'm one of those that like to use the USB stick.

WD Red but the Barracudas are the only ones with 1TB platters spinning at 7200 rpm.

Yes, inside the external hardisk casing is a normal hardisk. Can be 2.5" notebook hardisk or 3.5" desktop hardisk depending what you bought. Toshiba Canvio should be 2.5" notebook hardisk.

You can take out the hardisk from the casing and put it in your notebook but of course it'll stay in your notebook. This would It is very inconvenient to share the contents of that hardisk with other computers. It is easier if it's mounted on an external casing.

Depends on your needs. If you want portability, you still need to get an external casing (USB 2 or 3) so that your 2.5" hardisk can be portable and accessed externally by other computers / notebooks when you plug in the USB cable.

Hitachi drives are superb and very reputed for reliability except that it's very difficult to find nowadays after being bought over by WD. The Hitachi has higher MTBF and rated for 24/7 usage. Note that the 3TB Hitachi Deskstar is a 5 platter design vs 3 platter on the Barracuda.

Hopefully, the Hitachi factory Shenzen that was sold to Toshiba starts making Hitachi drives again (under Toshiba name).

http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/2202087/+980#

Did you check Anandtech? It had a short review of the drives in NAS environment.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6157/western...h-the-premium/3

Tom's Hardware also got;

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/red-wd...nas,3248-4.html

Anyway, if used as standalone, the Barracuda definitely wallops the WD Red but when you put in your network as a NAS device, you are limited to the 1 gigabit connection anyways and any drive capable of 125MB/s is going to look the same.

What do you want to use it for? Using it as a single disk or using it for NAS? Do you know that one is with 1 year warranty and the other is with 3 year warranty?

Outright speed, the Barracuda is slightly faster.

Which is better? You need to weight the pros and cons and choose it yourself.

That's true but the Toshiba HD that is trickling in slowly from the old Hitachi factory in Shenzen are actually based on Hitachi design. When Hitachi was Hitachi back then, they were reliable and they had one of the faster drives out there. They ran fine in RAID. I hope they come back in a big way through Toshiba. At the way its' going, there's too few players in the market that consumers get played out and bullied by WD and Seagate.

Anyway, Samsung hardisk were also not specifically for NAS but runs reliably in RAID.

WD bought over Hitachi and perhaps WD is controlling Hitachi prices?

I was also tempted to get the Hitachi 7200rpm 2TB drives and they cost the same as the 2TB WD Red. But then again, I wanted the higher capacity 3TB and the only one available is the WD Red.

Anyway, back to your question... If the Black is the same price as the Hitachi, I would go for the Black because of the longer warranty.

I'm assuming you're using it as a boot drive? Why not use 2 x 120GB SSD and do RAID 0?

Not just the Hitachi 4TB but Seagate 4TB drives are also no where to be seen here. I think the situation got worse after the floods and also due to Hitachi's acquisition by WD. If not for those two incidents, we would probably be enjoying 3TB and 4TB drives at sub 300 and sub 500 prices.

Yeah, curious to know too. Not much is written about the AV drives. I believe it's also 5400 rpm. Was tempted to get the Seagate SV35 drives which is also 3 years warranty and it's 1TB per platter technology based on the 7200rpm Barracuda. The 3TB drives are about the same pricing range as the 3TB WD Red.

WD is popular because of the slightly longer warranty. Seagate drives are generally faster but shorter warranty.

That's because Seagate bought over Samsung's hardisk division.