Hitachi 2TB Harddrive Owner's Thread

mavalpha said:
I will say that the Hitachi is REALLY loud, though- I can hear it over every other fan in my Shuttle, meaning a 1300rpm CPU fan, an 800rpm Scythe Kaze Slim and whatever the dinky fan is in the 300W PSU. It's my one gripe, but having it spin down after 30 minutes makes it livable.
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I was surprised how loud these are as well. NewEgg reviews include half the people saying how quiet they are and the other saying they're crazy loud. My opinion falls somewhere in the middle. I replaced a 5x1TB R5 with a 7x2TB R6 and during initialization, these Hitachis can definitely be heard 'chattering' quite often. It's not horrible, and not constant, but if you were planning on using these in a media server that is in the same room as your watching/listening area, you'd want to consider how sensitive to drive noise you are. If you are building in a Norco or Supermicro case with jet engine fans, or have a door between your TV and the server, the drive noise shouldn't bother you. In my case, I have my server in my home office, where I sit most of the day, so I definitely do hear them. With my previous R5, built on a mishmash of Samsung F1s and WD Green drives, I never heard a peep.

This doesn't change my opinion about the Hitachi, given its high ratings for reliability in a RAID setup, I'd buy it again, but I thought I'd post my opinion re: noise for others considering them.
 
Thank you for starting this thread. The info and reviews from the users on this forum helps a lot. I plan on getting a pair of these for some mirrored raid action.
 
we have a large SAN at work that uses these, 96 of them to be exact, split up into 16 RAID5 arrays in 4x 24 disk enclosures 4 arrays per enclosure... it gets hammered pretty hard every day and they have been running great, so far so good *knocks on wood*
 
I was working with these drives a lot while on my internship with Hitachi. They were codenamed "Jupiter-K". They ran IMHO a little too warm for me, but were on par or better than Seagates when coming to sound/dB, especially the spin-up/head parking. They also took forever to spin up, but having compared them to the WD 2TB Black and Greens, and the 2 TB LPs, they were just on par with the competition.

These guys were troopers. I was running four+ day tests doing CnC-like testing (and other variable load test suites) on these drives, and they rarely failed. We were using sample drives 4+ months old with 24/7 wear and constant firmware updates.

Hitachi has traditionally followed a 5-platter major drive capacity release, and re-introducing the lower capacities at higher platter density.

I.E. Jupiter-K (2TB) 5 platter @ 400GB/platter
Jupiter (<1TB, the 7K1000.B? 1TB for this example) 4 platters @ 500GB/platter

novadude said:
I was referring more to their platter's aerial density manufacturing capacities, and since they've jumped from 5 to 3 platter designs in the past surmising that since they've missed the four platter boat yet again they'll skip to three platters at whatever density they use for this year's drives (they scheduled the innovations necessary to give us at least 1TB/platter drives in 2010 after all, so maybe even a 2-platter 2tb design)
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Most current hard drive makers are now aiming at 4 TB drives for Q2 2012 in their roadmap. Don't expect to see anything concerned with 4 TB drives until December I would say at the soonest.

Ask me in a PM if you want to know anything more before it empties from my mind... It's already been over a month since I left and I've already forgotten quite a bit! Oops :p

EDIT: Also, I will try and find my old contacts in case anyone here has a RAID issue with their 2 TB drives. What you'll need to submit is the RAID card make and model, firmware revision, drive configuration, and maybe some other drive info (but also you'll want to run them under our Hitachi tools, like DFT [Drive Fitness Test] and etc)
 
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@Veritas7: very nice info, thanks a lot. one question that's worried me is what the RMA experience is going to be with Hitachi. Since I own over 50 of them and not one has failed in 2 years, I haven't had to seek a replacement yet, but I've heard stories that the amount of time it takes is excessive, up to 30 days in some cases. Any knowledge about the RMA process?

pug71 said:
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0315534

this drive has the 16mb Cache.. I was going to be sticking these in my WHS for extra storage. Anyone feed back on these from MC? Was going to drive down and get 2 this evening.
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feedback like what? i bought one there last night, begrudgingly, since I swore i wouldn't pay more than $150 for any drive going forward, having become totally spoiled by Fry's $129 sale a month ago, but I got one anyway, ran fitness test, it completed with zero errors, and into service she went. Unlike Fry's at least Microcenter doesn't mandate 1-per-household.
 
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Just ordered from NewEgg and skipped another 2TB, since I can wait for them to get back to <$130.

Fry's is fine with buying more than one so long as they are different receipts. I bought 2 drives at the same time on two different days.
 
I hear you about the Fry's $130 price, except walking into the store they're charging tax so final price is $142 and change. If you live in a state where Newegg doesn't charge tax (meaning not California) then it ends up being better than a Fry's $129 + tax in-store pickup.
 
