hard drives for a server

soundfreak1

I have been studying my **** off for information the building my new server now to the point where I need to choose a hard drive. question: when its comes to hard drives other than getting a 7200rpm speed and as much memory (1 tb) what do i need to know to get a good one. Is there a brand name i should look for or any other specs. I need to ask for. Please help as im a green pea when it comes to computers. Thanks

Drenis

What are you looking to do?

Standard speeds are 5400, 7200 and 10000 RPM drives. Look for an enterprise drive as it's built for server use.

I'll let others chime in on their manufacturer of choice as I don't have enough knowledge to recommend you something stable.

Bobsama

Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB/2TB drives are usually pretty decent. There's also the RE3/RE4 lineup which are specifically meant for RAID configurations. Are you planning on using RAID? If you are, it's probably worthwhile to spend an extra $100-300 on a RAID card--for better R/W speeds and easy system upgrades or replacements.

Many people used to swear by Seagate, but I've never once had a problem with Western Digital. RE4 2TB all the way.

WilliamM2

Although it's "only" 500GB, this is the highest rated drive on Newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152181

I've been running four of these Samsungs, two of them for almost five years, the other two for 4 years. Never a hiccup. Although mine came with three year warranties, maybe it's a typo.

Second best rated drive is the WD black, also 500GB:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136697

Larger drives seem to have higher failure rates in my experience, although they are getting better, and I'd still stick with the same two brands.

strider

Whatever you do, factor in some redundency when it comes to your data storage. Please, learn from my mistake. I was running wire for a dedicated outlet for (ironically) my computer audio set up. Pulling the wire, it got hung up. One good tug got the wire free, but hooked my external HD with 600GB of FLAC files, pulling it 4 feet onto the concrete floor below. While it was running. Ooops. Looks like I'm also shopping for a solution to my data storage needs. :sad:

transmaster

For your server here is what you want to do. Get a Drobo Hard drive enclosure (HDE). for now the 4 HD unit is plenty, they make them with up to 8 slots, and they can be stacked so 4 becomes 8, and 8 becomes........ This Drobo model can use up the 4 HD's with a potential storage space of 8 terabytes, I don't know if the controller on the HDE can handle the 3 TB hard drives yet. The way these units work is one drive automatically backs up another. So if you have a pair of 2 TB drives one backs up the other. If there is a problem with one of the drives you can hot swap them, meaning when you get notification of a drive failure without turning off the HDE of you slide out the failed drive and install a new one, a hot swap, the backup drive automatically reloads all of the content and you are off and running without a pause. I have always favored Western Digital, Seagate is good (Seagate is made by Western Digital) I get my hard drives from Tiger Direct right now TD has the Drobo DR04DD10 Hard Drive Enclosure for $299.99 which is $60 dollars off this is not a rebate, I don't go for any rebates savings up front or no sale period! Tiger Direct also have a good deal on Hard Drives the link below is to drives of at least a 1 terabyte of space. As you can see the prices range from $109 to $143 dollars. There is also a 2 TB internal HD Western Digital $193.00. Be sure to check in at Amazon you might find a better deal there, however I have yet to do so. There is the issue of buffer memory which is a way for a Hard Drive to keep up with demand currently it is 32, and 64 megs always go with the bigger number. If you have any question please ask me. I presently have just under 4 Terabytes of storage I can go for over a year 24/7 with TV shows and movies without a repeat, and with music over 4 years. Now with Apple Airplay, or DLNA making all of these files available via my network wirelessly it just doesn't get any better.

The Drobo 4 bay unit,
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4032471&CatId=4269

For Western Digital Hard Drives, this link is to 1 terabyte internal HD such as you would use in the Drobo.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Category/guidedSearch.asp?CatId=8&sel=Mfr%3BMfr_928,Detail%3B17_791_47515_47515

soundfreak1

Bobsoma: not aware of RAID could u clue me in please.

zane77

transmaster, great post +1

Bobsama

soundfreak1 wrote: »

Bobsoma: not aware of RAID could u clue me in please.

RAID means Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. There are 4 popular RAID implementations, 3 of which actually provide data redundancy.

RAID 0: A "spanned" array, where you have multiple hard drives to increase storage capacity and read/write speeds. I run a RAID0 array in my main; I use three 150GB hard drives for a single 450GB "partition" (which I see as C:\>). My read/write speeds are twice that of a single high-end mechanical hard drive. However, if one hard drive fails, I will lose all my data. There's no redundancy, just increased speed.

