3TB HD from WD

[ddrueding]

Two 3TB drives in RAID 0. What can go wrong?

Hence the mirror.

 

[Stereodude]

This will put me at 8. I'll rebuild my current 5-drive RAID 5 to a 8-drive RAID 6.

Are you planning to play the online capacity expansion lottery?

 

[Stereodude]

Hence the mirror.

I hope your mirror has some smarts keeping it from automatically reflecting the data loss when one assumes room temp. :cheese:

 

[Handruin]

Are you planning to play the online capacity expansion lottery?

I can try it, but I'm fine if it fails. My NAS is only about 10% in use and everything that's currently on it is a 3rd backup. I wasn't aware it was a possibility to add drives to an existing array, so I was planning to recreate the array.

 

[Stereodude]

I can try it, but I'm fine if it fails. My NAS is only about 10% in use and everything that's currently on it is a 3rd backup. I wasn't aware it was a possibility to add drives to an existing array, so I was planning to recreate the array.

It can do RAID level migration, and it also supports Online Capacity Expansion. I'm not sure if you can do both at the same time. Seems like you can. link

 

[ddrueding]

I hope your mirror has some smarts keeping it from automatically reflecting the data loss when one assumes room temp. :cheese:

Me too. I haven't even started the research on how this will work. The content is massively static, and the odds of the two users (my wife and I) changing the same file at the same time is zero. The speed between the two machines (GbE) is huge compared to the file sizes, and the network traffic would be basically nothing if we were both accessing the local copy of our data.

I still need to go through our old threads on the subject, bring current any older analysis, and then evaluate against this fairly basic requirement set.

Tonight however, I'm pulling a pair of 2-3 and another pair of 6-4 through the crawlspace, and another 14 12-2 speaker wires through the attic. Windows arrive on the 3rd.

 

[LunarMist]

The speed between the two machines (GbE) is huge compared to the file sizes, and the network traffic would be basically nothing if we were both accessing the local copy of our data.

I don't understand that. Say the drives are 75% full (4TB) and you generate and delete 100GB per day. How long will it take to synchronize the drives and how long is the rebuild time across the network when one fails?

 

[ddrueding]

I don't understand that. Say the drives are 75% full (4TB) and you generate and delete 100GB per day. How long will it take to synchronize the drives and how long is the rebuild time across the network when one fails?

They will hold about 4TB, but even a busy day would be 30GB. Regardless, GbE is no doubt enough to keep up with the file creation in real-time. Restoring from a failure is another matter; 11 hours is a realistic ballpark to transfer 4TB over GbE if there is no other traffic. How comfortable am I having the only copy of my data on a RAID-0 of WD drives for 11 hours? Not very, but that is what the backup server (run nightly) is for.

Remember: RAID is not a backup.

 

[Handruin]

They will hold about 4TB, but even a busy day would be 30GB. Regardless, GbE is no doubt enough to keep up with the file creation in real-time. Restoring from a failure is another matter; 11 hours is a realistic ballpark to transfer 4TB over GbE if there is no other traffic. How comfortable am I having the only copy of my data on a RAID-0 of WD drives for 11 hours? Not very, but that is what the backup server (run nightly) is for.

Remember: RAID is not a backup.

What about something like Mozy for a 3rd backup off site to ease the concern during those 11 hours of possibly restoration? I think I have over 1TB of data backed up there now which gives me peace of mind that my most important things have a 3rd copy in case of a failure, theft, loss of house, etc.

 

[ddrueding]

No need for mozy. I'll just keep a copy at work. We have about 10TB to spare at the moment, and my link to them is much faster than anything I could get to the internet. If I needed to do a full restore, I could put all the drives in the same system for the bulk copy.

 

[LunarMist]

They will hold about 4TB, but even a busy day would be 30GB. Regardless, GbE is no doubt enough to keep up with the file creation in real-time. Restoring from a failure is another matter; 11 hours is a realistic ballpark to transfer 4TB over GbE if there is no other traffic. How comfortable am I having the only copy of my data on a RAID-0 of WD drives for 11 hours? Not very, but that is what the backup server (run nightly) is for.

Remember: RAID is not a backup.

Yeah, well two unproven 3TB WD drives in RAID 0 are a gamble. :smurf: I'd rather use them individually.

 

[ddrueding]

Yeah, well two unproven 3TB WD drives in RAID 0 are a gamble. :smurf: I'd rather use them individually.

It's only a gamble if there is something to lose. With the data backed up elsewhere, I'd rather not have to break up my data. Besides, the added speed will be nice

 

[LunarMist]

Which controller and OS will work well with the advancing format and 3TB drives?

 

[ddrueding]

No idea. I bought a 4-port 3Ware controller to fool around with, but my main install will be directly on the ICH of my Gigabyte GA-H57M-USB3 boards.

 

[Chewy509]

Which controller and OS will work well with the advancing format and 3TB drives?

If you mean 4K sectors and 2TB+ sizes.

