Western Digital Enterprise Edition?

[mdubrow]

I just put together a new PC with a Seagate 7200.8 250 GB SATA hard disk, but I'd like to add a 2nd drive for a Raid 1 array. To hedge my bets a little, I thought I'd go with a different drive maker from Seagate, to lessen the odds that both drives fail at the same time.

I see that WD has a new (?) set of "enterprise" (SATA) hard drives which carry a 5-year warranty (see here for the RE series and here for the RE2).

I'm particularly interested in the RE series 250 GB, to match up with my current 250 gb Seagate. Does anyone have any experience with these drives, pro or con? The only reviews / discussions I've seen have been on the standard desktop hard drives.

Thanks!
Mike

 

[mdubrow]

Hmm. I was doing some more searching on the "enterprise" hard drives, and I came across this note at Monarch Computer (this is for the 320GB version, which was the only SD model they had):

Tech Note: The Western Digital SD series of SATA hard drives are engineered specifically for enterprise-class RAID applications. Please select this drive ONLY if you will be using in a RAID array in a 24x7, continuous high duty cycle environment.

Link

What would be the harm in putting an "enterprise" drive into a desktop PC RAID (not a 24x7 machine)? Why would better reliability be bad?

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

It's a matter of it being pointless otherwise. You could use it for a consumer level machine, but there wouldn't be much point to it.
Tas.

 

[mdubrow]

Okay, I see where Monarch got their warning from. I needed to more thoroughly read the link in my first post to WDC's website).

WDC states:
IMPORTANT: Because of the time-limited error recovery feature, this product is intended for server applications and is not recommended for use in desktop systems.

So permit me to refine my question: what is the time-limited error recovery feature, and why is its usage not recommended for desktop systems? And by not recommended, does that mean it's not optimal or is it actually detrimental?

Thanks!

 

[mdubrow]

Originally posted by: tasburrfoot78362
It's a matter of it being pointless otherwise. You could use it for a consumer level machine, but there wouldn't be much point to it.
Tas.

I'm seeing a difference in prices on the 250GB versions of ~$5. Surely the extra 2 years on the warranty alone is worth that much, let alone the much tougher specs an enterprise class drive would have to be able to live up to (I'm assuming it gets extra testing)?

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: mdubrow

Originally posted by: tasburrfoot78362
It's a matter of it being pointless otherwise. You could use it for a consumer level machine, but there wouldn't be much point to it.
Tas.

I'm seeing a difference in prices on the 250GB versions of ~$5. Surely the extra 2 years on the warranty alone is worth that much, let alone the much tougher specs an enterprise class drive would have to be able to live up to (I'm assuming it gets extra testing)?

just get another drive that is the same model number you have, the chances of both of them failing at the same time means your machine probably got struck by a massive power spike (use a UPS) or something happend that will make you data worthless to you(or you don't care that you lost it, like a massive fire or something horrible).

the only thing i have ever heard about drives with your situation is not to get consecutive # drives since they were built at the same time, but since your are going to be far apart time wise i doubt you will have any problem.

somebody can correct me if i am wrong but maybe the word enterprise is used to wow the people who have businesses and let non IT people order the servers. i don't think wd would really make totally different hdd for businesses, that would be stoopid, in a business you should go raid 5 scsi anyway.

welcome to the forum and thanks for not making a raid 0 array

 

[mdubrow]

Bob, thanks for the tips--and the welcome! Just a few things in reply:

(1) Fear not: I do use a UPS (APC Smart-UPS 1000). I used to have a smaller one, but I upgraded after the 2002 blackout (though what I really needed then was a generator).

(2) Comments that I've seen here and on storagereview.com are what makes me paranoid. After all, we're talking about taking two drives built by the same company within maybe weeks of each other using the same (or, at least, the same spec'd) components and used in identical fashion (RAID 1), and expecting them to have substantively different life expectancies. An alternative I have considered is to wait about 6 months and then buy a second Seagate (I do backup my data files to an external hard drive, so I'm not worried too much about data loss in the interim).

(3) Yeah, I don't even understand the point of RAID 0. Buy 2 drives, hook them together, and if one crashes, they're both wiped out? Who thought of that, Bin Laden?

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: mdubrow
Comments that I've seen here and on storagereview.com are what makes me paranoid

what comments exactly?

i have 2 maxtor that were bought at the exact same time and the #s are not too far off. one died in about 1.5yrs, the other is still going strong 3yrs later. it is definately a ymmv situation

 

[windraider]

Anand News On the WD RE Drives when they were first released last august. originally just a Caviar drive that got the same burn in test as the raptors to "prove" their reliability. the newer enterprise drives sound the same, but the TLER sounds like an extra chip or maybe a new bit flipped in a regular drives CMOS to turn it on. i'm not an expert on 24/7 raid arrays, but i'm guessing it is used in restoring the array when one drive tanks? sounds like it is used to prevent the whole array from restoring itself all at once and possibly causing more drives to tank in the process. not sure how this would affect a regular desktop IDE/SATA controller though, they might not like it.
anyway, my two cents.
Cheers

 

[AndrewZorn]

get another of the same drive you already have, exactly.

 

[bob4432]

from the articla - how exactly do you burn in a hdd?

 

[windraider]

I believe Burn-in testing is pretty similar to binning chips for speed grades that AMD/Intel do, or the major of memory manufacturers, etc.. stress testing the drives would be the final manufacturing step to determine if they will operate correctly when purchased by us, the consumers. Raptors have a more intesive stress testing, probably similar in nature to the endurance tests SCSI drives undergo before final sale. All guesswork on my part, but I don't believe I am too far off, in general terms at least. specifically what they do, you'd have to call WD and ask them directly.

Cheers