RAID 1: A "mirrored" array, where you have a pair of hard drives that each contain one copy of all the data. I run a RAID1 array in my server; I use a pair of 2TB hard drives for a single 2TB partition (which I see as Z:\>). My read/write speeds are the same as from that of a single hard drive. If one hard drive fails, the other contains a complete copy of my data.

RAID 5: An array with "parity", where you have 3 or more hard drives. It's like a spanned array, except you lose one disk's worth of capacity. The controller must calculate parity information--from which lost data can be rebuilt. In normal usage, the system simply uses the spanned information--meaning you get improved read speeds. Write speeds can greatly vary based on how powerful your controller is. If a single drive fails, you can rebuild the data using the remaining spanned copies and the parity data.

RAID 10: An array that combines the concepts of RAID 0 & RAID 1. There are actually 2 different implementations for this: the first is a single RAID 0 array consisting of two RAID 1 arrays; the second is a single RAID 1 array consisting of two RAID 0 arrays. Either way, you need 4 or more drives (even numbers--4, 6, 8, etc.) to properly implement it. You lose half the capacity, like RAID 1, but you increase performance, like RAID 0. Since there's no parity calculation, it's faster than RAID 5. You can lose 1 drive and the array can be rebuilt.

These basic concepts are used for RAID implementations. Additional levels exist--like RAID 3 (like RAID 5, except with a single dedicated parity drive), RAID 6 (like RAID 5, except with additional parity data--allowing you to lose any two drives before data loss occurs), and various other nested levels--like RAID 5+0, 5+1, 6+0, 6+1, et cetera. Other methods also exist to get similar redundancy--like Windows Dynamic Disk and many software solutions used in network-attached storage devices (like Drobo).

Lietuvis91

Just make sure you get dirves that support raid configurations. I know some cheaper WD drives have NOT in the past, because they didn't have a TRIM fundtion or some such. I don't exaclty remember all the details but just FYI.

gimpod

soundfreak1 wrote: »

I have been studying my **** off for information the building my new server now to the point where I need to choose a hard drive. question: when its comes to hard drives other than getting a 7200rpm speed and as much HARD DRIVE SPACE (1 tb) what do i need to know to get a good one. Is there a brand name i should look for or any other specs. I need to ask for. Please help as im a green pea when it comes to computers. Thanks

There I fixed it for you, (memory is not the same as hard drive size).

I've always liked Seagate drives, Never had a Western Digital last longer than 3 month. BTW Seagate drives are not made by WD. Also Seagate in May 2006 acquired Maxtor(CDC's Imprimis division, MiniScribe, Digital Equipment Corporation's storage division, Conner Peripherals) and in December 2011 acquired Samsung's HDD business.

Google is your friend RAID
IMO raid is a big PITA and not worth the money. Also keep in mind raid won't replace the need for a good backup plan.

Back to your question, It really depends on what your going to use it for, what OS/Software, etc..
If this is for Music & Movies get a couple 2 tb SATA II/III drives and call it a day.

transmaster

That is the beauty of Drobo or similar Hard drive enclosure it has it's own controller so you don't have to directly deal with a RAID configuration. Basically you pick what works best for your setup and tell it to do it that way,most of them come setup already. With the cost of HD so cheap there is no point in getting a hard drive with less then 1 terabyte in storage space.

transmaster

gimpod wrote: »

BTW Seagate drives are not made by WD. Also Seagate in May 2006 acquired Maxtor(CDC's Imprimis division, MiniScribe, Digital Equipment Corporation's storage division, Conner Peripherals) and in December 2011 acquired Samsung's HDD business.

Absolutly correct thanks gimod thanks for catching this.( by the way my spell check wanted to correct your handle to Imodium, LOL) The brain cell that had that memory has not turned on yet. Thanks for the info on Samsung I didn't know this Samsung has some very interesting drives. The only hard drives I have owned that have failed have been Western Digitals, hmmm, scratching my chin. Never a Seagate, double hmmmm....8^)

Drenis

gimpod wrote: »

I've always liked Seagate drives, Never had a Western Digital last longer than 3 month. BTW Seagate drives are not made by WD. Also Seagate in May 2006 acquired Maxtor(CDC's Imprimis division, MiniScribe, Digital Equipment Corporation's storage division, Conner Peripherals) and in December 2011 acquired Samsung's HDD business.

