Which hard drive(s) to buy for a Drobo?

[Aayush]

Hello.

I’m planning to buy a Drobo 2.0 with FireWire 800 today for use with my iMac. What sort of hard drives should I buy with it? Do 7200rpm hard drives offer any significant advantage over 5400rpm ones in external setups? I mean, wouldn’t the maximum speeds supported by FireWire 800 be a bottleneck anyway?

Since the price difference, in most cases, is significant, it’s important for me to make the right decision. Also, where do you guys think I ought to buy the hard drives from? I live in San Francisco.

Thanks.

 

[ZMacintosh]

the RPM shouldnt affect the throughput too much, but a 7200RPM SATA drive that has a 3Gbps transfer rate would be ideal.

there are green drives that go from 5400 to 7200.

Drives with the least amount of platters will have a higher impact of performance.
The 640AAKS 640Gb drives from WesternDigital are perfect with just 2x320gb platters and 7200rpm provide a fast sufficient storage drive.

the 640GB drives are pretty steep in price i think 64$ or 74$ on NewEgg.com (shouldnt take that long to ship in Cali)

The 1TB Caviar Black from Western Digital are great performers


otherwise i like the 750AAKS drives from WesternDigital as i have a few them in external raid to back up my music and video library.
Theyre running at $75 on Newegg aswell, im not 100% sureon their platter density, but they havent bottlenecked for me much and i run them on USB2.0 and FW400

hope that useful!

 

[Aayush]

Thanks.

I’ll be needing 1.5TB or 2TB hard drives though. Any suggestions?

 

[ZMacintosh]

Currently the max drive available is the 1TB harddrive, with the exception of the 1.5TB and there are no announced 2TB on the market.


the only 1.5tb drives are from Seagate at the moment and have had some flack for their firmware issues.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148337



i think WD or Samsung is releasing their own soon, which id be interested in looking into.

just look into the SATA II drives on NewEgg.com for best ratings

 

[kellen]

I have avoided the 1.5TB due to the problems I have heard. As a backup drive (not one out of 4 as in your drobo) it was too important to use something with such a high fail rate. Even if it is just online talk it has made me weary.

Heard good things about the 1tb seagate 3 platter and 750. Went with a WD black 640 for a system drive, but still looking for a good backup drive.

 

[DELTAsnake]

I'd go with a WD hard drive. I use both WD and Seagate drives, I find WD drives are quiter. Right now the loudest noise coming from my PC is the sound of the heads moving on Seagate hard drive. The WD Hard Drive it replaced was silent.

 

[kid rock]

i agree with above, WD for the win

 

[pprior]

For any Array device, it's very important you buy RAID certified drives. Standard consumer drives are frequently not speced to deal with the increased vibration caused by mounting multiple hard disks together and so enterprise/RAID drives are a better choice. Don't cheap out on drives in a backup system.

 

[numbersyx]

I'd go with a WD hard drive. I use both WD and Seagate drives, I find WD drives are quiter. Right now the loudest noise coming from my PC is the sound of the heads moving on Seagate hard drive. The WD Hard Drive it replaced was silent.

Interestingly enough I've had the same experience. Always heard Seagates were the better drive but they seem far more noisy than the WDs that I have.

 

[wiseguy27]

Check out Fry's (frys.com) - it's a big store in Sunnyvale, CA. If you can order online, you can check out newegg.com, buy.com, amazon.com, etc.