Advice on HDD RAID please

[aDoomGuy]

So I got the Seagate Barracuda 3TB err model number...... ST3000DM008. It's the 7200rpm one. My plan was to eventually get another one and do a RAID 0 with two of them. However, only the ST3000DM007 is being sold here now and that's the 5400rpm one.

 

My options as it currently stands get the ST3000DM008 7200rpm one on Ebay from China and wait for god knows how long until it gets here if it even does and in what condition. I usually don't buy storage on Ebay.

I can also get the 5400 rpm one but loose some MB/s from spec sheets it looks to be like 40MB/s at most when they are in RAID 0.

The least preferable option would be to get a 2TB 7200rpm drive but that will only give me 4 TB total HDD in RAID but of course slightly better speed than with the 5400 rpm.

 

Since I don't need it ASAP as I have 6TB of storage I'd be tempted to go the Ebay route but with the pandemic and all... My tummy say that may not be a chess move... But pandemics aside. Anyone here in the west ever ordered any HDD from China before? Did it arrive in one piece? What would you do if you was me and your plans got soiled like mine because for some reason all the shops want to sell slower drives all of a sudden? Never saw that one coming tbh.

[Biomecanoid]

Well you don't want to mix different drives in RAID. Just get the identical drive and wait. Is the drive from eBay supposed to be NEW ? because you should avoid used drives.

[SupaKomputa]

1 minute ago, Biomecanoid said:

Well you don't want to mix different drives in RAID. 

Actually it's not a problem. You can even mix SSD and HDD in raid, in which will operates to the lowest capacity and the lowest speed.

So the faster SSD will operate in the HDD speed and the bigger HDD will use only the size of the SSD.

[aDoomGuy]

5 minutes ago, Biomecanoid said:

Well you don't want to mix different drives in RAID. Just get the identical drive and wait. Is the drive from eBay supposed to be NEW ? because you should avoid used drives.

Well, they CLAIM it's brand new. It's gonna cost me a pretty penny or two to get it across the border, ermm I wouldn't want to do that with a used drive so I hope that's truthful. Thanks buddy.

 

Well, no I don't want to put a slower drive and a faster drive in RAID. The faster drive will get held back so yeah. That is indeed why I would not want the 5400rpm one even though the difference is not crazy looking at spec sheets at the least.

[Biomecanoid]

6 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

Actually it's not a problem. You can even mix SSD and HDD in raid, in which will operates to the lowest capacity and the lowest speed.

So the faster SSD will operate in the HDD speed and the bigger HDD will use only the size of the SSD.

Even if Raid can compensate a bit for different drives you don't have to mess it up to make things prone to errors.

 

The above scenario to mix ssd and hdd is a nightmare. Drives should be identical for peace of mind.

[SupaKomputa]

12 minutes ago, aDoomGuy said:

Did it arrive in one piece? What would you do if you was me and your plans got soiled like mine because for some reason all the shops want to sell slower drives all of a sudden? Never saw that one coming tbh.

Ofcourse, if not there's a buyer protection program, return it.

I would just get another HDD from another brand in your situation.

[aDoomGuy]

1 minute ago, SupaKomputa said:

Ofcourse, if not there's a buyer protection program, return it.

I would just get another HDD from another brand in your situation.

No 3TB 7200 rpm drives have been for sale in this lousy country for over a year it seems. 

It's like they stopped making them. I'f I'd known I'd just get the 4 TB 5400 rpm one or even a 6TB, but I wanted the rpms...

 

(Norway btw).

[Biomecanoid]

5 minutes ago, aDoomGuy said:

No 3TB 7200 rpm drives have been for sale in this lousy country for over a year it seems. 

It's like they stopped making them. I'f I'd known I'd just get the 4 TB 5400 rpm one or even a 6TB, but I wanted the rpms...

 

(Norway btw).

5400 rpm drives must be avoided at all cost they are dead slow. They are OK only for usb drives and maybe not even that.

[aDoomGuy]

4 minutes ago, Biomecanoid said:

5400 rpm drives must be avoided at all cost they are dead slow. They are OK only for usb drives and maybe not even that.

Well yeah.... Actually I'm gonna use them to copy videos edited in Davinci over to USB flash drives and the largest of those I will use my HyperX flash drive which is over 200 MB/s. The 7200 rpm is good for 180 MB/s-ish sustained on 10GB files if it's defragmented and the videos are put in the first blocks but I also have some games on there even though that's not a priority here since I have two SATA SSD in RAID dedicated to games.