Solaris 10 u9 (released last month) supports both on standard ICH9/10 and AMD 800+ chipset controllers in AHCI mode. Just 4K sector support in the BIOS support is needed to get GRUB loaded correctly. Also EFI is NOT required.

Linux distro's with kernel 2.6.36 will work as well.

Mac OS X 10.7 will have support.

Don't know about Windows.

PS. This is to use as a BOOT drive, not just as a data drive.

 

[Stereodude]

Which controller and OS will work well with the advancing format and 3TB drives?

Excluding booting Windows 7 and Vista work fine. To boot from them under 7 or Vista you need an EFI "BIOS" (as I understand it).

I believe that Windows XP Pro x64 will also work fine with advanced format 3TB drives since you can manually align the partition and it supports GPT. However XP Pro x64 can not boot from a GPT drive regardless of EFI or not.

 

[sechs]

WD has been good for me. Much better than the DOA or dying Seagates and somewhat better than the one out of five Samsungs that have bad sectors from the start.

Neither Seagate nor Samsung have been dumb enough to put the word "ass" in the model number for a drive. Not even an "a55."

 

[LunarMist]

ASS is just letters. It doesn't mean anything. :roll:

 

[ddrueding]

My 3TB drive from the Egg arrived this morning. Packaging was awesome. Waiting for the other 3 to arrive from somewhere else.

Two days after my drive from the Egg showed up I get a call from the other place (that had shown 250 in stock, and status never changed from "processing"): "We just got them in today, do you still want them?".

FuturePowerPC: You suck.

 

[LunarMist]

Those high stock numbers are often bogus. I think it means that some distributor has 250 on order. 50 websites probably show those same quantities.

 

[ddrueding]

Just got around to opening the 3TB WD Drive. The awesome packaging was thanks to the inclusion of a HighPoint RocketRAID 62X. PCIe 1x with a pair of SATAIII ports. Sweet.

 

[ddrueding]

Two days after my drive from the Egg showed up I get a call from the other place (that had shown 250 in stock, and status never changed from "processing"): "We just got them in today, do you still want them?".

FuturePowerPC: You suck.

As a follow-up. The guy I talked to yesterday assured me that "it will go out today". I just got an e-mail from them saying it shipped, but UPS just received the information and not the package! So I paid overnight shipping on something that will take a week to arrive. What BS.

 

[Stereodude]

There are reasons why refuse to pay extra for faster shipping. oke:

 

[LunarMist]

There are reasons to buy from a reliable supplier, but Eggs were out of stock. Slow shipping would probably have been worse.

 

[ddrueding]

There are reasons to buy from a reliable supplier, but Eggs were out of stock. Slow shipping would probably have been worse.

The Egg had them in stock, but limited me to one. Had I known this would take so long, I would have ordered one a day until I had all I wanted. It would have been faster and cheaper. Grr.

 

[LunarMist]

I thought it was 48 hrs or some such interval. :brilsmurf:

 

[LunarMist]

I thought it was 48 hrs or some such interval.

 

[ddrueding]

Honestly I don't know. Haven't tried such shenanigans yet.

 

[LunarMist]

There are probably other limits, such as one per street address. I remember in the olden days I had 4 Radio Shack accounts with slightly different names at the same address - plenty of free batteries.

 

[ddrueding]

Interesting. When the 3TB drives are connected to the 3Ware 9650SE they show up as 750GB each.

 

[Stereodude]

That's not at all surprising.

In the introduction we mentioned that WD knew from the start that there would be some compatibility issues with various systems, but they didn’t want to hold back this drive back any longer. In our lab we actually ran into a problem of getting the Caviar Green 3TB drive to recognize its proper capacity in our test rig, even with the HBA add-on card. No matter what we did the drive would only recognize as a 746GB drive.

 

[ddrueding]

Connecting them straight to the onboard controller of this Intel DP55KG board with the controller in AHCI mode worked brilliantly. Putting them into a Dynamic RAID-0 for testing now.

 

[Handruin]

I got my three 1.5TB drives today. They didn't ship using their new packaging method which is annoying. They came with a half-cut Styrofoam crate like the last time, which was bubble wrapped. Hopefully they all work ok.

 

[ddrueding]

Anything in particular anyone would like to see?

 

[ddrueding]

.

 

[Stereodude]

Uh... what's up with that HDtach STR plot?

 

[LunarMist]

Maybe the sectors are not aligned with the axis of the universe?

 

[sdbardwick]

Uh... what's up with that HDtach STR plot?

Total speculation: Given that it starts around 2,147GB Looks like something in the file system or HDTach is using a long int (max value 2,147,483,647) to store a value and it rolls over and starts at the beginning again.

 

[Handruin]

I got my three 1.5TB drives today. They didn't ship using their new packaging method which is annoying. They came with a half-cut Styrofoam crate like the last time, which was bubble wrapped. Hopefully they all work ok.

One of the three are clicking and won't be recognized. RMA filed. :tdown: The other two are being surface-scanned now.

 

[LunarMist]

WD or Samsung drives?