Is A 2.5" NAS For You?

[beq]

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30931/79/

Interesting article. Can these new NAS models take 2.5" HDDs that are 12.5mm high (instead of 9.5mm)?

WD announced a 1TB 2.5" HDD, but it's listed at 5200RPM and 12.5mm height:

- WD 1TB Scorpio Blue HDD with 3yr warranty, 8MB cache

I wonder if NAS performance with this drive would approach that of 5400RPM 3.5" HDDs?


Meanwhile, I don't think the 2TB 7200RPM 3.5" HDDs that have been announced are available yet at retail, either:

- Hitachi 2TB Deskstar 7K2000 HDD with 3yr warranty, 32MB cache, 5 platters
- WD 2TB Caviar Black desktop HDD with 5yr warranty, 64MB cache
- WD 2TB RE4 enterprise drive with 5yr waranty, 64MB cache, 1.2 million hours MTBF, NCQ, time limited error recovery (TLER for RAID)

 

[thiggins]

Interesting article. Can these new NAS models take 2.5" HDDs that are 12.5mm high (instead of 9.5mm)?

Dual-size models, yes. I'll have to check on the dedicated 2.5" models.

 

[Osamede]

The comparisons with the 7200rpm drive was interesting but in most home server situations a 5400 rpm low power drive would be more relevant than a 7200 rpm drive, especially as the 500Gb 5400 rpm laptop drives are more or less as fast as their 7200 rpm counterparts

So the real test of whether 2.5" drives make sense would be to see if there is any net reduction in power consumption, noise or heat from using a single 2TB WD Green Power drive vs a Scorpio blue. I doubt that. Maybe with an SLC SSD but that would be pretty expensive.

But if someone had low capacity needs, then 2.5" drives are very convenient to deal with vs the big old tones.

Also i think the 2.5" drives are set to jump to 1TB in a few months, although i dont know what the development plan is for the 3.5" ones.

 

[thiggins]

Interesting article. Can these new NAS models take 2.5" HDDs that are 12.5mm high (instead of 9.5mm)?

QNAP said they are waiting for the 12.5mm drives they ordered to come in so that they can check this. (I would think they could just check the mechanical design drawings, but that was their answer.)

Update from Synology:
"The DS409slim can indeed support the 12.5mm drives, though 14.8mm drives (like the Seagate Savvio 15K) are not compatible with the DS409slim."

 

[beq]

Thanks for the info Tim. I had thought that those really tall (10K/15K RPM) 2.5" HDDs serving a niche in blade servers and other enterprise environments are mostly SAS, but I guess there are SATA models too... Anyways looks like Synology's response also answers that question.

 

[beq]

Meanwhile, I don't think the 2TB 7200RPM 3.5" HDDs that have been announced are available yet at retail, either:

- Hitachi 2TB Deskstar 7K2000 HDD with 3yr warranty, 32MB cache, 5 platters
- WD 2TB Caviar Black desktop HDD with 5yr warranty, 64MB cache
- WD 2TB RE4 enterprise drive with 5yr waranty, 64MB cache, 1.2M-hour MTBF, NCQ, time limited error recovery (TLER for RAID)

I just read about Seagate's new 2TB, 7200RPM 3.5" HDD being announced today, which is also the first to use the new SATA 6Gb/s interface:

- Seagate 2TB Barracuda XT HDD with 5yr warranty, 64MB cache, 750K-hour MTBF, SATA 6G

Based on previous Barracudas I would expect the XT to have NCQ (unlike the WD 2TB Caviar Black), though I'm not sure about TLER.

 

[Unregistered]

It's good to see that 2.5" drives have come so far, but I still think the test is skewed in favor of the 2.5" WD Scorpios. The comparison drives are the Samsung F1, and the Seagate 7200.11. Both these are last generation hard drives, I think a more fair test would have been to compare the WD Scorpios to a Samsung F3s, and a Seagate 7200.12s RAID array. I think the 2.5" WD Scorpio will still perform pretty well, just that these newer drive revisions will perform better.

 

[thiggins]

It's good to see that 2.5" drives have come so far, but I still think the test is skewed in favor of the 2.5" WD Scorpios. The comparison drives are the Samsung F1, and the Seagate 7200.11. Both these are last generation hard drives, I think a more fair test would have been to compare the WD Scorpios to a Samsung F3s, and a Seagate 7200.12s RAID array. I think the 2.5" WD Scorpio will still perform pretty well, just that these newer drive revisions will perform better.

This was meant to be a sanity check, not an extensive test.

The fact that you're asking to compare a RAID array vs. a 2.5" drive says a lot!

 

[beq]

Meanwhile, I don't think the 2TB 7200RPM 3.5" HDDs that have been announced are available yet at retail, either:

- Hitachi 2TB Deskstar 7K2000 desktop HDD with 3yr warranty, 32MB cache, 5 platters
- WD 2TB Caviar Black desktop HDD with 5yr warranty, 64MB cache
- WD 2TB RE4 enterprise HDD with 5yr waranty, 64MB cache, 1.2M-hour MTBF, NCQ, time limited error recovery (TLER for RAID)

I just read about Seagate's new 2TB, 7200RPM 3.5" HDD being announced today, which is also the first to use the new SATA 6Gb/s interface:

- Seagate 2TB Barracuda XT desktop HDD with 5yr warranty, 64MB cache, 750K-hour MTBF, SATA 6G

Based on previous Barracudas I would expect the XT to have NCQ (unlike the WD 2TB Caviar Black)

Meanwhile I've seen no sign of the Seagate 2TB Constellation ES 72000RPM enterprise HDD (5yr warranty, 64MB cache, 1.2M-hour MTBF) which was pre-announced back in Feb 2009?

There's also the upcoming Hitachi 2TB Ultrastar A7K2000 7200RPM enterprise HDD (5yr warranty, 32MB cache, 1.2M-hour MTBF, 5 platters), but like Hitachi's desktop model this one seems to be based on older technology with lower-density platters.

 

[schoondoggy]

Duty cycle

Are laptop drives rated for 100% duty cycle now? A few years ago I used laptop drives for an embedded design, some of the vendors I looked at were concerned that their laptop drives weren't design to run all the time. The average laptop spins down the HD over half the time. New SAS 2.5" drives are designed to run all of the time. I would be interested to see how the drive vendors feel about running 2.5" SATA drives in a RAID.