Running Seagate Barracude Green Drives in RAID 1
 

Hi Everyone,

I had a question about running "green" drives in RAID setup... Everything I'm finding (by glancing on google) is talking about Western Digital Green hard drives and I'm wondering if the same applies to other brands. Western Digital also seems to have "server specific" hard drives that they reccommend in regards to using their "green" hard drives.

I have a server that I'm in the process of setting up.. It is:

AMD 64 6000+ Dual Core CPU
8GB OCZ 800mhz(?) RAM
MSI K9N SLI Ready MOBO
60GB IDE Hitachi HDD (holds OS)
2 x 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda 5900rpm Green HDD (to setup in RAID 1 and use as /home)

Now, will I run into issues using the Seagate green hard drives in the RAID setup? If so, am I to assume that all "green" hard drives will be problematic in this server setup?

The problem I saw in regards to the WD green drives is that they shut themselves down after not being in use, and when they are started back up they take too long to activate causing issues when the RAID setup tries to connect to them...

Thanks in advance.

AFAIK all the 'green' drives have problems with RAID. WD Greens are probably the worst, but Seagate etc. have similar problems. The HDD manufacturuers have all produced 'enterprise' (server level) HDDs, and sometimes they even make 'RAID edition' drives (eg WD 'RE' drives).

If you want to run RAID 1 for data protection, you might be able to simply run as 2 seperate drives and sync them. Pseudo RAID 1.

Hmm... well that is dumb. Essentially, "green" drives are useless, haha. They are no good in a RAID setup and they are no good for using as a boot drive. The only thing I can imagine they are useful for is storing files as a secondary hard drive (due to low spindle speed I doubt you'd want to run any programs on them), and even then most of the time the hard drive(s) that come in the system is enough storage space for the normal user..

Well, I'm a bit P.O.ed now, haha. I have about 1TB of data and (now) only 750GB worth of space for my RAID. I have two WD Black 750GB drives that I had planned to use at first, but then I came across the 1TB of data so I bought another 1.5TB drive to use them. Even then, I'm seeing that the WD Black drives aren't very RAID friendly either. Meehhhh.... what to do? What to do...?

Greens work just fine as a boot drive. Yes, they are no good for RAID....but that is true of most 'desktop' drives now.

You cant just check the drive RPMs and think that is all there is to performance. I've actually got an old 7200RPM seagate 80GB (probably a similar age and speed to your 60GB Hitachi) and a WD GP 1TB drive. The WD drive is a fair amount faster everywhere.

I'm currently using a Western Digital 320GB Green drive for my Windows 7 build... and, yes, it does work. But, I've read and have been told that they should not be used as boot drives because their lower spindle speed(s) hinder the performance of the OS. I'm seeing this is mostly a problem with boot up and running video games. Also, if the computer is idle for like 30 seconds the HDD will "sleep" and my whole computer shuts off (case fans and all) until you click the mouse or hit the keyboard.

I am on quite the budget for hard drives, but I figured I'd clone my current setup to one of my WD Black 750GB 7200rpm drives to get away from the WD Green drive. At this point, I have one WD Black 750gb drive, one WD Green 320gb drive, and one Seagate Barracuda Green 1.5TB drive. I will return the 1.5TB Seagate drive to MicroCenter then sell the WD Green 320 and the (extra) WD Black 750gb. As long as this works, I should have about $150-$175 to invest back into the hard drives for the server. I'd like to stay close to the $200 mark for two new hard drives (and I figured I'd shoot for 2TB drives this time). Any suggestions on RAID friendly drives or just comments on what to look for when choosing drives for RAID? It will be software RAID.. not a RAID card or anything.

Thanks for your help so far.

HDD RPMs dont tell anything like the whole story. Sure, the 'green' drives are slower than _current_ 7200/10,000 RPM desktop drives. Compared to ancient 7200s, they are much, much faster.

