Enterprise HDD's

[Matthew Lengenfelder]

when you choose HDD's for raids do you purchase "Enterprise" HDD's that cost $300+ or do you use consumer HDD's ?

I'm building a backup server and I've spoken with some people who think that when building any server you should always choose Enterprise HDDs. But for $300 you get Enterprise 1TB HDD's and I'm thinking that for a backup server... why not get some larger 1.5TB drives for $120 and save $180x9HDDs=$1620. As I understand it consumer drives could be marked as bad from a bad sector more often where enterprise HDDs mark the sector bad faster. This prevents the raid controller from marking the HDD bad and so you end up re-building the raid less often (when using enterprise drives) and Enterprise grade HDDs are less likely to fail overall.

I'm thinking of using these 1.5TB 5400 rpm drives, 8 of them in a raid 6 with 1 hot spare and one spare outside of the box just in case. and since they are 5400 RPM drives I'd expect that they would fail because of vibrations and/or heat a lot less often, possibly making them more reliable than enterprise grade drives.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152175&cm_re=1.5tb_hard_drive-_-22-152-175-_-Product

I don't think speed should be much of an issue, since we're just copying backups to this server and as long as it finishes it doesn't matter how long it takes.

What do you guys think?

[Jon Barnhardt]

Personally, I wouldn't use anything less than 7200 RPM in a server even if it's only backup. You will be able to tell the difference in speed, especially with large data chunks such as a backup task presents.

When it comes to enterprise vs consumer grade, I have said for a long time that as long as the correct RAID and backup scenarios are in place, why spend the extra money? The whole reason they created RAID is to expect drive failure and insure against it...

_________________________________
Jon Barnhardt

[Matthew Lengenfelder]

ty, I'll keep that in mind.

[robert]

So, the last time I looked, 1TB SATA drives were at about th $100 mark,
so you could buy 3 for the price of 1 enterprise disk.

Even if the SATA drives lasted 1/2 the time the expensive ones did, you
are saving money with the cheap ones.
Robert

--
robert <roberts.maili...@gmail.com>

[Jona Ziemann]

Matt,

 

I would agree with you on that for a backup server, a SAS or SCSI drive is not necessary if that is all it is doing.  I would definitely go with 7.2k SATA drives for a backup server.  I like to run enterprise drives in production servers though, especially if they require high IOPs.  Also you may be able to look into getting a NAS appliance for backup (Depending on price).

 

For the same price you can get a 1.5TB 7.2k rpm drive

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148337

 

Jona

 

From: bism...@googlegroups.com [mailto:bism...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Matthew Lengenfelder
Sent: Monday, September 28, 2009 6:48 PM
To: bism...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [BisManLUG] Enterprise HDD's

 

when you choose HDD's for raids do you purchase "Enterprise" HDD's that cost $300+ or do you use consumer HDD's ?

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[Eric Wanchic]

I've personally been a Seagate fan. I even purchased one of those bad
Seagates for really cheap, knowing that a HD bios flash would fix the
problem. I'm still happy with it. However, I read and know of a lot of
people that had some very very bad luck with seagate HDs, even the bios
flash updates.

I personally like the 7200, more cache the better, and SATA 3.0gb. Or,
basically whatever is around $100 today in the economic bell curve of
HDs. But I've been recently introduced to the idea of "Green" HDs. HDs
that basically power down at the HD level, not from the system OS level.
Therefore creating a constant power-down power-up fight with RAIDing. If
this is the case, I'd stay away from those "green" drives when raiding.

Eric

Jona Ziemann wrote:
>
> Matt,
>
>
>
> I would agree with you on that for a backup server, a SAS or SCSI
> drive is not necessary if that is all it is doing. I would definitely
> go with 7.2k SATA drives for a backup server. I like to run
> enterprise drives in production servers though, especially if they
> require high IOPs. Also you may be able to look into getting a NAS
> appliance for backup (Depending on price).
>
>
>
> For the same price you can get a 1.5TB 7.2k rpm drive
>
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148337
>
>
>
> Jona
>
>
>

> *From:* bism...@googlegroups.com [mailto:bism...@googlegroups.com]
> *On Behalf Of *Matthew Lengenfelder
> *Sent:* Monday, September 28, 2009 6:48 PM
> *To:* bism...@googlegroups.com
> *Subject:* [BisManLUG] Enterprise HDD's

[Brent]

In theory you are paying for higher MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure)
values and better warranty. However, I don't think any 3rd party
validates MTBF hours on drives so you are basically taking the
manufactures word for it. I see plenty of drive failures of all
manufacture brands in our environment regardless of whether they are
Enterprise branded or not, but I hold out some faith that the
Enterprise drives fail less. About the only manufacturer I avoid due
to past issues is Western Digital. Having said this I do purchase
Enterprise drives to get the better/extended warranty. Most
manufactures will ship advance replacement units same day for a small
surcharge. I always get at least one spare drive for any array that I
build.

On the topic of HD specs. Having been introduced to Enterprise SCSI
drives many years ago I still view 7200 RPM as "slow". I'm waiting
for good value 10K and 15K SATA drives. One final comment, there are
a number of SATA drives that ship jumpered to 1.5Gbps. There is no
reason to provision any system will less than 3Gbps HD/controllers.