2TB Hard Drive

[wrems]

I'm in the market for at least a 1.5+TB hard drive. This morning Newegg sent out a 72 hour sale email with a Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EADS 2TB 32MB Cache. They're selling it for $139.99 with promo code EMCYPNT63 and free shipping.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc..._-22136344-L0C


This sounds like a great deal/value. Does anyone have any experience with these drives? Is it worth pulling the trigger on, or do I look for a different particular drive?

TIA

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by wrems

I'm in the market for at least a 1.5+TB hard drive. This morning Newegg sent out a 72 hour sale email with a Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EADS 2TB 32MB Cache. They're selling it for $139.99 with promo code EMCYPNT63 and free shipping.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc..._-22136344-L0C


This sounds like a great deal/value. Does anyone have any experience with these drives? Is it worth pulling the trigger on, or do I look for a different particular drive?

TIA

Just remember I believe the green drives spin down when not in use so they can take a bit to spin back up to speed when called upon. I have good luck with them though for movie storage.

[jgscott987]

MWave had this drive for $120 a couple of days ago. Looks like a solid choice. The only drawbacks I see are that

* It has 4 platters which means more heat and more moving parts
* It's not a high-speed drive- WD won't say, but I believe this one spins at 5400 RPM. I actually view this as a positive, as you don't need a lot of speed for playing back media, and the slower speed should result in greater reliability.

[Djc208]

Good price, I just bought a 60GB SSD for just slightly less than that. Luckily I don't need any more storage right now though.

I have a 1GB Caviar Green drive. They're not as fast as other HDDs but can vary their spin speed as well as a few other tricks to try and save power.

I don't know that I've ever noticed any slowdown or other problems with mine, and so far it's been working fine.

[wrems]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

Just remember I believe the green drives spin down when not in use so they can take a bit to spin back up to speed when called upon. I have good luck with them though for movie storage.

That's what I'm looking for. A drive for movies only. Not an active recording drive. Any performance issues/considerations about the drive spinning down and say SMW or any of the new "stuff" coming out of the Ortus project?

[HelenWeathers]

I have 6 of these (2TB WD20EADS) in my SageTV server and use them for Blu-ray movie storage AND recorded SageTV shows - no problems at all with either and I don't notice any issues with recording or slow startup.

[mr_lore]

I wouldn't worry about it, with modern setups you have cache on the cpu, system memory, vista/win7 speed boost, the swap file, the jvm heap, the memory cache on the hdd itself, and then finally spinning storage.

I'm not saying all data flows around this way I'm just saying modern setups have 20+yr experience dealing with slow rotating media and making it 'work'.


I have at least 2 of these in my WHS, maybe more and it houses my blu rays which stream just fine, I've also been testing win7 media center and media browser/meta data and gigantic fan art and cover art loads up just fine.

[davephan]

I also have 6 of the WD green drives. I was concerned about the slower spin speed, but the drives function without performance problems. One drive did go bad within about a week. I haven't notice any SageTV performance problems that I could associate with the drives.

I bought the drives at Microcenter, where you I also bought a in-store return policy to make the drive exchange faster if you have problems. I returned the bad drive to Microcenter. The price had dropped in the two week time period. The store refunded me the difference, which was over $120 on the six drives, plus they re-started the extended warranty time for all the drives. The drives were in the standard boxes, not the bare drives. I don't know if there is any difference in quality when you purchase bare drives verses boxed drives.

There are a number of bad reviews on Newegg, but many more good reviews. If you value your video recordings at all, then you should use RAID or some other redundancy method to protect the data. Otherwise, you could lose data at any time with any hard drive.

Dave

[matt91]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

I have 6 of these (2TB WD20EADS) in my SageTV server and use them for Blu-ray movie storage AND recorded SageTV shows - no problems at all with either and I don't notice any issues with recording or slow startup.

I use them too, but I do noticed the spin-up when the drive hasn't been used for awhile. It's just 2 seconds or so.

[sandor]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

I have 6 of these (2TB WD20EADS) in my SageTV server and use them for Blu-ray movie storage AND recorded SageTV shows - no problems at all with either and I don't notice any issues with recording or slow startup.

I have 8 in a RAID-5 and have had no issues whatsoever. as we speak, i have 4 recordings coming from 2 HDHRs, recordings being encoded, iTunes playing podcasts, and an off-site backup running from work.

[KarylFStein]

Anyone have experience with the AV-GP series? I'm running out of space (?!) and looking to add a drive or two.

[sandor]

Originally Posted by KarylFStein

Anyone have experience with the AV-GP series? I'm running out of space (?!) and looking to add a drive or two.

No i have only used the EADS and the CSRTL, which is just the retail boxed version of the EADS.

