[SGVLUG] which hard drive for RAID?

[Claude Felizardo]

What make/model drives do most people use in their fileservers, ie, 24x7,
especially if it will be part of a RAID?

Some background...

I need to purchase a couple of hard drives at home.  One is to replace the
flaky WD 500 GB SATA drive in my fileserver, the other for offsite backups.
I have a Western Digital  WD5000YS-01MPB0 that has a known firmware bug
(version 07.02E07) that will periodically enter an unresponsive state.  I've
known about the fix for over a year now but just haven't had a chance to
update the drive.  It wasn't a big problem as it would only occur every few
months and a reboot usually fixed the problem but it's been occurring more
and more frequently. The other 2 drives in the box, same model Maxtor drives
have been working fine.

I'm getting tired of maintaining my own RAID system so this past summer, I
purchased a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ with two 500 GB drives in a RAID-1 mirror
configuration with the intention of backing everything up and rebuilding my
fileserver, this time with just two drives in a simpler RAID-1 mirror
configuration and rely on the NAS box to store my media.  I'd then use a 1
TB external drive to back that up and store it offsite like at work.  If
upgrading the WD fixes the problem, then I figure I could try it in the
ReadyNAS which will automatically reconfigure itself as RAID-5.

The question is what make/model drives should I purchase?  The drives I
usually buy are what ever is on sale at Fry's or equiv.  I haven't really
kept track of where each drive has ended up but it seems to me that the
drives that have been put in the desktops that are sometimes turned off or
at least put into sleep mode seem to be lasting much much longer than the
drives I put into my fileservers.

When I hacked my first TiVo, I replaced the original AV rated Quantum 30 GB
with a retail 80 GB that eventually died.  It's replacement died a few years
later so I ended up putting the original drive back.  This TiVo has been
running pretty much continuously since 2001.  Our latest TiVo is always
running out of space so I've been looking at the unofficial TiVo FAQ and
they recommend specific drives that are AV rated.

So I'm wondering if an AV rated drive would do better than a Fry's special
in a RAID environment.  I imagine that they must make drives designed for
RAID but they are probably much more expensive whereas the AV drives don't
seem to be that much more than "regular" drives IF you can find them.

Here's a partial list of drives from the TiVo upgrade FAQ:
http://tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=370784

500 GB drives
WD5000AVDS http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=765
ST3500321CS
ST3500312CS

750 GB drives
WD75000AVCS and WD7500AVVS

1 TB drives
WD10EVDS http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=617
ST31000533CS

Tried to look for the Seagates but I just see other models and it's not
clear if these drives are designed for AV use.  The Western Digital site is
pretty good in that it tells you what their drives are designed for.  Does
anyone know where to find the equivalent for Seagate drives?

Looks like the WD 1 TB is going for <$100 at Amazon, buy.com and CDW.  Need
to find the 500 GB version at hopefully <$60.

claude
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