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Recommended 3.5" SATA hard drives for Windows 8.1 Drivepool


Kassad

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Just installed the trial version of Drivepool on my 8.1 machine to test it out. So far so good.  I have three - 2TB WD green hard drives (WD20EADS I think).  The hard drives are several years old and were pulled out of a Thecus NAS because apparently the NAS kept losing the RAID array.  I'm hoping that drivepool works differently and won't complain, but I'm planning for the worse.  Over the next couple months I'll replace each 2TB drive and am looking for suggestions on what drive(s) work well with drivepool and Windows 8.1.  

I'd be particularly interested if anyone's using the WD Red drives, like the WD??EFRX (20, 30, or 40 depending on size).  The 3TB (WD30EFRX) are $122 on amazon which seems like a good deal but I'm not sure if these will work well in a windows 8.1/drivepool configuration. I don't really know how picky the software is when it comes to hard drives.  Thanks for any advice.

 

 

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+1, I'm a drive Whore, if they are on sale, I buy them, most of mine are jail broken from external enclosures.  I have WD greens (with the headparking extended via WDidle3) and red's (1tb 2.5") , Seagate,  Hitach and Samsung. No issues with any of them, had some fail, but no issues with DP.  

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I have never ever heard of DP not liking drives. I'm no expert but I'd say if Windows likes it when formatted as NTFS then you're good to go.

Since the drives are presented as normal disks, there shouldn't be any issue.

In fact, RAID arrays are more sensitive, and that's why they may have disks "fall out" of the array. StableBit DrivePool doesn't have that problem.

 

+1, I'm a drive Whore, if they are on sale, I buy them, most of mine are jail broken from external enclosures.  I have WD greens (with the headparking extended via WDidle3) and red's (1tb 2.5") , Seagate,  Hitach and Samsung. No issues with any of them, had some fail, but no issues with DP.  

Same. However, I've got two disks that are a bit over a year old, with serious issues (500+ reallocated sectors, and 1200 uncorrectable sectors on the other) that I cannot RMA, because they're disks from external enclosures that I ripped apart.

It's worth spending the bit more on drives that have a usable warranty...

 

And in that case, I would recommend any disk designed for NAS or enterprise storage. WD Reds or Seagate NAS drives are fantastic for DrivePool. And they are what I would recommend.

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Naturally, all these sales happen, after I've bought 2-3 of them.........

:)

 

Im thinking on grabbing some but amazon now is charging taxes to florida, im kinda interested on HGST 4TB Deskstar Coolspin 3.5" SATA III Internal Desktop Hard Drive that its $150, but this is consumer drive not NAS  :blink:, the difference would end $21.20 per drive that its making me think on pulling on the NAS or desktop....

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:)

 

Im thinking on grabbing some but amazon now is charging taxes to florida, im kinda interested on HGST 4TB Deskstar Coolspin 3.5" SATA III Internal Desktop Hard Drive that its $150, but this is consumer drive not NAS  :blink:, the difference would end $21.20 per drive that its making me think on pulling on the NAS or desktop....

I'm running two of HGST coolspins right now that I jail broke from an external enclosure, I have 1 year and 150 days on one of them, and 297 days on the other, both have been running 24x7, your mileage may vary,  i'm not convinced the NAS drives are any different mechanically, they may have different firmware but on the other hand, the 4tb NAS drive have come down in price by roughly $50 since they came out last year, so they are more affordable,  your call,

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NAS drives are designed to be more power efficient, and idle better, but without the hit to performance that the GREENs (or other lower power disks) suffer. And tend to not generate as much heat.

 

But yeah, they definitely do have a different firmware.

So I guess, it really depends on where your preference is.

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I do think NAS but enterprise level are much better mechanically, but i do also have my doubts into this NAS labeled new gen of drives, i do think they do have different firmware and they are orientented for a NAS envioirment, but it seems also lots of marketing involve, now that NAS are becoming more popular among home users.  WD reds with Greens, and Seagate STXXXXXXM000 with STXXXXXXN00.  I guess the 3 years warranty vs 1 year alone justifies the extra money invested, but weather they are really much different idk.

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I've seen some indication that the enterprise drives aren't significantly different, except in the warranty period (backblaze's blog) (5 year warranty as opposed to 1 or 3 year).

 

However, the NAS drives definitely use a different firmware than the desktop drives, are supposed to run at a bit lower temperature, and consume less power.  I do think they  tend to have a larger cache size, but I'd have to double check that.

 

That, and one of the major differences is that enterprise drives and "RAID Edition" drives use "TLER" to prevent the deep cycle error correction from occurring (or lasting long enough for the RAID controller to drop it out of the array). 

 

Here is some of the information about the NAS drives:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=810

http://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/nas-drives/nas-hdd/

 

And a good comparison:

http://www.storagereview.com/seagate_nas_hdd_review

 

 

 

But basically, if you want good, consumer grade storage, the NAS drives are a good way to go.

But if you are willing to spend almost twice as much money, the Enterprise grade drives are better.

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