Re: SATA drive reccomendations for reliablity (server use)

[Michael Loftis <mloftis@modwest.com>]

Drives go bad.  Some drives go bad sooner than others.  In our experience 
right now drives in teh 250-500GB range have a pretty high reliability if 
they're perpendicular recording, 120-160 if your'e talking about linear 
drives.  Many manufacturers now make "Enterprise" editions of their drives 
which (at least supposedly) have a much higher MTBF.  Either due to higher 
initial quality rating, or software/firmware differences that cause them to 
be more cautious in how they write data.

I wouldn't go over 500GB for enterprise needs right now.  Also, remember 
that these large drives are relatively slow.  The IOs/Gb and MB/s/Gb has 
gone down drastically, not up.  So if you've any sort of I/O intensive 
application you might want too look at still smaller spindles, and more of 
them (and yes, at an increased $/Gb, $/Gb is obviously NOT the only 
measurement)

--On August 2, 2008 5:36:23 PM -0600 Scott Edwards <supadupa@gmail.com> 
wrote:

> I have two servers that I will buy two to six drives a piece for
> (each).  I'm thinking 750gb is the sweet spot for storage prices.
>
> I know everyone has had a drive go bad.  I'm not interested in endless
> stories of how yours was bad, how you lost your lifes work, or why
> you'll never buy from vendor X just to spite them.
>
> I'm looking for larger scale independent third party testing and
> certification of SATA and SATA II drives released on the market,
> geared for server use.  I want to use this to make a comparison of
> where price, performance, and reliablity make the best for our needs.
>
> If any of the existing hardware matters, here is the hardware I am
> considering for running XEN.  I haven't decided if I will stick with
> the etch kernel, or jump into a newer mainline release.
>
> Supermicro 2021M-UR+V
> Kingston KVR400D2D4R3K2/8G
> Intel 4 port gigabit server adapter. EXPI9404PT
> 2 GHZ QC optron cpus
>
> Regards,
>
>
>
> Scott Edwards
>
>
> --
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--
Michael Loftis
Modwest Operations Manager
Powerful, Affordable Web Hosting