What make/model drives do most people use in their fileservers, ie, 24x7, especially if it will be part of a RAID?<br><br>Some background...<br><br>I need to purchase a couple of hard drives at home. One is to replace the flaky WD 500 GB SATA drive in my fileserver, the other for offsite backups. I have a Western Digital WD5000YS-01MPB0 that has a known firmware bug (version 07.02E07) that will periodically enter an unresponsive state. I've known about the fix for over a year now but just haven't had a chance to update the drive. It wasn't a big problem as it would only occur every few months and a reboot usually fixed the problem but it's been occurring more and more frequently. The other 2 drives in the box, same model Maxtor drives have been working fine.<br>
<br>I'm getting tired of maintaining my own RAID system so this past summer, I purchased a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ with two 500 GB drives in a RAID-1 mirror configuration with the intention of backing everything up and rebuilding my fileserver, this time with just two drives in a simpler RAID-1 mirror configuration and rely on the NAS box to store my media. I'd then use a 1 TB external drive to back that up and store it offsite like at work. If upgrading the WD fixes the problem, then I figure I could try it in the ReadyNAS which will automatically reconfigure itself as RAID-5.<br>
<br>The question is what make/model drives should I purchase? The drives I usually buy are what ever is on sale at Fry's or equiv. I haven't really kept track of where each drive has ended up but it seems to me that the drives that have been put in the desktops that are sometimes turned off or at least put into sleep mode seem to be lasting much much longer than the drives I put into my fileservers. <br>
<br>When I hacked my first TiVo, I replaced the original AV rated Quantum 30 GB with a retail 80 GB that eventually died. It's replacement died a few years later so I ended up putting the original drive back. This TiVo has been running pretty much continuously since 2001. Our latest TiVo is always running out of space so I've been looking at the unofficial TiVo FAQ and they recommend specific drives that are AV rated.<br>
<br>So I'm wondering if an AV rated drive would do better than a Fry's special in a RAID environment. I imagine that they must make drives designed for RAID but they are probably much more expensive whereas the AV drives don't seem to be that much more than "regular" drives IF you can find them.<br>
<br>Here's a partial list of drives from the TiVo upgrade FAQ: <a href="http://tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=370784">http://tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=370784</a><br><br>500 GB drives<br>
WD5000AVDS <a href="http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=765" target="_blank">http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=765</a><br>
ST3500321CS<br>
ST3500312CS<br>
<br>750 GB drives<br>WD75000AVCS and WD7500AVVS<br><br>1 TB drives<br>WD10EVDS <a href="http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=617" target="_blank">http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=617</a><br>
ST31000533CS<br><br>
Tried to look for the Seagates but I just see other models and it's not
clear if these drives are designed for AV use. The Western Digital
site is pretty good in that it tells you what their
drives are designed for. Does anyone know where to find the
equivalent for Seagate drives?<br><br>Looks like the WD 1 TB is going for <$100 at Amazon, <a href="http://buy.com/" target="_blank">buy.com</a> and CDW. Need to find the 500 GB version at hopefully <$60.<br><br>claude<br>
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