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Forum Discussion
How much does a drives RPM make a difference?
I have two ReadyNAS NV+ units that I use in a home environment. One of the NV+ units is used to back up some (but not all) of the data from the primary NV+ unit. I have 5 Macs, two AppleTVs, two TiVos, and two Sling Cathers in my home. All but one of those devices (a 2.8 GHz iMac) connect to the NV+ via WiFi (802.11n). (The primary NV+ is connected to via a Gigabit Airport Extreme Base Station.) At any given time, probably no more than 2-3 of those devices access the primary NV+. I use the NV+ to store all of my photos, all of my iTunes library (video and audio files), and a few critical Word, Excel, and Quicken documents. In addition, I have copied/ripped all of my DVDs to the primary NV+ (the Video_TS folders are all stored on the NV+) and would like to be able to stream the DVD files to my TV through my TiVo and/or AppleTV.
I currently have both NV+ units decked out with 1.5TB 7200 RPM Seagate drives (Seagate ST31500341AS). I'm starting to run out of space on the primary unit and considering upgrading it to four 2TB units. However, I know whether it is worth the extra money to go with 7200 units as opposed to the less-expensive 5900/5400 units. Right now NewEgg has a Seagate Barracuda Green ST2000DL003 2TB 5900 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive for $69.99 and also has a SAMSUNG EcoGreen F4 HD204UI 2TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s (which I assume is 5400 RPM). In contrast, 7200 RPM drives seem to start at $119. Thus, if I go with the 5400/5900 RPM drives, I can save roughly $200 ($50 per drive x 4 drives), which is pretty substantial dough. On the other hand, I don't want to cheap out if the lower speed drives won't do what I need them to do.
So, with all this in mind, I would appreciate any advice you can offer with respect to not only whether, given what I am using the NV+ for, I will notice a difference if I go with a 5900/5400 RPM drive instead of a 7200 RPM drive. Please don't hesitate to also chime in with recommendations for 2TB drives that will fit my needs without causing me to spend more than necessary.
Thanks!
I currently have both NV+ units decked out with 1.5TB 7200 RPM Seagate drives (Seagate ST31500341AS). I'm starting to run out of space on the primary unit and considering upgrading it to four 2TB units. However, I know whether it is worth the extra money to go with 7200 units as opposed to the less-expensive 5900/5400 units. Right now NewEgg has a Seagate Barracuda Green ST2000DL003 2TB 5900 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive for $69.99 and also has a SAMSUNG EcoGreen F4 HD204UI 2TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s (which I assume is 5400 RPM). In contrast, 7200 RPM drives seem to start at $119. Thus, if I go with the 5400/5900 RPM drives, I can save roughly $200 ($50 per drive x 4 drives), which is pretty substantial dough. On the other hand, I don't want to cheap out if the lower speed drives won't do what I need them to do.
So, with all this in mind, I would appreciate any advice you can offer with respect to not only whether, given what I am using the NV+ for, I will notice a difference if I go with a 5900/5400 RPM drive instead of a 7200 RPM drive. Please don't hesitate to also chime in with recommendations for 2TB drives that will fit my needs without causing me to spend more than necessary.
Thanks!
17 Replies
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- From yoh-dah regarding 5900 RPM drives:
yoh-dah wrote: The Ultra is shipped in a diskless SKU, so we'll use the fastest drive from our HCL to showcase how fast the actual box can drive (for those who will buy the fastest drives). That said, if you were to use the 5900 RPM LP drives, you'll get about a 10% difference in performance. So rather than 100 MB/sec, you'll get around 90. That being the case, home systems won't be able to push anywhere close to that w/o using RAID, SSD, or a 15K RPM drive on the client. And the advantage with the LP drives (which by the way the loaded systems are shipped with), there's a good power saving if you're running it 24/7.
In the case of an NV+ or Duo, they can only push 25-35 MB/s so I doubt that the performance hit would even be noticeable.
