Bert 49 Posted February 12, 2014 Author Share Posted February 12, 2014 Thanks for the tip, might just look into 3 TB WD Green Drives Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronvp 92 Posted February 12, 2014 Share Posted February 12, 2014 Thanks for the tip, might just look into 3 TB WD Green Drives Good choice.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Koleckai Silvestri 1150 Posted February 12, 2014 Share Posted February 12, 2014 (edited) Green drives aren't a good choice for raids as they will spin down too often. You can spend a little more and get Red drives for a longer lifespan. That would actually mean a lower cost over time. Edited February 12, 2014 by Wayne Luke Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tikuf 663 Posted February 12, 2014 Share Posted February 12, 2014 Green drives aren't a good choice for raids as they will spin down too often. You can spend a little more and get Red drives for a longer lifespan. That would actually mean a lower cost over time. Good advice. The reds are also designed to operate at higher temps that are often seen in small nas boxes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmac 132 Posted February 12, 2014 Share Posted February 12, 2014 (edited) I was also looking at Green drives, since that's what's in my external's, and I've had good luck with them so far. But I've noticed that red drives have excellent reviews and are still a decent price. My question is, since I'm not going RAID, or NAS; are they still good to use for a JBOD box? They seem to be marketed purely for RAID purposes, I wasn't sure if there was anything about them that would make them not work properly for a JBOD box. Edited February 12, 2014 by pmac Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swynol 375 Posted February 12, 2014 Share Posted February 12, 2014 i know drive bender has been mentioned in here, also want to add drive pool into the loop. same sort of thing as drive bender but a bit 'simpler'. i have a trail of drive pool at the moment and it took about 15mins to setup with 5 different hard drives varying in size from 3TB to 1TB. I like the feature that you can duplicate at folder level, so i can duplicated things like Pictures across as many drives as i want but leave me blu ray collection as i can jsut re-rip them. also if anything happens to my main C:\ drive i can remove the storage hard drives and access the data on them on any PC, as all Drive pool does is create a hidden folder on the drive and stores stuff in that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CBers 6771 Posted February 12, 2014 Share Posted February 12, 2014 @ - sounds very much like Drive Bender Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Koleckai Silvestri 1150 Posted February 12, 2014 Share Posted February 12, 2014 Western Digital's Red line is just an upgrade from Green. They have a higher fault tolerance. You can use them anywhere you can use a SATA 3.5" drive. Sometimes you can even find the Red drives for a lower cost than the Green. Depends on factory status and inventory levels. I personally recommend and use Red. A lot less hassle. However my wife has a 1.5 terabyte Green Drive in her PC that is several years old. It replaced a 750 GB Seagate drive that failed on cue one year after the PC was purchased and fell out of warranty. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmac 132 Posted February 12, 2014 Share Posted February 12, 2014 Thanks @, that's good to know. As for the Green Drives, I have had excellent luck with them in my external's so far (fingers crossed). Right now I've got five of them ranging from 1TB to 3TB, and some are at least 3 years old, probably more than that... I can't remember exactly when I got them. In my opinion, I attributed their longevity to the fact they spin down when not in use, however, the Red drives are spinning constant are they not? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Koleckai Silvestri 1150 Posted February 12, 2014 Share Posted February 12, 2014 All drives can be spun down when not in use. The Green Drives spin down more often though. Just stating my opinion. I had posted this before but here is Backblaze's writeup on what drives work best: http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/01/21/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/ You probably won't be at their volume anytime soon but it is a good read. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmac 132 Posted February 12, 2014 Share Posted February 12, 2014 (edited) Yeah, I read that when you posted it in another thread. It looks like from their experience that even though they have primarily Seagate drives, that the WD one's they do have seem to perform better. The greens they're using seem to perform very well, but it looks like they haven't had the red's long enough to draw a conclusion. Although I'd expect the life expectancy to be even better than the greens. EDIT: I wonder why they say they absolutely won't buy more WD Green 3TB drives, when the Seagate 3TB drives they use have 3x the failure rate? Edited February 12, 2014 by pmac Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Koleckai Silvestri 1150 Posted February 12, 2014 Share Posted February 12, 2014 (edited) They state that: The drives that just don’t work in our environment are Western Digital Green 3TB drives and Seagate LP (low power) 2TB drives. Both of these drives start accumulating errors as soon as they are put into production. We think this is related to vibration. The drives do somewhat better in the new low-vibrationBackblaze Storage Pod, but still not well enough. These drives are designed to be energy-efficient, and spin down aggressively when not in use. In the Backblaze environment, they spin down frequently, and then spin right back up. We think that this causes a lot of wear on the drive. Depending on mounts, vibration could even be a factor in an 8 bay enclosure. They also state that the Red 3TB drive is their second choice after the much cheaper Seagate drives. I don't get that but I suspect most of their hardware gets upgraded after a year anyway so having Seagates that fail after a year isn't a big deal. Personally, I've never had any success to Seagate. I'd buy Western Digital Black drives if I could afford it. But have to kick in the budget limit somewhere so the wife doesn't get angry. Edited February 12, 2014 by Wayne Luke Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmac 132 Posted February 12, 2014 Share Posted February 12, 2014 The drives that just don’t work in our environment are Western Digital Green 3TB drives and Seagate LP (low power) 2TB drives. Both of these drives start accumulating errors as soon as they are put into production. We think this is related to vibration. The drives do somewhat better in the new low-vibrationBackblaze Storage Pod, but still not well enough. These drives are designed to be energy-efficient, and spin down aggressively when not in use. In the Backblaze environment, they spin down frequently, and then spin right back up. We think that this causes a lot of wear on the drive. I must have missed that part somehow, that makes sense to me now. I'd buy Western Digital Black drives if I could afford it. But have to kick in the budget limit somewhere so the wife doesn't get angry. I hear ya there... Why do you think I haven't built a full-scale backup server all this time?? Haha. But I've finally got her convinced why I need something for backup now. (Plus, she wouldn't be happy if all of a sudden she couldn't watch her shows due to a hard drive failure ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bert 49 Posted February 12, 2014 Author Share Posted February 12, 2014 So Seagate actually is warrantying both of these 3 TB drives. I had to call because the site wasn't working right and told her what the deal was. The lady was nice and said, oh the ones out of warranty by a couple months, I'll extend it so you can return both. AWESOME Service (too bad their products seem to suck). Anyway, now when I get the new drives should I crack them open and put them in the 8 bay unit? She indicated they will have no further warranty anyway, so that's not an issue. Opinion please? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmac 132 Posted February 12, 2014 Share Posted February 12, 2014 (edited) @@CBers, when merging drives with Drive Bender, does it take a while for your files to show up on the pooled drive? The reason I ask, is that I've successfully created a pool now using a blank 1TB drive, and after I got that working I added one 3TB drive to it, but only files in the root folder showed up in the pool. I tried refreshing the drives from within DB and that still didn't work, so I added a drive letter to DB2 and then moved the files on the disk into the hidden folder DB created (a long string of number,letters,etc.). After doing this my files still weren't showing up, but after a little while they eventually did. I don't know if this is because I manually added the folders on my drive to the folder DB created that links it to the pool, or if it was just from waiting long enough for them to show up. So now that two drives are successfully pooled, i decided to add my other three drives to the pool, I didn't want to have to manually add the folders again (I will if I have to), but the files from these drives still hasn't showed up in the pool. Is there something I'm doing wrong? - First 1TB drive "Added" to create a pool - 2nd 3TB drive "Merged" into pool - Manually copied files on 3TB drive into Drive Benders Mount Point folder created on drive - Merged remaining two 1TB drives and one 3TB drive - Files from these drives haven't shown up in pool. EDIT: I ended up adding letters to all of my pooled drives and manually moving my files/folders into the pool. Reset my computer and ran a refresh from within Drive Bender and now my files are showing up in the pool, so