Interesting. Didn't know Samsung was bought out by Seagate for their drives division. Samsung made some of the best drives... hope Seagate doesn't kill that.

gimpod

transmaster wrote: »

Absolutly correct thanks gimpod thanks for catching this.( by the way my spell check wanted to correct your handle to Imodium, LOL)

There I fixed it for you, I think you need to turn Auto Correct off, I'm surprised it didn't want to change it to something pornographic. There are a bunch of site like this one fyouautocorrect some of this stuff is hilarious. :eek:

transmaster wrote: »

The brain cell that had that memory has not turned on yet. Thanks for the info on Samsung I didn't know this Samsung has some very interesting drives. The only hard drives I have owned that have failed have been Western Digitals, hmmm, scratching my chin. Never a Seagate, double hmmmm....8^)

It's kool, it's Sunday your brain cells are still trying to recover from Friday and Saturday night.:razz:

I use to use only Maxtor HDD's untill Seagate bought them out then I switch and have never had one go bad on me yet. I'm still running 4 200gb PATA Maxtors in my test server today without a hitch (OH crap I may have just jinks myself). Of the 4 WD HDD's I've tried since the mid 90's on everyone has died with in 3 months, I got one now (came with my laptop, swapped it for a 500gb Seagate) a 250gb that works when hookup in a computer but won't work as an external drive. At first it did but now it won't go figure.:rolleyes:

The Seagate's I'm now using are 3 2tb 5900 rpm SATA II in the HTPC (DVD's only), 1 500gb 7200 rpm 2.5" SATA II in the laptop, and 1 250gb 7200 rpm SATA II (boot drive) and 2 500gb 7200 rpm SATA II in the main rig.

soundfreak1

I plan on using it 90 percent music server. streaming. and rip cds. intended to upgrade to windows 7 and use a combination of one of these for software, I river mediamonkey 4 gb powerhouse. will be coming out of the computer spidiff opt.
going to my dac and then to my pre.

gimpod

I would just get a 120 - 250gb for a boot drive and software then a 2tb data drive for your cd's and call it a day. Simple easy to set up and the 2tb drive will hold a boat load of cd's.

Sherardp

Western Digital Cav Blacks or Samsung F3 Spinpoints. Not sure what prices are like now though, but I would also recommend a SSD for boot drive. Since it's a server, a small 60gb drive should be fine.

Bobsama

Drenis wrote: »

Interesting. Didn't know Samsung was bought out by Seagate for their drives division. Samsung made some of the best drives... hope Seagate doesn't kill that.

From what I've heard, Seagate already has killed Samsung-branded drives quality. That's very disappointing--as older Spinpoint F4EG 2TB drives are very reliable compared to WD Greens or low-RPM Seagate drives.

Drenis

Bobsama wrote: »

From what I've heard, Seagate already has killed Samsung-branded drives quality. That's very disappointing--as older Spinpoint F4EG 2TB drives are very reliable compared to WD Greens or low-RPM Seagate drives.

Agreed based on my experience and knowledge. WD Greens are a NO-NO for RAID setups.

wolfman1138

I have experience running raided (Raid 0 or Raid 1) and non-raided systems. After RAIDing for a while I just gave up and reformatted to get extra storage space.

There is a lot of good things to say about the stand-alone NAS boxes (Network Attached Storage) I have a DiskStation which I use for pictures. It is configured as Raid1 because redundancy is the most important thing there.

You really don't need speed for serving music. I have a Old Quad Core (Intel Q6700) as a server with about 7 TB of HD space on it for streaming video. I can stream a 1080p MKV to the Popcorn Hour and transcode a 720p MKV to an iPad without running out of hard drive bandwidth on a WD 5400RPM green drive. Music, even FLAC, is nothing compared to that.

For a fixed amount of cash you can choose space, speed or redundancy. For my music collection, I have it backup up on Google, Amazon and Carbonite, so just give me the hard drive space. For my DVDs, I have the physical copies as my back up.

Choose wisely tho. You usually cannot unraid RAID0 disks without wiping all the data. Also, if one disk goes toes up, you can loose the whole thing! (This is the case for striping. JBOD arrays (Just a Bunch Of Disks) can sometimes be separated without loosing data.)

