Early 2008 RAID

[HawkEye40]

Hi,

What are the best HDD's for the 2008 MP currently for striped RAID? Are WD Blacks the way to go?

Thanks

 

[nanofrog]

Hi,

What are the best HDD's for the 2008 MP currently for striped RAID? Are WD Blacks the way to go?

Thanks

Hardware or software based implementation? And if it's hardware based, what card is it?

I ask, as software RAID can use consumer grade drives, of which WD Caviar Blacks are a very good choice. But with true hardware RAID controllers, they typically only work with enterprise grade HDD's (i.e. WD RAID Edition series), and you'd be best checking the card maker's Hardware/HDD Compatibility List as they indicate disks they've tested that worked properly (saves a lot of time and aggravation).

 

[HawkEye40]

Cheers for your reply. It's the Apple RAID card that came with the 2008 MP's.

 

[CaptainChunk]

Cheers for your reply. It's the Apple RAID card that came with the 2008 MP's.

That would be true hardware RAID in your case. So enterprise-level SATA or SAS drives would be preferable.

Western Digital RE3/RE4 drives are the "enterprise" equivalents of the Caviar Blacks. Seagate calls their newer enterprise drives Constellation ES (the 7,200-rpm versions, anyway) and Hitachi would be UltraStar (A7K2000 and 7K3000 for 7,200-rpm variants). Those would be the popular ones, anyway.

SAS interface drives (Apple's RAID card is compatible with these) are another story. You'll get faster spindle speeds and what not, but they're a lot more expensive and lower in capacity.

 

[nanofrog]

Cheers for your reply. It's the Apple RAID card that came with the 2008 MP's.

As CaptainChunk stated, that is a proper hardware RAID card, not a software implementation.

So enterprise grade disks are a necessity if you want the array to be stable.

Please continue reading...

Western Digital RE3/RE4 drives are the "enterprise" equivalents of the Caviar Blacks. Seagate calls their newer enterprise drives Constellation ES (the 7,200-rpm versions, anyway) and Hitachi would be UltraStar (A7K2000 and 7K3000 for 7,200-rpm variants). Those would be the popular ones, anyway.

I'd recommend the Western Digitals for SATA (enterprise and consumer grade), as I won't touch Seagate's or Hitachi's if I get to make the decision (seen too many failures, particularly with Seagate's since 2008 - and I'm talking about enterprise models, not just consumer versions).

For SAS, I tend to go with Toshiba (formerly Fujitsu) for workstation use, and Hitachi for database use (their SAS disks aren't the same as their SATA products, and the same goes for Seagate; for the moment anyway... ). BTW, the new Western Digital SAS disks are Hitachi's, as they just bought their storage division.

 

[HawkEye40]

Thanks for your help guys - I now feed educated on HDD's

Much appreciated.

 

[nanofrog]

Thanks for your help guys - I now feed educated on HDD's

Much appreciated.

NP.