Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB--Safe to use?

[germ]

In view of this:
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15863

And numerous reports of firmware updates from Seagate, would you recommend using such drives in a DIY NAS box?

They are attractive because of their low price ($129) for 1.5 TB vs. ~$100 for 1 TB from other vendors. Also, they supposedly come with a 5 years warranty (vs. 3 years).

Thoughts?

 

[Jim.Roberts]

Depends

How were you thinking of using them? In RAID or just by them selves. As for reliability, a five year warranty is a good sign, it means the manufacture has some faith in their product. The speed depends on the number of platters and the areal density density of the disks (the amount of data / area), the higher the areal density (usually) the faster the disk. However more platters can cause reliability problems (thinner platters, etc...)

Upgrading the firmware shouldn't be a problem unless the firmware loader is not supported by your OS.

I personally am using 1TB Samsung F1 drives (x3) in RAID 5.

You also have to consider the availability of drives in the future, if a drive fails in 4 years time, will the manufacture still make this type of drive. RAID arrays are well known for being particular about mixing different drive types, depending on the typo of RAID you are going to be using (Full hardware / Hardware+Software / Full Software).

Hope this helps you make up your mind!

Jimbo

 

[MoralDelima]

Where there's doubt, there is no doubt. You know what I mean? While the extra 500GB may be tantalizing, remember that the WD 2TB drive was just released. You can also find Hitachi 1TB drives on sale for about $80 shipped. Also, AFAIK they are dropping the warranty from 5 years down to 3 years on all of their drives.

While they took good steps to help win back customers by offering free data recovery for anyone who had a bricked drive, the fact remains that the 1.5TBs had an abnormally high failure rate. Is your data unimportant enough to risk it?

 

[Jim.Roberts]

MoralDelima is right, while the extra 500GB might sound good, is it really worth it? A 1TB drive can be had for a bit less, and if your building a RAID array in your NAS, what is the point of the extra 500GB? You might as well wait for the 2TB drives to drop in price and their reliability to increase. The more data you have on the disk, the more is lost when it fails (simple, but true). The idea being that with lots of smaller drives, the impact of single drive failure is less than with a few large drives.

Jimbo

 

[corndog]

Hello all,

I have a QNAP TS639Pro with 6 1.5TB Seagate drives in it. When I first got them, they were terrible. I couldn't put any data on the NAS because they would fail. I did some research and found out about the problem with the firmware on these drives.

So I went through the process - called Seagate and got the updated firmware. I gave them all 6 serial numbers from my drives, and to my luck the same firmware update applied to all of them. So I lined them up, built a little firmware upgrading station, and did them all in a single session. I put them back in the QNAP and built the array.

Since then I have put this QNAP NAS with these 1.5TB drives through a LOT of very heavy torture testing. This has included repeatedly writing 3 Terabytes of data to it in a non-stop stream, deleting it all, and doing it again. It has also included getting several computer all sending files simultaneously to the QNAP as fast as they can, while other computers are simultaneously reading large files off the NAS, while a full backup is going on at the same time. In all of these tests I have never experienced any more drive issues, although I have had the poor NAS on its knees and the fans blowing like mad because I've worked it so hard.

So, from where I sit, I can confidently say that I AM comfortable with using these drives with the new firmware from Seagate. Your mileage may vary, but believe me - I've put in a very solid amount of work on these drives before saying this.

 

[germ]

Here's how I plan to use them

How were you thinking of using them? In RAID or just by them selves.

4 disks in RAID 5 or 6.

 

[germ]

Options

Thanks corndog for the really useful info.

My choice is now down to either the new WD 1TB green power (WD10EADS, $100) or the 1.5 TB Seagate (7200.11, $129). They are both fast. The WD is nice because it uses less power, but the Seagate is attractive because it offers 50% more capacity for 30% more price. The WD 2TB is too expensive right now. The Hitachi, while cheaper, is less desirable IMHO (slower).

I am still concerned about reports of the Seagate not working well in RAIDs and the potential hassle of going through firmware updates.

 

[corndog]

If it helps, I chose about 4 years ago to purchase only Seagate because they were the only ones that still offered a 5 year warranty.