Hope this info is helpful!

copperpipe

For a rainy day... look into something called "zfs" (surpised nobody mentioned it yet). It can be configured to be much better than RAID, and it ("it" / zfs is a filesystem) guarantees that the data you put into the system is the same data that you get out. RAID cannot offer this guarantee. I setup my own freebsd / zfs server which holds source code, my emails, and many media files. Like raid, you can set it up to use redundancy and speed at the same time (my setup is 4 disks, 2 disks form one slice, the other 2 disks form the other slice, and each slice is mirrored between the disks in the slice).

For either RAID or ZFS, the trick is to use different drive manufactures, and definitely different manufacturing dates / batches if you stick to one vendor... the reason is that if you buy 2 / 4 identical drives at the same time, they have a good chance of failing at roughly the same time; you might have a failure, try to replace the disk, then while the RAID array is rebuilding a second drive fails and you lose everything.

So spread out the purchases among different vendors, just make sure the capacity of each drive is the same (so buy all 1 TB or all 2 TB etc)

Edit: almost forgot... if you build your own system, you can't really throw too much cooling at the system... heat will kill a drive very fast, so make sure you have good fans in the front of the case (blowing air INTO the case, directly over top of the drives), and more than 1 fan in the rear of the case (blowing air OUT of the case). I usually buy 120mm fans, but in some cases you can replace each 120 mm with 2 80 mm fans.

Marty913

I too favor the JBOD pooled approach as wolfman1138 above mentioned. Drivebender will allow you to undo without losing any data, and will allow "normal" access to your files should you need it. It does not require all drives to be the same type or size.Here's a link:

http://www.drivebender.com/

Bobsama

That's always a problem--once you build the array, you cannot easily split it. Luckily, by the time you upgrade it, you may have a larger drive available. My RAID 1 array is built on a 2-port controller so I have the main controller's 6 ports open for future upgrades. My OS is on an IDE hard drive.

Just note that breaking the array yourself (deleting the array) usually results in the loss of the data--so do a backup. With RAID 1, 5, & 10, a degraded array can be rebuilt. Usually, a 2TB+ RAID1 array is sufficient for music. If you call 300 MB the average size of an album, you'd need 6000 CDs to fill it with just FLACs. 5000 CDs if you do both FLAC & MP3 copies. Also note that large RAID5 arrays with crappy controllers (motherboard and low-end add-in cards) can take a ridiculous amount of time to rebuild.

Gadabout

If that is what your going for, you don't really need server drives, or a raid set-up. If you want a longer lasting drive buy an enterprise drive that has a 5 year warranty. Also, if it is just a music server you won't need to worry about the speed of the HD.

Go with what Gimpod said in post #17. A 250 Gb boot drive that has some speed to it and a 2 Tb storage drive.

These are ball park numbers, someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong (it also doesn't take into account bit / byte difference). The average FLAC ripped CD (compression 5) was right around 300Mb. Let's round to the high side for the sake of easy math and average it up to 333 Mb / CD. That would be 3 CD's / Gb. So, a 2TB drive will hold approximately 6,000 CD's.

As the drive gets older you can always back up what is on the 2TB drive to another and just swap it. I usually back things up with images and use Acronis.

Hope that helps a bit,
Scott

Bobsama

I would not advise anyone to rely on a single consumer drive to store their music collections, not with the age of ISP bandwidth caps upon us. A 2TB internal drive plus a 2TB external drive would be fine--so long as there are frequent (daily) backups. Karen's Replicator is a good little program for that--it'll keep an up-to-date copy of everything.

In copying over a thousand CDs, we burned through a couple old CD drives. If it fails, you'll have to re-download an online backup (which typically costs a few bucks a month) and your ISP will be very unhappy if you try to download 500GB of music (that's ~1700 CDs). They may cut you off or at least throttle you.

Marty913

All good recommendations. If you really want to keep things simple and just want to store FLAC files with appropriate backup, why not just use the calculations in here (roughly 30-35 songs per GB) to decide what size HD you need. Buy a quality Seagate or Western Digital drive (any of the recommended above) plus an external USB backup drive of similar size. Setup a free backup program like FBackup4 or Karen's Replicator to mirror changes and call it good. Since you're only backing up changes, a daily backup should only take a few minutes. I keep a weekly backup of my music in a small fireproof safe in the garage.

As mentioned by Gadabout, the suggestion in #17 from Gimpod regarding the solid state drive is a good one. They are a little pricey still but the performance boost is amazing. Definitely not needed for music files but great for the OS drive.