[SupaKomputa]

1 minute ago, Biomecanoid said:

5400 rpm drives must be avoided at all cost they are dead slow. They are OK only for usb drives and maybe not even that.

I disagree, especially with higher capacity drive, my 2TB 5400 rpm (180mb/s read) beat my 1TB 7200 (110mb/s).

The higher the density, the higher the bandwidth.

But there also a technological problem which is SATA HDD can't go faster than 250-300mb/s (12TB Baracuda pro).

So 180 is not that bad.

[Biomecanoid]

12 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

I disagree, especially with higher capacity drive, my 2TB 5400 rpm (180mb/s read) beat my 1TB 7200 (110mb/s).

The higher the density, the higher the bandwidth.

But there also a technological problem which is SATA HDD can't go faster than 250-300mb/s (12TB Baracuda pro).

So 180 is not that bad.

"especially with higher capacity drive, my 2TB 5400 rpm (180mb/s read) beat my 1TB 7200 " Capacity has nothing to do with speed.

 

Your 7200rpm might be an older model and the 5400rpm might be newer technology with bigger cache. The rule is that between 2 new drives of the same period the higher the RPM the higher the read speed.

 

Unless you live in a parallel universe or twilight zone

[SupaKomputa]

13 minutes ago, Biomecanoid said:

Capacity has nothing to do with speed.

Untrue, the higher the capacity means more density, higher density means more data per square mm, means less time needed to pick up the data.

https://eshop.macsales.com/blog/11825-when-slower-is-actually-faster/

With higher density drive and HDD reaching the sata speed cap, the difference between speed is getting less obvious.

My 1TB obviously older than my 2TB, higher capacity drive usually younger, with better tech.

All I'm saying if you have a high density drive (2TB and up), you don't have to worry about the speed, the slower drive probably 10% slower at worst, but NOT MUCH SLOWER like you said.

I don't have the same age drive to prove it, but i found these videos:

 

 

[Biomecanoid]

5 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

Untrue, the higher the capacity means more density, higher density means more data per square mm, means less time needed to pick up the data.

https://eshop.macsales.com/blog/11825-when-slower-is-actually-faster/

With higher density drive and HDD reaching the sata speed cap, the difference between speed is getting less obvious.

My 1TB obviously older than my 2TB, higher capacity drive usually younger, with better tech.

All I'm saying if you have a high density drive (2TB and up), you don't have to worry about the speed, the slower drive probably 10% slower at worst, but NOT MUCH SLOWER like you said.

I don't have the same age drive to prove it, but i found these videos:

 

 

You live in a world that is OK to match SSD and HDD in a RAID array, In a world that HDD RPMs don't really matter and that capacity is tied with transfer speeds. Well so nothing surprises me anymore

[SupaKomputa]

5 minutes ago, Biomecanoid said:

You live in a world that is OK to match SSD and HDD in a RAID array, In a world that HDD RPMs don't really matter and that capacity is tied with transfer speeds. Well so nothing surprises me anymore

I'm not saying that is okay, it's doable (but if you do it, you're a dummy), you don't need the same exact drive for RAID. 

It's recommended that you have a different drive from a different manufacturer especially for raid 1, as the exact drive made the same batch prone to have problems, if any, you don't want it to fail at the same time.

https://superuser.com/questions/257892/matched-or-unmatched-drives-for-raid-arrays

 

 

https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-id/000139367/dell-enterprise-raid-and-physical-drive-replacement-faq-can-different-drives-be-used-in-a-raid

Quote

Must hard drives in a RAID array be identical?

No.  It is perfectly valid to use hard drives from different manufacturers, model numbers, sizes and rotational speed (spindle speed or rpm).

 

[Biomecanoid]

7 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

I'm not saying that is okay, it's doable (but if you do it, you're a dummy), you don't need the same exact drive for RAID. 

It's recommended that you have a different drive from a different manufacturer especially for raid 1, as the exact drive made the same batch prone to have problems, if any, you don't want it to fail at the same time.

https://superuser.com/questions/257892/matched-or-unmatched-drives-for-raid-arrays

 

 

https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-id/000139367/dell-enterprise-raid-and-physical-drive-replacement-faq-can-different-drives-be-used-in-a-raid

 

Well I hope you don't work in IT because any of those kind of advice will get you fired and also laughed at.