In the various places where I manage storage I have the following:
- 2 ReadyNAS 1100's each with 4 Seagate 750G drives in them
- 1 ReadyNAS Pro with 6 Seagate 1TB drives in it.
- 1 ReadyNAS NV with 4 Seagate 500GB drives in it.
- 1 QNAP TS509Pro with 5 Seagate 1TB drives in it.
- 1 QNAP TS639Pro with 6 Seagate 1.5TB drives in it.
- 2 EqualLogic P5000's each with 8 Seagate 1TB drives in them
- 1 SonnetTech R400Q with 4 Seagate 750G drives in it.
- 1 Drobo with 4 Seagate 500GB drives in it.
- 4 Addonics External RAID devices each with 4 Seagate 1TB drives in them
- 1 CoRAID SR1521 with 15 Seagate 750GB drives in it.

All of this is not counting up to about 60 servers with various sizes of Seagate drives from 80GB to 400GB, including SATA, SCSI, IDE, and SAS, all RAID1.

ALL of these systems run Seagate drives. After the debacle with the 1.5TB drive firmware, I'm looking to give the WD 2TB Green drives a chance. I am starting by getting 15 of them for the CoRAID SR1521. We'll see how well they perform in there.

But, suffice it to say, I think I can confidently state that Seagate drives work just fine in RAID arrays. My Data Centers are proof of that.

Corndog

 

[germ]

Yes, the 5 years warranty (it's unclear whether that still applies) is a good reason to choose Seagate.

While I don't doubt that Seagate drives have performed flawlessly for corndog, unfortunately such amount of data, while impressive, is insufficient to evaluate the reliability of a particular model of disk drive with some statistical confidence. There are many reports of problems with the 1.5 TB drives. It's impossible to know whether everybody that reported problems has applied the firmware update and whether that solved the problems. That's why I am still hesitating.

 

[Jim.Roberts]

It boils down to how much you want to spend now and how much storage you need!

4 x WD10EADS, @ $100 Each = $400 / RAID 5 = 3TB / RAID 6 = 2TB
4 x 7200.11 @ $129 Each = $516 RAID 5 = 4.5TB / RAID 6 = 3TB

For an extra $116 you get 1.5TB in RAID 5 and 1TB in RAID 6 (if my math is right!)

Using RAID 6 is a bit overkill. Provided you replace a failed drive promptly then there should be no problem using RAID 5. Even so, always make a back up, as Terry Pratchett said, million to 1 chances crop up 9 times out of 10. If a drive is going to fail, it's going to be when you need it most (or is that just me being cynical?)

Corndog has a lot of experance with Seagate and he's had no problems that couldn't be fix with a timely firmware update, still, you think Seagate would have tested the drives and had them fixed before release .

 

[corndog]

A couple of comments if I may:

germ: The Seagate drives have definitely not performed flawlessly for me. Like all hard drives, a number of them have died. Especially the 750G models - I lost a lot of those. But I never lost data. RAID worked as it should.

Jim: I am going to have to politely disagree with you on the idea of RAID6 being overkill. While you are correct about one thing - the chance of two drives failing at the same time being low - you are missing another RAID5 risk. When you replace that failed drive, your remaining drives begin resyncing with the new one. During that time your RAID array is not redundant, and your drives are working harder than they ever normally work. This can cause one of the other drives to fail - just when you're not protected. That's why RAID6 was invented.

germ: best we can do is give you our experience. I know it is anecdotal, but at least I can give you the experience based on a couple hundred drives. That's just skirting the bottom edge of becoming statistical. Also, in using Seagate drives I have always kept a couple test stations going with WD, Hitachi, and other models of drives in the lab to keep the comparison up. I have found Seagate drives to be "pretty good" - not as fast as some of the others, and not as quiet, and also not as cool. But they do the task reasonably.

You have to make your own decision, and I wish you good fortune with that. Just don't hesitate forever - analysis paralysis will ruin the fun you'll get out of running your NAS and experimenting with IT

 

[Jim.Roberts]

CornDog, you are quite right, for mission critical data then RAID 6 is the way ahead as it provides double redundancy as you quite rightly pointed out. I was referring to a home situation where that kind of data protection is not really needed, thank you for clarifying that with Germ.