I've removed all the drive letters from my DB drives. Everything seems to be working fine now, I'm not sure if that's the proper way to merge drives, but it seemed to work, so I can live with it. I like having everything on one drive though! It was a pain having separate media drives and trying to figure out where to put things. My DB trial ends in April, but I'll definitely be buying it before then Now I've just gotta save up for a new enclosure and a few more drives! Edited February 12, 2014 by pmac Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trusselo 220 Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 also note that green drives are 5,400 rpm and considered low power/low usage 80-100MB/s , black are 7,200 rpm standard drives 130-160MB/s , and red are 7,200 designed for NAS, high usage 130-160MB/s, higher quality. then there's WD raptor drives at 10,000 rpm.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bert 49 Posted February 14, 2014 Author Share Posted February 14, 2014 So, anybody have an opinion on if I should crack open these USB 3 drives? The original item (8 bay tower) is here....drives probably be here tomorrow....need advice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmac 132 Posted February 14, 2014 Share Posted February 14, 2014 I just opened up one of my WD USB drives the other day, took about 2 minutes, and it works just fine. I'm hoping the rest of my externals go that smoothly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bert 49 Posted February 14, 2014 Author Share Posted February 14, 2014 Follow up questions....I just emptied and formatted an older 1 TB WD HD and ran tests using Samsung Magician (I have a Samsung SSD). It is coming back with the following readings....Sequential Read 33 MB/s Sequential Write 31 MB/s Random Read 173 (IOPS) and Random Write (IOPS) 578. Is this drive (I actually think there are two inside) dieing / dead? This is really slow even for USB 2, no? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Koleckai Silvestri 1150 Posted February 14, 2014 Share Posted February 14, 2014 (edited) Depends on the spec of the drive... SATA II at 5400 RPM will probably clock in at that speed. With the USB bus it also depends on how much stuff is going on over the Bus overall. It is shared bandwidth. Edited February 14, 2014 by Wayne Luke Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trusselo 220 Posted February 14, 2014 Share Posted February 14, 2014 (edited) Follow up questions....I just emptied and formatted an older 1 TB WD HD and ran tests using Samsung Magician (I have a Samsung SSD). It is coming back with the following readings....Sequential Read 33 MB/s Sequential Write 31 MB/s Random Read 173 (IOPS) and Random Write (IOPS) 578. Is this drive (I actually think there are two inside) dieing / dead? This is really slow even for USB 2, no? 30 mb/s is the EXACT speed of USB 2 take the drives out of the external case, put them in any tower and they will work at full speed. 100-160 mb/s depending on drive type. green/black/blue/red shouldnt even need to format them, unless they were something a little fancy, such as the 3TB MyCloud NAS drive i tore appart, it was partitioned and formatted specially, i had to delete all partitions and start from scratch with that drive. EDIT just read there may be 2 drives inside that one... probably going to have to format... probably raided. still limited to 30mb by usb2 tho Edited February 14, 2014 by trusselo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bert 49 Posted February 14, 2014 Author Share Posted February 14, 2014 (edited) Well opened up my WD Mybook and sure enough it has two 500GB Caviar Green Drives (manufactured 10-1-08). Turns out it is a different 500 Gig drive that I was using that may be the real culprit. Sequential write speed is only 3 MBS....so that one is definitely dieing, correct? Edited February 14, 2014 by Bert Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trusselo 220 Posted February 15, 2014 Share Posted February 15, 2014 which drive now? and how did you test it? how is it hooked up? another USB2? use a drive software that gives s.m.a.r.t. drive info, such as http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html crystal disk info. open it up, and each drive connected gives a good, caution or bad, message. plain and simple the second you open it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bert 49 Posted February 18, 2014 Author Share Posted February 18, 2014 (edited) So I got the unit up and running..one of my drives shows "caution" with Crystal by the way. I have cracked the seagate 3.0 USB 3 TB Drive and it is in the unit, however, it won't let me format it to a 3TB partition only 2 TB. Anyway around this? Edit: Fixed my own problem, right click the disk in disk management and convert to GPT, worked Edited February 18, 2014 by Bert Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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