I recently bought 2 Hitachi HDS723020BLA642 drives for 109.00, although they're now 99.00 each:How to read the Deskstar model number
HDS723020BLA642 = 2TB, 64MB buffer
H = Hitachi
D = Deskstar
S = Series prefix
72 = 7200 RPM
30 = Full capacity—3TB
20 = Capacity this model, 30 = 3TB (20 = 2TB, 15 = 1.5TB)
B = Generation code
L = 26.1mm z-height
A6 = Interface, SATA 6Gb/s
4 = 64MB buffer
0 = Reserved (2 = Reserved)
http://www.hitachigst.com/internal-driv ... tar-7k3000 - iprobe8 - the Samsung HD204UI drives are not on the HCL. Neither are the Hitachi HDS723020BLA642 drives, although the older HDS722020ALA330 are. (Newegg does not currently list them, but Amazon has them at $119.95).
Your best bet from a price performance standpoint is the Seagates. Keep in mind that larger drives have a higher failure rate, and you might want to keep a spare on hand, or maintain a current and complete backup. You could invest in a dock that will attach to one of your Macs and backup the videos and music that does not change much on to your older drives once you have removed them. They will make good backup storage and don't have to be on line except when copying to or from them. A dock makes a good temporary connection for an SATA drive. PapaBear wrote: the Samsung HD204UI drives are not on the HCL. Neither are the Hitachi HDS723020BLA642 drives, although the older HDS722020ALA330 are.
You're correct, PapaBear --- I should have prefaced my comment that they are not on the HCL. I chose them based upon feedback from other forum members and have not had any issues in the month or so that I've used them.- Plus the fact that if you have problems, you are unlikely to need much help from technical support.
iProb8 wrote: I currently have both NV+ units decked out with 1.5TB 7200 RPM Seagate drives (Seagate ST31500341AS). I'm starting to run out of space on the primary unit and considering upgrading it to four 2TB units.
It does not seem that "economical" to replace all 4 (presumably otherwise "good") drives with 4 drives that are only 25% bigger. You currently have 4.5TB usable, so your new would only be 6.
What about shifting to 3 x 3TB drives? That will give you the same 6 usable -- still leaving one slot for a future 3TB drive at, presumably, a lower price point.
Assuming you have someplace to temporarily store 1.5TB of data, or if you have at least 1.5TB "duplicated" on your 2nd NV+ or a different source... If you bought 3 drives, it would be easy (but slightly time-consuming) to transfer your data:
1) Ensure at least 1.5+ TB of data is backed up to other "random" drives or on NV+ #2
2) Put #1 3TB drive in external USB case. Back up remaining up-to-3TB from NV+ to that drive.
3) Shutdown NV+, remove all drives, label them 1-4
4) Insert #2 & #3 3TBs into NV+. Update to latest firmware. Create new X-RAID volume
5) Restore #1's data to NV+
6) Insert #1 as the 3rd drive in NV+
7) After expansion, recopy the remaining 1.5+ TB from scattered random drives or the other NV+
--> Note, if desperate, you could yank one of the 1.5TB's from the NV+ at the start (MEANING YOUR ARRAY IS DEGRADED), put that in a USB, to store 1.5TB's of your original data - then complete the backup with one of the new 3TBs.
Sounds complicated, but this buys you a new array with latest firmware (I know with the Pro's, you need to recreate the array with the latest firmware to expand beyond 15TB?) and still have room to add 3TB more of space via the 4th drive.- NV+ (like all other Sparc ReadyNAS) does not support 3TB drives. So when moving to 3TB disks it would be time to get a new NAS.
- Darn... my knowledge is so outdated that I need to stop trying to help :( Bummer about the Sparc's & 3TBs.
It makes me wonder -- could they possibly create a *new* firmware that had absolutely no backwards-compatibility (ie, no "in-place update", nor can read drives from old array - maybe the firmware "space" is an issue and preventing them from enabling larger drives) - so users could choose to back up all data, create a "new technology" array, and restore data to that. Perhaps doing this would allow them to excise/remove enough "backwards-compatibility" code that Netgear could enable the latest on older equipment.