New to the group here, and also new to these drives as I planned to go with WD blacks until I read about all the TLER stuff. I really like them, but I'm getting a little worried that maybe I've got a bad one or I picked the wrong drive. Long story short, I've got 3 of these on a 3ware 9550x-12 controller in a home NAS and they ran fine for about a month, then twice in two weeks, I had one drive drop out of the array. After restarting and/or checking connections, the drive shows back up on the controller and i rebuild the array successfully. Unfortunately, I didn't write down which one dropped last time. As far as I know I don't have any "power" settings that tell them to spin down or anything. I see links here in the thread for Hitachi's tools, but I'm not sure what I should check first. Could use some expertise on where some of you more experienced users start when troubleshooting issues like this. I'm willing to do the work, just not sure what direction to head in first.
 
Some quick facts on a recent build I did with 7 of these drives.

I started with a 2x2TB RAID 0 that I used to transfer data from another 6x1TB drive R5 array that I had in the same box (only 8 ports available, so this seemed like the easiest way at the time to get most of the data over in one shot and keep a backup available in case things went sideways).

Once the initial data was copied over (~4TB), I removed the R5 and installed 5 more 2TB Hitachis. I then used my RocketRaid 4320's online capacity expansion / RAID migration to go from R0 to R6. Once I'd triple-checked everything, I crossed my fingers and clicked "apply" and then.... I waited, and waited and waited. 98 hours later, it completed, and low and behold, it worked just like it was supposed to. I did have to reboot windows and then expand the volume in Windows' disk management utility to take advantage of the new space, but other than that, no issues.

The computer actually blue screened on me 2x during the migration which I thought for sure meant I was hosed. Fortunately, it powered through it and has been running for a week since with no more issues.

I'm not sure if 98 hours is fast or slow for this type of a migration, but it sure felt like it took forever. :)

I'll post some performance numbers later comparing this array to my R5 as well.
 
myrison said:
I'm not sure if 98 hours is fast or slow for this type of a migration, but it sure felt like it took forever. :)
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98 hours is probably 2 or 2.5 times longer than what a latest gen Adaptec or Areca would've been, but consider also that the card was really performing two operations: a space expansion and a raid level migration, which most raid cards usually handle in two separate sequences that are invisible to the user interface you're looking at, since all it presents you is a progress percentage.

Since you're on RAID6 now, next time you add a drive it won't have to perform the raid level migration, only the capacity expansion, so it should go faster. Probably half the time or less.

I hear you about the "blue screens" during the operation- i've had a few heart attack situations occur during migrations/expansions myself.
 
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myrison said:
Some quick facts on a recent build I did with 7 of these drives.

I'll post some performance numbers later comparing this array to my R5 as well.
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Odditory, thanks for the comments, the next time I see a 130'ish price I'll probably add one more to fill up the last of my current ports, after which I'll be looking more seriously into one of the HP SAS expanders you've been fervently testing.

So, back to the performance numbers. I used CrystalDiskMark, which hopefully is a decent benchmark. These are the best numbers I've recorded since finishing the migration. As a reminder, this is on a RocketRaid 4320.

7x2TB R6 array:
Code: 
Sequential Read :         433.503 MB/s
Sequential Write :        374.309 MB/s
Random Read 512KB :      188.398 MB/s
Random Write 512KB :      63.057 MB/s
Random Read 4KB :          3.495 MB/s
Random Write 4KB :         0.725 MB/s

         Test Size : 100 MB
HD Tune shows comparable read results, with an average of ~450 MB/s measured across the entire disk. (577 max to 276 min)

For comparison, here are the highest results from the previous R5 array.
This was using a mish-mash of drives, 3 WD Greens, 2 Samsung F1s, and 1 Maxtor.

6x1TB R5 array:
Code: 
Sequential Read :  478.334 MB/s
Sequential Write :  367.511 MB/s
Random Read 512KB :  180.221 MB/s
Random Write 512KB :  147.122 MB/s
Random Read 4KB :    3.481 MB/s
Random Write 4KB :    1.158 MB/s

         Test Size : 100 MB
The results are pretty comparable, which is nice considering I've doubled capacity and my redundancy. (the one extra disk adding to the performance doesn't hurt either, but between the combination of increasing disk size and going from R5 to R6 I expected to see a bigger drop)
 
512KB bad sectors after a full format. Anyone else have any bad sectors?

It passed both the quick and long drive fitness tests though.
 
I finally ordered 20 last night. Should be here soon and then I can buy more once I transfer the data off my old array.
 
eBay. You can get a few for $137 shipped with the MS cashback thing still. I bought all of the cheaper ones.
 
Blue Fox said:
eBay. You can get a few for $137 shipped with the MS cashback thing still. I bought all of the cheaper ones.
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Hmph... Last time I ordered a HD on Ebay, it came shipped in a box meant for a VCR tape or something... Their auction stated their return policy in clear English, and obviously the drive was damaged, but when I emailed them, they told me my "best bet" for getting a working drive was to RMA it to the manuf, as it still had warranty through the manuf... (they refused my attempt to send it back to them as it had manuf warranty on it still, although that went against their own wording in their own listing...)

Never have wasted time doing that again...

Sometimes attempting to save $5 teaches you a lesson! (I realized the risk, but was curious...)

FWIW: My mom knows almost nothing about computers, and when she realized what was in the package (it went to her house), she couldn't believe they did that... The box had been pretty man-handled... (and I think that was before it even got to the postman's hands, too! :D )
 
TD has these for 125$ each after rebate and bcb (5 max)

Mine should be arriving in a few days.
 
