Replace Toshiba with Seagate or another Toshiba?

[darkryoushii]

Hey there,

So I've just had my first drive failure, (and car problems and first power outage in over a year.. all today.)

I'm going to be taking mine back to the store tomorrow and asking for a replacement and I know I will be offered either a Toshiba or a Seagate as a replacement. Which should I take? Currently I have all drives identical and bought them at the same time. So I want to replace it and get it up and running again in case another drive fails soon. SMART says the rest are fine while this one is screaming saying the drive WILL fail in the next 24 hours.
Currently have 4 of these and 1 dead one in RAIDZ1
Buy another? or get
One of these as a replacement instead to mix manufacturers.

Also is there anything better than these two options?

Thanks in advance!

 

[cyberjock]

The WD Reds are supposed to be pretty good. Choosing drive brands and models is like choosing a religion. Everyone will have a story for why theirs is better and yours is wrong.

 

[darkryoushii]

Could I add a 3TB W.D. Red to the mix of 4x 3TB Toshiba DT01ACA300 without any issues though? I doubt it :(

 

[cyberjock]

Sure can. You can mix and match all over the place, even mix sizes if you want. It just causes uneven performance across the pool and the pool ends up limited to the slowest and smallest drive. But you can do it.

I am not a fan of 7200RPM drives unless you actually need lower latency. For home use, its kind of dumb as they get VERY hot compared to the lower RPM drives. Check your disk temps with smartctl -a /dev/(yourdisk) | grep Temperature

Anything above 40C means you are significantly shortening your disk lifespan.

 

[darkryoushii]

For now, I aim to be replacing it with another Toshiba, purely because the seagate drives seem like hell and I don't want to create uneven performance (adding a single 5900rpm drive to a 7200rpm array) for a single failed drive. That being said if under the assumption that more drives start failing, I would love to be able to replace them all with a different type. But that is a lot of money that I don't have.

 

[Z300M]

For now, I aim to be replacing it with another Toshiba, purely because the seagate drives seem like hell and I don't want to create uneven performance (adding a single 5900rpm drive to a 7200rpm array) for a single failed drive. That being said if under the assumption that more drives start failing, I would love to be able to replace them all with a different type. But that is a lot of money that I don't have.

I'm not sure that Seagate drives are any worse than any others. It's true that there were many complaints about them on NewEgg.com, but many of those complaints seem to be more about NewEgg just throwing "bare" drives into a box with some bubble-wrap around -- and not necessarily between -- them:; some even arrived with dented covers.

 

[cyberjock]

http://www.behardware.com/articles/881-6/components-returns-rates-7.html

This is from France from an e-tailer from late 2012. Naturally, there's a boatload of reasons why this could be different here in the USA. For example, if Seagate makes the drive in France and ships them here while WD makes them here, you can expect Seagates to have higher failure rates because of the extra travel distance. There's plenty more that I could probably make up if I really wanted to dig deep.

Overall, they all tend to average out to be pretty darn close to the same with the exception of Hitachi. But most people only discuss WD and Seagates. I hate Seagates because of my experience, others hate WD because of their experience. But both seem to be about the same.

 

[JimPhreak]

Many of the Toshiba's are rebranded Hitachi Deskstar's as Toshiba bought the consumer line of Hitachi. They are great drives as I've been running 8 of them (the 2TB version) in a RAID10 array for about 2 years now with no problems. Just look closely at the picture of the Toshiba's and you'll see they say Hitachi on them.

 

[darkryoushii]

I have replaced it with a Toshiba. The new models have a revised firmware and no longer mention hitachi on the label. They also identify themselves as Toshiba rather than the original ones I have which show up as Hitachi deskstars.

 

[JimPhreak]

I have replaced it with a Toshiba. The new models have a revised firmware and no longer mention hitachi on the label. They also identify themselves as Toshiba rather than the original ones I have which show up as Hitachi deskstars.

Which model did you buy?

 

[darkryoushii]

Which model did you buy?

I should have said the new batches. Old ones SEPT 2012 new one was JULY 2013

Check my sig for the model

 

[JimPhreak]

I should have said the new batches. Old ones SEPT 2012 new one was JULY 2013

Check my sig for the model

Interesting I just bought 2 of those off Amazon less than a week ago and they still say Hitachi on them. My 2-bay NAS box reads them as Hitachi's as well.