Re: [SOLVED] Is squeeze compatible with WD20EARS and other 2TB drives?
Stefan Monnier put forth on 1/9/2011 10:42 PM:
> I have no idea what makes you so angry against "green" drives.
I am against using any drive, at this time, in Linux, with a native sector size
other than 512 bytes. The Linux partitioning tools still do not easily/properly
handle these hybrid drives with 4096 byte per sectors that translate 512 byte
sectors to the host. Simply partitioning them correctly requires Ph.D. The
average, and even some advanced, users cannot configure them for correct
performance. Thus, most end up with a drive that has native crappy performance,
and then it's made even crappier because of the lack of proper partitioning
support. Put 6 of these drives in RAID 5 with the misalignment and performance
really sucks.
I'm down on these drives because of the dozens upon dozens of posts I've seen on
this list, linux-ide, linux-raid, etc, with owners of such drives banging their
heads against the wall trying to get the partitions aligned properly.
Anyone who buys one either
A. Is a masochist
B. Doesn't care about performance of any kind, and is happy with sub 20MB/s rates.
I'm down on these drives due to the maniacal 8 second head park interval, which
likely does more mechanical damage than it saves power in dollar terms. I'm
down on the fact that people buy them to save power, when they really don't save
that much power compared to other drives. Not enough to notice on an electric bill.
The sector alignment issue bugs me the most. Second on the list is that these
WD Green drives were designed to NOT be used, rather than used. The only way to
get significant power savings is to sleep the drive most of the 24 hour day.
BUT, all the other drives same almost as much power in their sleep modes.
So again, where's the advantage? Some of the drives are quieter by 3-4 dB. If
your chassis sits on the floor you won't notice much difference. If you have
moderately loud system/CPU fans they'll drown out the noise generated by the drives.
There's just nothing to really like about these drives, and many things to
dislike. It's that simple.
--
Stan
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