When I built my RNPP I had to go for the terrible Seagate 1.5TB drives that as predicted have slow but surely been creeping into the near death cycle due to mounting errors. Since the Samsung HD204UIs are on the official HCL and have performed well in my NV+ I decided to get 6 for the RNPP, except now Seagate manufacture these drives under a new model number ST2000DL004 and make them in China instead of Korea with 1 instead of 3yr warranty. Apparently NCQ and another feature have also been tweaked by Seagate.
Read a lot of comments about people seeing higher failure rates with these drives (Seagate has gotten too famous for this in recent years) and newegg has a deal for US$ 99 on the new model.
Is Netgear going to update its HCL to include these new drives or has anyone bought them to use in their NAS so far?
*EDIT* Found this bit of info on a forum:
These are apparently barracuda drives relabled to samsung. Samsung's tools dont recognize it, Had to use Seagates' tools. Theres a tiny print above the samsung label that says "Barracuda Green" but anywho, Windows started barking about finding an error on it and its failed the seagate tools test so I will have to send off to RMA.
Doesn't inspire me with much confidence about these drives.
As your references suggest, rather than relabeling the HD204UI in Seagates new numbering scheme, they took a Barracuda Green drive and relabeled it as a Samsung. As a long time Seagate drive user, I would suggest you try the WD20EFRX. They are fairly new (several months since release) and they are higher priced because demand is currently outstripping supply. Amazon currently has better prices than Newegg (currently out of stock) but I'm not sure about shipping them to where you are.
If you are not familiar with the new WD red label series, this is a line of drives specifically designed for use in desktop NAS units. There were a lot of good reviews when they first came out and they have a 3 year warranty. You might consider getting on or two as spares. If your data volume is increasing, you might also want to consider replacing your 1.5TB with 3TB drives. If you are currently at single redundancy, once you have replaced two of the 1.5TB drives with 3TB drives, you will gain an additional 1.5TB (gross) of data storage.
I was very interested in the new WD Reds as soon as they came out, but held off due to them being 'new' and rather untested among the masses. But I saw a pretty good price on Amazon yesterday (130$ per drive) and bought a half dozen (plus 1 spare) set of WD20EFRXs.
Even with 1.5TB drives in the RNPP, I'm only at 56% usage with 1 hot spare in XRAID2. I'm going to re-balance the data across both my RNPP & NV+ and hence won't need 3TB drives in my RNPP for a good long time, plus they just weren't cost effective to buy. Will be reporting on performance of the drives once they arrive and I get a chance to swap out all the data/drives in my RNPP.
Disappointing about Samsung, wondering if WD is doing the same with Hitachi since Toshiba now owns all of Hitachis 3.5" plants and will be releasing their own line of HDDs soon.
I agree. I have 5 of the older Hitachi 3TB drives (4 in service, one spare still in anti-static bag) and they have been stellar performers. Far better reliability than the Seagate ST31000528AS drives I had previously. The Hitachi situation is somewhat confusing since WD supposedly bought them but now they are being made by Toshiba and marketed by who? Of course with the advent of the WD red label series, I'm not sure WD needs anything from Hitachi.
i have 6 2tb hitachi ultrastars in my readynas pro and the run well (they better do for that kind of money).
i have very good experience with wd black series and samsungs drives. since samsung is no more i would go for the wd reds since they are specifically designed for up to 5 bay raids and should be tested and qualified by almost every major nas vendor (including netgear) now.
Beisser - on of the quirks in the WD promo is they say they are specifically designed for up to 5 bay raids, but one of the units they list in the WD promotional material as being certified for use with the reds is a 6 bay ReadyNAS! And confirmed by Netgear putting the drives on the HCL for 6 bay units.
I would think they may run into problems with the 8 bay competitor units and of course with rack mounts because of the vibration. The design of the 6 bay ReadyNAS units (two rows of three drives) vs competitor 8 bays (8 in one row) may be a factor. Of course the only drives certified for ReadyNAS rack mounts are the enterprise class drives.
