Hitachi 2TB, 5 platters :P

[LunarMist]

The Samsung 2TB is back in stock at the eggs.

 

[Handruin]

So are the 1TB and the 1.5TB. I guess they got a shipment.

 

[LunarMist]

I have a bookmark link for all 2TB drives. I don't look at smaller drives now, but of course they are there.

 

[Handruin]

The 2TB drives still don't seem to be on the cost advantage. Which 2TB drives do you normally buy? I'm really leaning towards 5x 1.5TB Samsung drives for my array vs 5x 2TB drives. The difference in price is

5x 1.5TB = $550 | 7.5TB
5x 2.0TB = $900 | 10TB

The difference in price is $350 and it gets me another 2.5TB total space. If I use that $350 I can buy 3 more 1.5TB drives and get 4.5TB more space.

3 (@$110) x 1.5TB | 4.5TB = $330
8x 1.5TB = $880 | 12TB

Granted I spin 3 more drives...but I don't even need 12TB right now.

 

[ddrueding]

At the office I'm running 1.5TB Samsungs. At home I'm running 2TB WD Greenpower drives mainly because I'm paying for the electricity, don't appreciate the extra heat, would have to put up with the extra noise, and don't have the SATA ports to spare.

There are many reasons besides $/GB to go for fewer larger drives.

 

[LunarMist]

The 2TB drives still don't seem to be on the cost advantage. Which 2TB drives do you normally buy? I'm really leaning towards 5x 1.5TB Samsung drives for my array vs 5x 2TB drives. The difference in price is

5x 1.5TB = $550 | 7.5TB
5x 2.0TB = $900 | 10TB

The difference in price is $350 and it gets me another 2.5TB total space. If I use that $350 I can buy 3 more 1.5TB drives and get 4.5TB more space.

3 (@$110) x 1.5TB | 4.5TB = $330
8x 1.5TB = $880 | 12TB

Granted I spin 3 more drives...but I don't even need 12TB right now.

I have limited space for hard drives (only 13x3.5" along with 2xSSD and one optical drive) so the larger ones are for capacity. Lately I have been replacing the remaining 1TB drives with retail 2TB Hitachi drives, simply because they were in the $130-$140 range at the time. I have a number of WD 2TB drives from 2009 because they were first to market in that capacity, and the drives are cool and quiet. They are mainly the backups for the Hitachis.

Someday I'd like to have two large disk arrays, but it will probably never happen. I could ill afford the lost space from RAID 5 or 6 (2 or 4 drives) and a motherboard plus 2x RAID controllers is rather pricey.

 

[Handruin]

In your situation the larger drives make complete sense. I'm growing as I need more space and I don't need to populate all 15 bays that I plan to have in my case. I'll start with 5 for now and as drive sizes increase over the years, I'll buy the larger drives.

 

[Mercutio]

Faced with the choice, I paid ~$250 for two Perc5s (plus the 3ware cards I already had) so I could get enough ports to run inexpensive 1TB and 1.5TB drives rather than paying the premium for 2TB drives. I figure the ports are forever (probably five years, anyway) and eventually I'll move up again with some quantity of even larger drives.

 

[Handruin]

I was thinking of just using on board ports. I found a gigabyte motherboard with 10 SATA ports and dual GigE for $200. I figured I could spend $200 alone on a card just for 10 ports, so that seems like a decent way to go.

 

[LunarMist]

Faced with the choice, I paid ~$250 for two Perc5s (plus the 3ware cards I already had) so I could get enough ports to run inexpensive 1TB and 1.5TB drives rather than paying the premium for 2TB drives. I figure the ports are forever (probably five years, anyway) and eventually I'll move up again with some quantity of even larger drives.

Can you use two of the RAID cards in one machine?

 

[Mercutio]

I do both. I use 8 onboard SATA ports + cards that have 8 more, normally with an IDE boot drive).
I've read that you can use two Perc5s in one PC, but I don't have any systems set up that way.

 

[ddrueding]

Can you use two of the RAID cards in one machine?

I haven't tried two of the same cards in the same machine (would be too confusing, IMHO), but I know 3Ware's software supports up to three cards at a time. I currently have an Areca 24-port and a 3Ware 16-port connected to a machine with another 10 onboard SATA connectors. This is temporary of course, I don't have a chassis with 50 bays on it.

 

[LunarMist]

I would need two arrays, one for data and another equal one for the backups.

Are there differences in 2TB drives on arrays? I recall that WD sells specific models for RAID at substantially higher prices. Are Hitachi and Samsung,
Seagate, etc. all the same?

 

[Bozo]

I used a 3ware 2 port card for the boot/programs and a 16 port 3Ware for 8TB of storage on the same motherboard.
I have also mixed 3Ware and Adaptec cards on the same motherboard.

 

[LunarMist]

I used a 3ware 2 port card for the boot/programs and a 16 port 3Ware for 8TB of storage on the same motherboard.
I have also mixed 3Ware and Adaptec cards on the same motherboard.

I have used up to four controller cards in one computer, but not more than one of the 8x/16x slot variety that would be needed. My next computer may need 3+ 8x/16x slots.

 

[ddrueding]

I have used up to four controller cards in one computer, but not more than one of the 8x/16x slot variety that would be needed. My next computer may need 3+ 8x/16x slots.

Something kinda like this?

 

[Handruin]

Nice, that'll give you 3 @ 16x, 2 @ 8x and 1 @ 4x.

 

[ddrueding]

Nice, that'll give you 3 @ 16x, 2 @ 8x and 1 @ 4x.

Yup. I could have a dual-port GbE NIC that is 4x, a pair of 8x RAID cards, and then a bunch of ATI video cards for some Eyefinity multi-monitor madness!

Or not...

 

[LunarMist]

By the time I build a new system that board will be long gone.

 

[ddrueding]

Thanks to the GPU computing, I suspect that there will be something equivalent from here on out.