Hitachi 3TB Ultrastar SAS HDD 7.2K HUS724030ALS64 (10x for $350 OBO, 20x for $650 OBO) free shipping

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czl

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May 14, 2016
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FYI: My testing of another set of these drives (from another vendor, stock firmware) also found very slow seq write speed. Poking around I noticed that their write cache was OFF and smartctl manual says this should be ON by default so when I did turn it on the seq write speed was fixed. From command line that's

smartcl -s wcache,on /dev/disk/by-id/${disk}


Did any of the reformating change the seq write performance?
 
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BLinux

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FYI: My testing of another set of these drives (from another vendor, stock firmware) also found very slow seq write speed. Poking around I noticed that their write cache was OFF and smartctl manual says this should be ON by default so when I did turn it on the seq write speed was fixed. From command line that's

smartcl -s wcache,on /dev/disk/by-id/${disk}
that's awesome and totally makes sense. i'll have to check my systems out to see if that was the issue. BTW, does that smartctl command permanently change the setting or is it something I need to do every time the hard drive is powered on?
 

BLinux

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FYI: My testing of another set of these drives (from another vendor, stock firmware) also found very slow seq write speed. Poking around I noticed that their write cache was OFF and smartctl manual says this should be ON by default so when I did turn it on the seq write speed was fixed. From command line that's

smartcl -s wcache,on /dev/disk/by-id/${disk}
hmmm... unfortunately, when i checked each of the drives, their write cache was already on. so your "very slow" seq write speeds must have been slower than what I was seeing.
 

czl

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May 14, 2016
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Possibly there is another firmware setting you can tweak to fix them?

With the write cache off my sequential write speed was ~10-20MB/s once I turned it on their write speed jumped to what StorageReview.com (link above) reports for these (as with all HDD's speed varies across the platter location starts high I think maybe 130Mb/s and drops to maybe 80MB/s). My drives are now in use so can't re-test them but they feel normal and not that much different from other drives I have -- before I changed the write cache setting they felt slow.

BTW: To max performance and minimize points of failure I like to run these older HDD's in 4 x 8 RAIDZ2 sets. With 32 drives per file system and plenty of SSDs for cache. I don't worry much about performance of individual disks -- only that performance be comparable across peer disks. Laggards are inspected and culled as necessary -- that's how I noticed the write cache was off for a few of the new ones I was installing.

hmmm... unfortunately, when i checked each of the drives, their write cache was already on. so your "very slow" seq write speeds must have been slower than what I was seeing.
 

czl

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May 14, 2016
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When I test I have 30-40 drives all sharing the same PCI slots so my peak throughput per drive is capped by that (~4Gb/s across two r710 slots). Without that cap I expect mine would be as fast as the posted benchmarks.

starts high I think maybe 130Mb/s.
 

Cipher

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Aug 8, 2014
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I finally got around to testing these drives in my chassis and so far have found similar results to those posted here.

For example, here are the results of a test with disk caching turned off:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 5.2.2 x64 (C) 2007-2017 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : Crystal Dew World
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes
Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 161.983 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 160.129 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 2.447 MB/s [ 597.4 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 2.095 MB/s [ 511.5 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 162.090 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 70.885 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.732 MB/s [ 178.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.714 MB/s [ 174.3 IOPS]
Test : 1024 MiB [K: 0.0% (0.3/2794.4 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2018/03/18 11:26:47
OS : Windows Server 2016 [10.0 Build 14393] (x64)

Whereas, here are the results of a test with disk caching turned on:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 5.2.2 x64 (C) 2007-2017 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : Crystal Dew World
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes
Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 162.917 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 161.515 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 2.450 MB/s [ 598.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 2.426 MB/s [ 592.3 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 161.916 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 161.061 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.725 MB/s [ 177.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 2.392 MB/s [ 584.0 IOPS]
Test : 1024 MiB [K: 0.0% (0.3/2794.4 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2018/03/18 11:03:09
OS : Windows Server 2016 [10.0 Build 14393] (x64)

The main difference is that the Sequential Write and Random 4K Write performance increases quite a bit once disk caching is switched on, as reported by czl.

