Recommended 1TB HDDs For FreeNAS

[JonnyAlpha]

Hi;

I am experiencing some problems with one of my HDDs in my new NAS setup. I bought 3 x 1TB Western Digital Caviar Green SATA 6GBs WD10EZRX.
I have since found out that these drives are not recommended for RAID setups of more than 3 x Drives, I have had them installed in a 3 x 1TB RAID Z1. The reason they are not recommended is apparently because they are designed to sleep (GREEN) when not in use (you would think this could be disabled).

I have just started the RMA process for the poss knackered one but they will only replace like for like, so it may or may not work (There have been mixed results with these drives).

In case I need to replace these drives can someone recommend replacements for around the same price (these cost about £58 each). Something like Seagate Barracuda?

Thanks in advance.

 

[cyberjock]

WOW. This question has been asked so many times.... /sigh

Prepare for the war of the drives...


Edit: BTW.. green drives DO work great in FreeNAS servers.. as well as Windows, etc. I'm sure if you search for "WD Green" you'll find at least 10 instances where I mention a tool called "wdidle". So yes, it can be disabled. :) I have 24 WD Green drives in my server and they're the best drives I have ever owned for 3 years running.

 

[Z300M]

Seagate vs. WD

The latest Seagate Barracuda drives are not the same as the earlier ones. I RMA'd a dead ST32000641AS, and they sent me an ST2000DM001 in its place, a drive with significantly worse user ratings on NewEgg.com. At the time I was still able to buy another (new) ST32000641AS, and that is what I have in my FreeNAS machine. If you read the reviews on NewEgg.com, you'll find people saying that they've given up on Seagate and are switching to WD, and others saying the opposite.

Another thing, the newer Seagate drives have only a 2-year warranty vs. the 5-yr warranty on my original ones. It looks as though WD still has some with 5-yr warranties.

 

[joeschmuck]

True, those Green drives are not recommended for NAS use but they effectively took those same drives (so I hear, I could be wrong), plopped an adjusted firmware on them and now they are the WD Red series. If you have the drives shock mounted (on rubber isolators), use wdidle and then you should be good to go. Just some advice, if you have to replace one of your drives due to failure, use a WD Red drive. The cost is slightly higher unless you catch them on sale (sales happens quite frequently if you're looking to buy a spare before you need it) and they have better firmware to make the drives more suited for a NAS environment.

 

[JonnyAlpha]

WOW. This question has been asked so many times.... /sigh

Prepare for the war of the drives...


Edit: BTW.. green drives DO work great in FreeNAS servers.. as well as Windows, etc. I'm sure if you search for "WD Green" you'll find at least 10 instances where I mention a tool called "wdidle". So yes, it can be disabled. :) I have 24 WD Green drives in my server and they're the best drives I have ever owned for 3 years running.

So maybe I just have a faulty WD drive then. It passed both the short and long WD data life guard tests and im sure if I RMA it they'll just send it back?

Wonder if i should try wdidle on this drive? What are the recommended wdidle settings?

 

[cyberjock]

So maybe I just have a faulty WD drive then. It passed both the short and long WD data life guard tests and im sure if I RMA it they'll just send it back?

Wonder if i should try wdidle on this drive? What are the recommended wdidle settings?

You definitely didn't...

...search for "WD Green" you'll find at least 10 instances where I mention a tool called "wdidle"...

If you did you'd understand what wdidle does and you wouldn't be asking me what "recommended" settings to use.

 

[JonnyAlpha]

You definitely didn't...



If you did you'd understand what wdidle does and you wouldn't be asking me what "recommended" settings to use.

Sorry cyberjock not sure I follow your first comment "you definitely didn't" do you mean (a) i don't have a faulty drive. or (b) I definitely didn't run wdidle?

Ref your second comment I found one of your posts that recommend setting a time out of 300 seconds - thanks.

I will run wdidle on the faulty Green Drive (and the others) and give it another whirl.

 

[Stephens]

I tried reading the thread... really, I did. But nowhere do I see how the OP determined the drive he's trying to RMA is "bad". What's the problem this thread is attempting to solve?

 

[cyberjock]

Honestly I'm not sure. But as I said before the OP didn't read up on wdidle at all otherwise he'd understand what it does and that it won't fix whatever problem(not sure if he's even stated a problem except to say that Green aren't recommended for servers) he may be having but it will make Green drives work fine for servers. I'm giving up on this thread though before I go cross-eyed :P

I'm really not sure what to think of this thread at all. Nothing has been said to be broken nor any explanation for how, nor how it was determined, but the OP somehow thinks the wdidle tool will fix a broken drive before he has to RMA it.

?????????

 

[joeschmuck]

His first post says he's having problems with one of his drives but he doesn't specify what that problem is. It could be anything from frequent spinning up to the drive popping offline or maybe something else.

JonnyAlpha, post exactly what problem you are having with the drive. Also include what version of FreeNAS you are running and briefly list your hardware.

 

[JonnyAlpha]

cyberjock - I sure you have replied in one of my other posts which details the fault I am experiencing but maybe not, if you do a searc for my posts you'll see. The reason I started this post was due to a fault with one of my new WD CAVIAR GREEN WD10EARX SATA Drives. The drive suddenly started reporting CHECKSUM errors in View Volume and the volume degraded. I ran WD DLG on the drive short and long and it passed, I have also tried SPINRITE but that crashed after an hour or so??

I replaced the drive with a temporary spare that I had been using fine in my test STRIPE but this drive, when added to the RAIDZ1 as a replacement came up with 140K Write Errors in zpool status after a scrub. (Didn't seem to resilver when I ran the zpool replace command).

Im running an ACER Generic Mobo with a Core Duo CPU but only 2GB DDR2 RAM (Which I know will affect performance).

The reason for this post was to ID recommended HDDs but it spiralled off into the "ARE WD GREEN DRIVES OK"

 

[joeschmuck]

I think one possible problem could be a poor SATA cable connection to the drive. We have seen it here, I have personally experienced this myself as well. Sometimes it's wiggling the SATA cable and it works again or a replacement is required. I'm not saying your drive isn't the issue but keep an open mind that the cable could have been the issue. If you RMA the drive, just tell them you are having corrupt files or the drive once in a while will make a clicking noise. They will replace it but you are likely to get a refurbished unit.

On an unrelated subject, you are running extremely low RAM for a ZFS system. I'm curious how much memory swapping (swap space) is going on all the time. I'm sure CyberJock will chime in here but maybe a UFS RAID system would be better for that low RAM number? I don't know since I've never attempted to run anything smaller than 4GB.

 

[JonnyAlpha]

Well, I downloaded UBCD and ran short and long WD tests on the HDD, I also ran a quick fill zeros 1st and last million sectors. I then ran wdidle (also on UBCD) and set timeout to 300 seconds as suggested by cyberock.

I then fitted the drive back in my NAS using another different cable (pulled from a once working PC).

I booted up FreeNaS and clicked replace against the failed disk in the zpool and selected ADA0 (the WD Drive that I had been having problems with. Unlike previous attempts the GUI replace did not error!! I then opened shell and ran zpool status. The status showed that the zpool was resilvering (unlike previous attempts).

After 17 mins zpool is resilvered with 0 errors, read / write and cksum are all zero.

I am afraid to sneeze and any slight noise scares the bejesus out of me.
What now?