Hitachi 7200s, PATA and SATA, 60Gb to 180GB. All less than 60MB/sec sequential read and write (IOmeter)-

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/sto...0_7.html#sect0

WD Green 1Tb + 2Tb (and some other drives). Just under 100MB/sec read and write (IO meter)-

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/sto...s_6.html#sect0

Response time will (in most cases) be slightly better with an old 7200 than a new 'green' drive, but its not by much (12ms vs 14ms).

Never had that problem with my WD GP EADS 1TB with linux, or my housemates WD GP EARS 1TB with linux or windows XP.

Could possibly be a problem with the nForce 570 SLI chipset...nVidia did a pretty bad job on them (and IIRC they dont support NCQ which will impact SATA perforamnce)

You cant afford drives that are made for RAID on a very limited budget. You can use 'normal' drives, but its more likely to develop a problem than if you use 'enterprise' or RAID' drives. hich makes having a RAID 1 array kinda pointless IMO.

Keep the black, use it as a OS disc (and /home or storage as well), keep the seagate 1.5TB, use it for /home and/or storage, and get a external for backups.

Yeah, I assumed I wouldn't really notice a difference in response time. But, I figured if I have a WD Black on hand I'd be better off using it when it comes to performance and stability of the two.


I'm not running the 320gb Green drive in this setup I will be using as a server... I'm currently using it in an Intel i5 setup (Asus p877-VK(?) mobo) so I would think the nVidia chipset is different from the nVidia 570 mentioned. Also, if it matters, I'm using a GTX 660 graphics card (but, it behaved like this before I installed the graphics card)...


I'm going to buy new hard drives for this setup because I currently have about 1.2TB of data and I'm not trying to nit pick through it to condense it down for storage on the 750gb drive(s). Also, I'd like all of the data to be on one disk, so I don't want to use the 750gb drive for extra storage. So, any ideas on what specs I should look for that make the drives "RAID friendly" would be great.

The external backup is not an option I want to explore. The reason I'm building the server is so all data downloaded, created, etc. on any machine on my network will save their data to the server so all the data for all of my devices are being constantly backed up. I don't want to have to cart around the external drive and hook it up to individual devices when something needs backed up. It seems like a waste of my time to sit and back up 3-4 different computers with an external when I can setup RAID1 and let it do it for me.

With an iX setup it will be an intel chipset, not nVidia. Intel didnt want nVidia making chipsets for intel CPUs anymore.

WD RE ('Raid Edition') drvies, or enterprise drives from any of the manufacturuers.

While some people have run various different 'desktop' drives in RAID arrays, I cant in good faith suggest any standard desktop drives for use in RAID arrays. If you could buy $100-125 1.5-2TB HDDs that were fine with RAID, do you really think that the server guys would be paying the same amount for 250-500GB enterprise drives?

Backup, backup, backup. Having RAID 1 doesnt mean you are immune to data loss- one good power line hit and your whole array could be toast.

Having an external, not hooked up to the computer or the power lines _apart_ from when it is being used to backup is safer than trusting RAID 1. Esp. trusting RAID 1 with cheap desktop drives.....

There would be no difference between having 2 drives in RAID 1 and a single drive in this situation.

Yeah, after talking to a few people they've told me I can run some of the lower GB size drives, but it is not reccommended because they will not last too long. And, they said Seagate isn't very reliable when you start getting into their 1-2TB hard drive ranges. I did find in the Western Digital Black series manual that the Black series is good to use in consumer based server setups, which I'm assuming means home setups. So, now I'm currently in the process of conjuring up some loose parts and household items to see if I can sell on Craigslist to make some of the investment money for two 2TB black drives, lol.



Aren't the external PSU's (or UPS thing?) to protect from the power surges / power line hits? I was under the impression that it is worth having one of these things so the server doesn't go down with the rest of the power. And if that's the case, I would think my data would be safe in a RAID 1 if the the UPS protects the system from failing because it has it's own power source rather than relying on the failing (home) power source.

I haven't looked into these PSU things too much though...

So, I've bought 2 x 2TB WD Black hard drives and a RAID controller card to run the RAID 1. After moving some funds around and selling off some old parts or something, I will invest in a 2-3TB external drive for monthly offline backups.