Also, I use Hard Disk Sentinel to test all my drives and the Reinitialize test runs very slow (around 17 MB/s) whether caching is turned on or off. From poking around some posts on their forum, it look HDS disables caching for its tests which would explain this speed I'm seeing:

Yes, Hard Disk Sentinel disables the cache in all possible ways, exactly to prevent using the cache, as it is important to read/write the actual sectors, instead of the cache. For this, it uses direct communication method for the testing which disables caching of reads/writes.

I'm currently running the last of 4 tests (Reinitialize) and it's estimated that it will take 48 hours to complete! For comparison, my 8TB reds usually averaged around 24 hours on the same test. Again, I'm using these in a backup server and will have disk caching turned on for all of them so I don't foresee any issues with these when it comes to performance.
 
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Cipher

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Aug 8, 2014
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While waiting 48 hours for my last drive tests to complete, I took a look online to see if I could find some newer firmware files that might improve performance. I couldn't locate any on the Hitachi (HGST) site and to be honest I'm not sure if these are from the original vendor or from a 3rd party. All I know is that the firmware version on these drives is A120.

However, during my search I did come across two firmware updates for the Dell version of these drives:

HGST SAS HUS723020ALS640 and HUS723030ALS640 firmware version M440 Driver Details | Dell Canada
Enhancements:
Improved sequential write performance
Improved SMART error reporting

Hitachi NL SAS HUS723020ALS640 and HUS723030ALS640 firmware version M2D4. Driver Details | Dell Canada
Fixes & Enhancements:
Resolves issue with false drive failures. Reseat drive and flash using M2D4 prior to replacing drive.
Resolves issue with incorrect sense code when resuming from idle
Improves sequential Read / Write performance
Improved drive error handling
Improved drive long term reliability

Also, I came across firmware updates for the IBM version of these drives:
https://delivery04.dhe.ibm.com/sar/CMA/SDA/079eh/0/ibm_fw_ds3khdd_4.23_anyos_anycpu.chg

Interestingly, both of those Dell firmware updates include improvements to sequential write performance which seems to be their biggest issue when write caching is turned off.

Has anyone found a newer firmware than A120 for these drives? If not, any idea if we can crossflash to the Dell firmware?
 
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nev_neo

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Jul 31, 2013
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While waiting 48 hours for my last drive tests to complete, I took a look online to see if I could find some newer firmware files that might improve performance. I couldn't locate any on the Hitachi (HGST) site and to be honest I'm not sure if these are from the original vendor or from a 3rd party. All I know is that the firmware version on these drives is A120.

However, during my search I did come across two firmware updates for the Dell version of these drives:

HGST SAS HUS723020ALS640 and HUS723030ALS640 firmware version M440 Driver Details | Dell Canada
Enhancements:
Improved sequential write performance
Improved SMART error reporting

Hitachi NL SAS HUS723020ALS640 and HUS723030ALS640 firmware version M2D4. Driver Details | Dell Canada
Fixes & Enhancements:
Resolves issue with false drive failures. Reseat drive and flash using M2D4 prior to replacing drive.
Resolves issue with incorrect sense code when resuming from idle
Improves sequential Read / Write performance
Improved drive error handling
Improved drive long term reliability

Also, I came across firmware updates for the IBM version of these drives:
https://delivery04.dhe.ibm.com/sar/CMA/SDA/079eh/0/ibm_fw_ds3khdd_4.23_anyos_anycpu.chg

Interestingly, both of those Dell firmware updates include improvements to sequential write performance which seems to be their biggest issue when write caching is turned off.

Has anyone found a newer firmware than A120 for these drives? If not, any idea if we can crossflash to the Dell firmware?

This sounds awesome...have you tried flashing them as yet ?
 

Cipher

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Aug 8, 2014
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This sounds awesome...have you tried flashing them as yet ?
I haven't flashed them yet as I'm not sure which firmware release I should be looking at (Hitachi, Dell, IBM etc). As well, I'm still not sure if one can cross flash hard drive firmware from another company.

