Selecting a Hard Drive for server.

[Konig]

I've been doing over the hard drives that are currently available, trying to decide if I should get 1, 1.5, or 2TB drives for my server. The $/GB is about equal. Customer reviews on every drive are a bit concerning tho. It seems a lot of people are getting DOA’s of every brand, especially from online vendors (Newegg). I suspect it’s a shipping issue. So I’m leaning towards buying locally. Bestbuy’s prices aren’t much more than Newegg. We also have a Staples in town. I should check them too.

I looked online but didn’t see any bad “professional” reviews of the Seagate or WD drives. I’ve personally had both brands and they’ve served me well over the years. I see that Samsung and Hitachi are contenders. Does anyone have experience with them? I’m wondering if I should get a 5900RPM “Green” drive. It should be fast enough but I read that, to save power, the arms park themselves a lot more than a 7200RPM drive. Would recording TV on a green drive wear it out sooner?

[wolfie99]

I just put in 8 1.5TB WD Green Drives. There is no performance lag that I can see. HD looks good. The reviews were good on these drives as well.

[Skirge01]

There are going to be failures from every drive manufacturer. I've come to accept this fact and it no longer bothers me when I see a bunch of reviews on Newegg about DOA's.

My current rule is that I will not purchase any drives with more than 2 platters for my WHS box, due to the added noise and heat created by 3+ platter drives. Green drives should have plenty of speed for SageTV (half of mine are WD Green drives), even at the lowly 5400rpm speed. However, I will no longer spend more money for a green drive, since I don't believe it's warranted.

[paulbeers]

tomshardware.com just did a comparison between the new green drivers (samsung) vs. older 7200. Might be both checking out.

[Phurious]

The "RE4-GP" series from Western Digital. These are their second generation "RAID Edition" drives designed for higher MTBF, and have a 5 year warranty instead of 3 years.

[MattHelm]

I've had 4 of the 1TB WD green drive running for 10 months, and no problems. I think they've fixed all the spin down/up problems in the newer versions.