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Forum Discussion
Newbie - Novice requires Setup Advice
Hi, I'm a complete novice when it comes to NAS, Raid, etc, however have bought some kit, so would like some advice on the best setup for what I want to primarily use, which is: i) Media Stream...
The drives you have are essentially the same drive, but manufactured in different countries. That maybe why they have different P/N's and different firmware. There *may* be differences in the firmware and/or subtle differences in operation between the different P/N's but only Seagate could advise you on that front.
One thing the 9YN166-500 type drives do is they exhibit an audible "click" about once ever 30-60 seconds. They have no APM feature, but do have AAM. The CC4H firmware was released to address an issue with performance and (potential) reliability on these drives. However, whereas before the F/W upgrade my drive wasn't "Chirping" like a lot of people posting about this on SeaGate's forums, it was making this audible click noise. Which sounded not unlike the noise a drive makes when it's dying. Since the update they do do a random seek every 30 seconds. At least that's what it sounds like to me. But even then it's not consistent. Sometimes it goes on for hours, other times nothing. So the issue has been looked at, but not fixed properly as yet. It doesn't prevent the drive operating though. Mine is still going strong and exhibiting no negative symptoms in SMART, even if the noise annoys the hell out of me. It is fairly loud too. ;)
The Firmware update tool SeaGate has up comes in two flavours. One that can be burnt to a CD-Rom, and one which installs a (temporary) bootloader on your PC and loads that on the next reboot to flash the drive automatically. Disconnection of your PC's own drives during this process isn't really nessecary as the tool won't attempt to flash a drive which doesn't match what the firmware supports, and if memory serves you have to give the tool final confirmation before the update is performed anyhow. But if you have multiple drives whose firmware needs updating you will need to have all connected, or repeat the process for each drive that will end up in the NAS. The NAS cannot flash drives itself.
If I was buying disks now, i'd take a look at the new WD-Red drives as these were designed with NAS systems in mind. As to whether they do a 3TB model, i don't know. Seagate's track record with HDD's over the last few years hasn't been brilliant, but now Samsung have sold their HDD unit to Seagate, the options are drying up somewhat.
One thing the 9YN166-500 type drives do is they exhibit an audible "click" about once ever 30-60 seconds. They have no APM feature, but do have AAM. The CC4H firmware was released to address an issue with performance and (potential) reliability on these drives. However, whereas before the F/W upgrade my drive wasn't "Chirping" like a lot of people posting about this on SeaGate's forums, it was making this audible click noise. Which sounded not unlike the noise a drive makes when it's dying. Since the update they do do a random seek every 30 seconds. At least that's what it sounds like to me. But even then it's not consistent. Sometimes it goes on for hours, other times nothing. So the issue has been looked at, but not fixed properly as yet. It doesn't prevent the drive operating though. Mine is still going strong and exhibiting no negative symptoms in SMART, even if the noise annoys the hell out of me. It is fairly loud too. ;)
The Firmware update tool SeaGate has up comes in two flavours. One that can be burnt to a CD-Rom, and one which installs a (temporary) bootloader on your PC and loads that on the next reboot to flash the drive automatically. Disconnection of your PC's own drives during this process isn't really nessecary as the tool won't attempt to flash a drive which doesn't match what the firmware supports, and if memory serves you have to give the tool final confirmation before the update is performed anyhow. But if you have multiple drives whose firmware needs updating you will need to have all connected, or repeat the process for each drive that will end up in the NAS. The NAS cannot flash drives itself.
If I was buying disks now, i'd take a look at the new WD-Red drives as these were designed with NAS systems in mind. As to whether they do a 3TB model, i don't know. Seagate's track record with HDD's over the last few years hasn't been brilliant, but now Samsung have sold their HDD unit to Seagate, the options are drying up somewhat.
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