I also posted this question in the following STH thread - Hitachi Harddisks Thread (5K3000, 7K3000, 7K2000)

Hopefully, someone with these drives has some updated information on who is responsible for the A120 firmware that these drives came with.
 

Cipher

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Aug 8, 2014
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After some more googling, I'm pretty sure the A120 firmware is from Hitachi themselves as I've come across the following PDF's which list compatible drives and firmware for certain Broadcom/Avago controllers:

Broadcom Compatibility Report for IT SAS Gen 2.5 Controllers
Broadcom Compatibility Report for IT SAS Gen3 Controllers

Our drive model (HUS723030ALS640) is listed in both PDF's as supported with firmware A220. The format of the name is too close to A120 to be a coincidence so I suspect our drives are likely running an earlier release.

I'd love to get a copy of the A220 firmware to test on one of my drives, but an online search turns up nothing. Since these were bought from eBay I'm not sure how helpful Hitachi would be to send us the newer firmware.
 

violetdragon

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Oct 29, 2021
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FYI: My testing of another set of these drives (from another vendor, stock firmware) also found very slow seq write speed. Poking around I noticed that their write cache was OFF and smartctl manual says this should be ON by default so when I did turn it on the seq write speed was fixed. From command line that's

smartcl -s wcache,on /dev/disk/by-id/${disk}
enable Write Cache also fixes the problem i was having but i also noticed that Read Performance was also bad when VMs are backing up from these drives in a iSCSI array it was very poor so enabled Read Cache fixes that problem as well.

After some more googling, I'm pretty sure the A120 firmware is from Hitachi themselves as I've come across the following PDF's which list compatible drives and firmware for certain Broadcom/Avago controllers:

Broadcom Compatibility Report for IT SAS Gen 2.5 Controllers
Broadcom Compatibility Report for IT SAS Gen3 Controllers

Our drive model (HUS723030ALS640) is listed in both PDF's as supported with firmware A220. The format of the name is too close to A120 to be a coincidence so I suspect our drives are likely running an earlier release.

I'd love to get a copy of the A220 firmware to test on one of my drives, but an online search turns up nothing. Since these were bought from eBay I'm not sure how helpful Hitachi would be to send us the newer firmware.
Dell has there own Firmware which i am going to try flashing one of the drives. HGST SAS HUS723020ALS640 and HUS723030ALS640 firmware version M440
 

violetdragon

New Member
Oct 29, 2021
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FYI: My testing of another set of these drives (from another vendor, stock firmware) also found very slow seq write speed. Poking around I noticed that their write cache was OFF and smartctl manual says this should be ON by default so when I did turn it on the seq write speed was fixed. From command line that's

smartcl -s wcache,on /dev/disk/by-id/${disk}
Thought i'd mention this. enabling wcache then powering down the Drive does not remain enabled. You have to re-enable it.
 
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mr44er

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Feb 22, 2020
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Sorry for necrobump!

Sequential Write (T= 1) : 161.061 MB/s
This is with activated write cache the upper limit for both 7k3000 and 7k4000, regardless if SAS/SATA. The mentioned 400MB/s is highly unrealistic (or the test was with files smaller than 64MB, that's the cache these drive have), even some SSD didn't reach this from that era 2014/2015. The fastest spinners I've seen were 15k @ 210 MB/s seq. write with enabled write cache.

I'd love to get a copy of the A220 firmware to test on one of my drives, but an online search turns up nothing. Since these were bought from eBay I'm not sure how helpful Hitachi would be to send us the newer firmware.
A120 is HGST original, so you can flash files from attachment, where A3A0 ist the latest existing from my knowledge. It works for all three models viceversa. HUS724040ALS640 HUS724030ALS640 HUS724020ALS640

Dell has there own Firmware
For Dell check my other thread and latest W350 : https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...and-lu-is-resource-provisioned-lbprz-0.40221/

enabling wcache then powering down the Drive does not remain enabled
Try sdparm -s WCE=1 -S /dev/sd$, should work also for SATA if connected through SAS backplane or HBA.
 

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