Hey guys, and apologies if you have covered this already.
What hard drives do you use? I'm asking cause I'm looking to build a RAID 1 array in my main rig, and possibly a custom network storage in the future, and would like everything nice and quiet. But I would like reliable devices too.
I recently had to remove one of the storage drives from my rig cause it hummed like a bee on honey, and the sound resonated through the case.
Thanks and keep up the awesome work!
SSD
Try enterprise or NAS drives.
These days every hard drive you buy might die within first few hours, few days or months but if it will survive first year it's gonna rock for a few years. I'm not saying you should be scared of buying new HDD but RMAs are much more frequent than say 5-6 years back. Also, if you're planning to buy only 2 disks, RAID 1 is a waste of space. Just put them like you normally would and copy important data, set scheduled backups once per day or something. If you really wanna play with RAID 1 consider ZFS mirror matrix (or ZRAID or something like that) mentioned in a vid some time ago. Maybe someone who actually remember which vid that was could point you there.
WD reds, now that WD has their ducks in a row with manufacturing and testing them, have proven reliability and are very quiet.
My r1 is 2*wd blacks, and my nas is 4*constellation + 4*barracuda, sounds like a whining supercharger or a spaceship taking off when they all spin up at once xD
Go with WD reds for raid.
For reliability I've always had fantastic luck with Western Digital. However for something quiet, I've yet to find a drive over 2TB that doesn't sound like a coffee pot brewing in the morning. I suppose it would depend heavily on your case.
I'm running an SSD as the OS drive. Don't fancy spending $$$$ on a huge SSD for storage.
I have RAID options on the motherboard and thought about using that. I've used RAID years ago, and it was handy. Also I've had to RMA one drive after just a year, but that was painless and was replaced under warranty.
I guess I'll just try backing up from one disk to another, only the necessary files like you said.
The main thing is having a drive that's quiet. My Samsung Spinpoint F3 is silent. I had to remove a recent WD Blue cause it was vibrating and driving me nuts.
Thanks, I'll check out the WD Reds.
Yea, I'm running the Antec One case. It's cheap but does the job. The WD Blue I removed resonated through the side panels. The Spinpoint F3 is silent though.
I'm looking at getting 1TB drive. Cannot fill 2TB yet :)
Well you asked for quiet and reliable, not cheap and huge ;)
As others have said, the WD Reds are pretty good. They also come with a 3 year warranty instead of the standard 2 year, IIRC. I've got 4 in one of my rigs and haven't had a problem with the noise. Greens should also work just as well, since it's a desktop not a NAS; albeit without the extended warranty. Isolated mounts go a long way, too.
Note with regard to Greens in RAID: You might hear that Greens will hurt RAID performance, and while that can be true, I don't think you're going to do RAID 1 for the performance gains. I assume you want the redundancy for data integrity. In this scenario, Greens will be OK.
And don't forget rule #1: RAID is NOT a BACKUP!
The Antec One is a nice case, not too big. You could probably put a cheap sound dampening foam kit in it that would help greatly with the resonating. I find it works better on smaller cases then the larger ones when it comes to drive noise.