RAIDZ setup single manufacturer drives or mix of various manufacturers?

[Tekkie]

If building a RAIDZ setup with 6 drives is it better to have all drives from a single vendor or a mix of vendors?

Although I've run 2 Buffalo TeraStations with (4*500GB) WD in one and Seagate in the other for donkey's years without incidents, I am currently leaning towards having drives from at least 3 vendors (Seagate, WD & Samsung) to minimize any single batch/vendor issues affecting the storage system.

What do you say?

 

[torrin]

I think generally, mixing manufacturers is a good idea (as long as they are the same speed/cache/sector size). I have experienced multiple drives from the same vendor (purchased at the same time) failing within a few days of each other. I would also suggest RAIDZ2 with 6 drives.

 

[matthewowen01]

i had 2, 2TB Seagate drives fail within 4 hours. i buy from multiple venders now.

 

[matthewowen01]

with 6 drives you should go raidz2 for safety.

 

[Tekkie]

Current drives list is:
2 x Samsung F4 EcoGreen 2TB 32MB 5400RPM
2 x Western Digital Caviar 2TB SATAII 64MB 5400RPM (WD20EARS)
2x Seagate 2TB 64MB 5900RPM Barracuda Green (ST2000DL003) <<== Just a little worried about these babies...

 

[esamett]

I spread out my purchases over about two months. I stuck with hitachi so I wouldn't have to worry about the 4k sector size issue until FreeNAS 8 caught up with the issue. I don't know which other drives are native 512b sector size.