Riotf said:
512KB bad sectors after a full format. Anyone else have any bad sectors?

It passed both the quick and long drive fitness tests though.
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Just did a surface scan with chkdsk. Now says 0KB. I think it was a false positive because SMART shows no reallocated sectors.
 
Doh, you guys are putting the 4 x 2TB drives that I bought to shame! Even puts my existing 8 x 1TB drives to shame!
 
I'm getting sector repair warnings from my 3ware card on one of my drives. Example: "0x04:0x0023): Sector repair completed: port=0, LBA=0xDEE62EA"

They're always on the same port and i can get 1-2 a day for a few days then not see another one for a week. Any suggestions for a way to doublecheck that these are "real" problems with the drive? Reading this thread it looks like there are some possibilities of a false-positive. It's in a freenas box right now so i'll have to pull it to do any testing in Windows.
 
Did I forget to shower? There was a flurry of discussion, then I asked my question and everyone left ;) I'm just new to these Hitachi drives (long time WD Black user) and have heard negative things about their replacement process. I'd like to exhaust all my options locally (testing, checking, etc.) before I start the RMA process. Any help is appreciated.
 
Honestly, I wouldn't worry too much about the sector repair messages. The 3ware cards are very verbose. Every week, I get half a dozen sector repair warnings from our RAID 6 8x750gb Seagate ES.2 array on a 9650se and we have yet to drop a drive or have any issues.

If you are concerned, the best thing you can do is to pull the drive and run the Hitachi diagnostics. I'm not familiar with their specific utility, but others let you run a full erase and a long diagnositc. Run the entire battery of tests, wipe the drive, and see what happens. Hitachi will want you to do this before RMA'ing anyway. If it passes all tests, then don't worry about it.
 
First I would just swap the ports around, in order to make sure it's not a cable or connector problem.

Then I would degrade the array, by pulling out the drive which 3ware was having issues with.

Boot into DOS and run an Advanced Test with Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test.

If that comes back with no issues, use both Erase Boot Sector and Erase Disk from Drive Fitness Test.

When that finishes, stick the drive back into the RAID array and rebuild. Watch the log for errors.

When the Rebuild finishes, Verify the Array. Watch the log for errors.

If still no errors, try filling the array about 80% full and doing a SMARTplacement defrag with PerfectDisk, which will likely put a lot of stress on the array by shifting the entire contents.

Still no errors in the log? Then hopefully the drive is fine.

If the 3ware controller reported errors on the exact same drive connected to a different port, then I personally would RMA it since it is only happening on a single 7K2000 and not all of them in your array. The "Sector repair completed" errors are usually triggered under heavy load when the 3ware controller isn't able to read/write the data it expects to be in a particular sector so it repairs it with Parity.

Edit: If you have access to Hitachi HiTest, you may also want to try running that as it is more sensitive to errors then Drive Fitness Test.
 
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What exactly does a SMARTplacement defrag do that a regular windows defrag wont?

Any reason for me to use a different defrag utilitty than windows 2008 builtin?
 
Thanks for all the advice. I picked up a spare today ($150 @ Microcenter - no rebates) and i'll probably just swap it in for the one in question. If the old one passes all the tests, I'll add it back and be 2TB to the positive (and get into that elusive 10TB club)!

Thanks again for all the suggestions. i'll try to post updates over the weekend. Getting the users (kids) to agreeing to taking down the server (movie machine) will take some negotiating.
 
PerfectDisk SMARTplacement defrag optimizes file locations by modification date, as well as the boot files, and directory information. The offline/boot-time defrag also optimizes the pagefile, hibernate, and metadata locations as well as the MFT.

PerfectDisk 11 Pro which will be released within the next week or so (beginning of March), adds multiple SMARTPlacement profile presets and the ability to create custom SMARTPlacment profiles so it arranges files how you want them arranged. It's a nice improvement over PerfectDisk 10 which only had a single fixed profile with no way to change it.

In any case, the only reason I mentioned using PerfectDisk SMARTplacment is because I'm familiar with it and on its first run it will usually end up shifting a huge amount of data in order to get it sorted into Recently Modified, Occasionally Modified, and Rarely Modified. Especially so when using the new SMARTplacment Performance profile in PerfectDisk 11, since that profile places all recently modified files at the beginning of the partition. Since recently modified files normally fall in the first available free space (usually near the end of a drive), it ends up as a very intensive stress test by shifting and consolidating all that data to the beginning of the partition and likely hitting nearly every sector with read/write operations, multiple times. If there is a problem with the stability of a drive or array, that should trigger it.

PerfectDisk has an extensive PDF explaining its advantages and differences from Win7 defrag here: http://www.perfectdisk.com/user_data/white_papers/keydifferentiatorspd_win7.pdf
You may also want to take a look at their blog where they occasionally post various things of this nature: http://blog.perfectdisk.com/blog/all-things-perfectdisk--and-defrag


@joshnerl Did you recently buy the 7K2000 which is having issues? If it is within 30 days, you could probably return it to the store and not have to deal with an RMA.
 
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