I know there have been reports of the AV-GP (EVDS) drives not being recognized/dropping in and out of the array, etc on the QNAP forums.

[texneus]

I've really got to question if the WD Green drives really and truely spin down. I keep reading they do, but mine do not. WD does not claim this feature either.

I have the 1.5 TB version and it definitely does not spin down unless it is set to do so in Windows power management. Same is true of an older 640 WD Green drive.

[Skirge01]

I have 4 of the AV-GP drives and not only will I never buy them again, but I'll never buy ANY green drive again. They simply don't warrant a price premium. Does the AV-GP work? Sure. Any better than the regular GP series? Not as far as I can tell. Am I saving electricity? Not in any measurable (i.e. monetary) fashion. Bottom line: I'll be going with dual platter, 7200 rpm drives in the future. They're faster, quieter, and cooler.

[Konig]

I've really got to question if the WD Green drives really and truely spin down. I keep reading they do, but mine do not. WD does not claim this feature either.

Last weekend I took my 1.5TB Green drive from my failed winXP server and put it in my win7 (fresh install-no tweaks) workstation. I noticed it spins down quite often. It's OK tho, only takes a second or two to access the files. I don't know if it ever spun down on the old winXP server.

My question is what does all the spinning down do to the life of the Green drives? I noticed they only have a 3yr warranty. Should I stick to the Black drives that have 5 year warranties?

[jgscott987]

Originally Posted by Konig

My question is what does all the spinning down do to the life of the Green drives? I noticed they only have a 3yr warranty. Should I stick to the Black drives that have 5 year warranties?

There is a lot of speculation about hard drives and what makes them die a premature death...

I have read in several reliable sources that spinning up the hard drive puts a lot more stress on the motor than just running constantly. In my admittedly small data-set, the drives in my server (constantly spinning) are a lot more reliable than other drives that spin down multiple times a day.

I have only had one 'green' drive, an external Western Digital My-Book. It spun itself down after short periods of being idle. The drive was accessed fairly frequently, so it would spin up and spin down at least 10-15 times per day. The drive died after about 16 months, which is very unusual for a hard drive. They almost always die in the first 30 days or after 4-6 years.

Now I know you can't infer much from my personal experience, but I've come to firmly believe that spinning down a hard drive while idle is a bad idea. The only time I intentionally spin mine down is over night.

On a similar note, why is everyone pushing these green drives? A normal 7200 RPM drive draws 6-8 watts while spinning. At 12 hours per day a standard hard drive uses less than $4 worth of electricity per year. A 'green' drive might be 50% more efficient, saving you a whopping $2 per year. If these green drives turn out to have a shorter life span, I'd say that's not very green at all.

[wrems]

Originally Posted by jgscott987

On a similar note, why is everyone pushing these green drives? A normal 7200 RPM drive draws 6-8 watts while spinning. At 12 hours per day a standard hard drive uses less than $4 worth of electricity per year. A 'green' drive might be 50% more efficient, saving you a whopping $2 per year. If these green drives turn out to have a shorter life span, I'd say that's not very green at all.

I think that is a really excellent point. On a unrelated but similar note I've been suspect as of late about CFL's. I've had about 6 of my cfls burn out in the last few months... They aren't very old I'd say ~2 years, and not they aren't even used constantly. Aren't cfls supposed to last a really long time... I probably still made my money back on them but it seems odd.

[Skirge01]

I've read the same things regarding the spinning down of drives causing more premature failures than keeping them running. The only reason I purchased the GP drives I currently have was for quiet operation. However, as I noted previously, a well-made 7200rpm drive with only 2 platters is faster, cooler, and often quieter. I really hope the manufacturers get the density down so that they can release higher capacity 2 platter drives. My credit card is itching for a purchase of several.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by wrems

I think that is a really excellent point. On a unrelated but similar note I've been suspect as of late about CFL's. I've had about 6 of my cfls burn out in the last few months... They aren't very old I'd say ~2 years, and not they aren't even used constantly. Aren't cfls supposed to last a really long time... I probably still made my money back on them but it seems odd.

Not to get too far off topic, but that's a common theme I've experienced and heard about. Most manufacturers will honor the warranty and send a replacement, though, so long as you kept your 2+ year old receipt, which the store undoubtedly used that wonderful disappearing ink on.

[SHS]

Originally Posted by jgscott987

MWave had this drive for $120 a couple of days ago. Looks like a solid choice. The only drawbacks I see are that

* It has 4 platters which means more heat and more moving parts
* It's not a high-speed drive- WD won't say, but I believe this one spins at 5400 RPM. I actually view this as a positive, as you don't need a lot of speed for playing back media, and the slower speed should result in greater reliability.

More Heat yes that ture and as for more moving part that no it dosen't matter if 4 platters or 1 platters it still only 2 moving parts