Being able to do something doesn't mean you should. Some things are just bad practice.

 

The only scenario that mis-matching drive would be OK is maybe RAID0 where the 2nd drive is used for mirroring. In any other scenario performance would suffer.

[SupaKomputa]

11 minutes ago, Biomecanoid said:

Well I hope you don't work in IT because any of those kind of advice will get you fired and also laughed at.

Being able to do something doesn't mean you should. Some things are just bad practice.

 

The only scenario that mis-matching drive would be OK is maybe RAID0 where the 2nd drive is used for mirroring. In any other scenario performance would suffer.

Well for over a decade, i've build and maintain webservers for a living, i hope it's IT enough.

[Biomecanoid]

9 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

Well for over a decade, i've build and maintain webservers for a living, i hope it's IT enough.

Well I am in IT for a bit more than that and never practice what you say. I value my sanity and don't enjoy sabotaging myself

[Blue4130]

14 hours ago, aDoomGuy said:

So I got the Seagate Barracuda 3TB err model number...... ST3000DM008. It's the 7200rpm one. My plan was to eventually get another one and do a RAID 0 with two of them. However, only the ST3000DM007 is being sold here now and that's the 5400rpm one.

 

My options as it currently stands get the ST3000DM008 7200rpm one on Ebay from China and wait for god knows how long until it gets here if it even does and in what condition. I usually don't buy storage on Ebay.

I can also get the 5400 rpm one but loose some MB/s from spec sheets it looks to be like 40MB/s at most when they are in RAID 0.

The least preferable option would be to get a 2TB 7200rpm drive but that will only give me 4 TB total HDD in RAID but of course slightly better speed than with the 5400 rpm.

 

Since I don't need it ASAP as I have 6TB of storage I'd be tempted to go the Ebay route but with the pandemic and all... My tummy say that may not be a chess move... But pandemics aside. Anyone here in the west ever ordered any HDD from China before? Did it arrive in one piece? What would you do if you was me and your plans got soiled like mine because for some reason all the shops want to sell slower drives all of a sudden? Never saw that one coming tbh.

If you are concerned about speed (you are after raid 0 and 7200rpm, so that's my assumption) and mention video editing, so I gather this is your scratch disk/working volume and not storage volyme... Just get a SATA ssd. It's faster that HDD raid 0. You loose on capacity, but workflow will be much better. 

[aDoomGuy]

4 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

If you are concerned about speed (you are after raid 0 and 7200rpm, so that's my assumption) and mention video editing, so I gather this is your scratch disk/working volume and not storage volyme... Just get a SATA ssd. It's faster that HDD raid 0. You loose on capacity, but workflow will be much better. 

I got already 2 SATA SSD in RAID 0 and a NVMe it's not that. It's just if I got a similar drive to RAID the HDD it would not be so slow compared to my other volumes but because my original plan got borked I'm also considering ditching the drive and getting 1 more NVMe and two more SATA SSD. They got a sale now for the same NVMe that I got. This HDD is what I use for any large things that are not frequently played games, well I guess I could pass that drive on and get 3 more SSD but it wouldn't give me more storage. Which probably is fine, I don't need to have games installed that I don't play lol.

[deserttan]

The speed of RAID0 starts kicking in when you got 5 or 6 disks in a volume. I had 3-disk RAID0 and it was pretty slow, 6-disk is just perfect, about 80% as fast as a half-empty SSD. Much better than spending more money for less space with SSDs. And spinning disks have essentially unlimited read/write cycles.

[aDoomGuy]

1 minute ago, deserttan said:

The speed of RAID0 starts kicking in when you got 5 or 6 disks in a volume. I had 3-disk RAID0 and it was pretty slow, 6-disk is just perfect, about 80% as fast as a half-empty SSD. Much better than spending more money for less space with SSDs. And spinning disks have essentially unlimited read/write cycles.

I'm not planning a massive array with maximum performance. Just a large volume with not dead preformance. 3-400MB/s will be decent enough. If there is something I want maximum performance out of it will go into either my SSD array (games) or on my NVMe. The latter I will probably make an array of pretty soon aince they got the A2000 on sale and I got a coupon I can use. So I may be dropping HDD alltogether eventually. Maybe just save up for 2x2TB SATA SSD which will give me 8TB total.