Does anyone have any real-world experience with the read speeds between the Western Digital Green 1TB HDD's and the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB (and 1.5TB) drives?

I have a soon to arrive MSS-470, and plan to update the drives right away. My current plan is to replace the OS drive with a WD Caviar Black WD6401AALS (640GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache), as I've heard favorable reports regarding its speed. I'm of the opinion your OS drive should be as fast as possible.


However, I'm not sure what I want to use for my data drives. On the one hand, the Green's appear to be more energy efficient (and cooler running), however, my understanding is they are not as fast. I would like to be as efficient as possible, but not at the expense of limiting media streaming.


Anyone have advice?

I'm building a new homebrew WHS, and I'm using the Caviar Black 750gb for the boot drive, as I am of the same opinion as you. But I will be using the GP 1tb drives under it, for energy and cooling efficiency. Are they the absolute fastest? I don't know, but the difference is probably unmeasureable in the real world server environment.

Yes, I do know that's not really a word...

_________________
This Space For Rent

I believe they are BOTH faster than the MSS is going to be able to practically exceed under normal use.

Before you get the Seagate 1.5TB take a look at the several threads about it, bothe here and over on http://www.mediasmarthome.com/ . Most seem to need to be patched and even then some folks continue to have problems.

I use the WD10EACS (Green) drives.

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

Thanks for all the input and help everyone!




Really? I thought streaming bandwidth would be capped by the read speed (minus some overhead) of whichever discs are being read at the time, since gigabit is well above that (unlike like RAID striping, which obviously allows for much higher throughput)?

I'm a newb though, and just basing that on some of the stuff I've read.


Yeah, I've been pretty much scared away :p

Once they're sorted out, I might bite. They sound like they'll be fantastic drives once the kinks are out, but I'd rather not deal with such issues when first getting my server. I'd have to upgrade my desktop to even do the firmware updates, and IMO, it hasn't been long enough to really get a feel for how effective the updates are at this point.

To be safe (and a bit energy conscious ), I decided to go green for now. I actually got the WD10EADS version however. It's a slightly faster version of the WD10EACS (3 x ~333GB platters + 32MB cache, versus 4 x 250GB platters + 16MB cache), that's also marginally more efficient. The 1TB's WD10EADS's were only $14 more at Buy.com than newegg.com's price for the WD10EACS's. It will be interesting to see how they perform.

I purchased two of those, and will couple it with a WD6401AALS (640GB Caviar Black) for the OS. I figure some extra speed is at least warranted for the C partition.

I would probably get the WD10EADS as well next time. Cannot hurt!

And I agree on the extra speed for the C: partition. That may actually help. (Toyed with the idea of getting a 10,000 rpm drive there, something like the Raptor, but have found other places to spend cash instead. (I do use a pair of Raptors in a RAID mirror on my Vista machine for the C: drive and it does help noticeably there!)

The 1Gb/s LAN is slower than what the disks are capable of. (And it's not likely you would actually get the maximum throughput down the LAN anyway!)

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

There's a pretty good review at Tom's Hardware. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hdd ... ,2077.html

I went with the Caviar Green (WD10EADS).