After all, with 3TB drives available now, it would only take 1.5 of those to back up most NV+ units for a clean re-boot. Kind of like the last Star Trek movie totally (and awesomely) rebooted the franchise :) - @zamboni, Thank you for the 3TB suggestion, but the NV+'s inability to go beyond 2TB is somewhat of a non-starter on that one. I don't want to invest the money right now in a new NAS. I was really hoping the extra space from the 2TB drives would last me at least another year or two. Perhaps then I would be in a position to buy a new NAS unit. Incidentally, I have a 2-bay D-Link NAS unit that I am not using (I bought it before my first NV+ and so much prefer my NV+ that I scrapped the D-Link) and could fill it with two of the 1.5TB drives if I needed the extra space.
@dbott67 and PapaBear, thank you for the information. The lower power and lower heat of the 5900 RPM drives is particularly attractive as my NV+ units are in a room with a southwest exposure (I live in Arizona) and, thus, gets quite warm at times. Anything I can do to keep the heat down (as long as I'm not taking a noticeable performance hit) is appreciated. PapaBear, I also like your suggestion of using a dock (I already have two but don't use them much) and the existing 1.5TB drives as back-ups. I might also want to keep one or two of the 1.5TB drives as spares to for the second NV+ (the one I am not backing up). Incidentally, fwiw, I have the second NV+ (the one I use as for backing up the first NV+) set to only turn on at night when it runs the nightly back up of the first NV+. - If the D-Link is still viable and has not been cannibalized, you could maybe put two 1.5GB drives in it and use it as a server for video files that don't change. I don't know if it will work as a video file server or not, just a suggestion to maybe help pull some of the files off the NV+ to gain some space.
Last year when my NV+ was filling up, I bit the bullet and went with an NVX (replaced in the market by the Ultra 4) and just recently had to expand it with 2x3TB drives. When you add the next ReadyNAS, the x-86 units using X-Raid2 have this nice feature of layering the volume so you don't have to replace all the drives. I have 2x3TB and 2x1TB drives replacing the 4x1TB drives and my volume is now 4.5TB instead of 2.7 with the 4x1TB drives. The removed 1TB drives went into my NV+ which serves as a second backup of critical files. PapaBear wrote: If the D-Link is still viable and has not been cannibalized, you could maybe put two 1.5GB drives in it and use it as a server for video files that don't change. I don't know if it will work as a video file server or not, just a suggestion to maybe help pull some of the files off the NV+ to gain some space.
Last year when my NV+ was filling up, I bit the bullet and went with an NVX (replaced in the market by the Ultra 4) and just recently had to expand it with 2x3TB drives. When you add the next ReadyNAS, the x-86 units using X-Raid2 have this nice feature of layering the volume so you don't have to replace all the drives. I have 2x3TB and 2x1TB drives replacing the 4x1TB drives and my volume is now 4.5TB instead of 2.7 with the 4x1TB drives. The removed 1TB drives went into my NV+ which serves as a second backup of critical files.
Ironic, PapaBear, that you mention that you went with an NVX. After my last post, I was fooling around with TwonkyMedia Server on the ReadyNAS, as well as with my AppleTVs, TiVos, and Sony TV. In doing some research, I discovered Plex but, much to my chagrin, found out it doesn't work with the NV+ but does work with the NVX and the Ultra 4. I see the Ultra 4 is $530 at Amazon (compared to $656 for the NVX) so now I'm wondering whether I should bite the bullet and get the Ultra. Between the two (NVX and Ultra 4), is there any reason to go with the NVX instead of the Ultra 4?
Incidentally, last night I also discovered may duplicate video (.mpg) files on the primary ReadyNAS. I'm in the process of deleting them to see how much space I can recover. Perhaps I can squeeze some extra life out of the 1.5TB drives I have now.
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