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Re: [LUG] Bah! Disks! Bah!

 

On Thu, 28 Jan 2010, Rob Beard wrote:

Quoting Gordon Henderson <gordon+dcglug@xxxxxxxxxx>:

Had a server creak and groan overnight with disk failures of both
drives (mirrored) I'd like to say something like: "What's the chances
of that happening", unfortunately, it's not the first time as I had a
server some 3 years back which lost 3 out of it's 6 drives in an
18-hour period.

All 5 drives are/were WDC drives too.

Oh well - looks like this one will limp along until I can replace them
in a few days time. (well - badblocks scans of the partitions that are
live was OK)

Ahh not good.

It's only 8 months old too. Ho hum!

Anyone got any recomendations for good reliable SATA disks in the
500-700GB size range?


I have a couple of Seagate 500GB drives in an USB external case and a Seagate 750GB drive in my server which run 24/7, they're getting on nearly 3 years old now and they are still working fine. I've not had any problems with Maxtor drives either (although saying that Maxtor drives now are pretty much rebadged Seagate drives).

I've had both Seagate and Maxtors fail on me in the past - but saying that, I've still got some Maxtors whirring away quite hapilly...

I suspect it's a bit of a gamble these days unless you pay top whack for the expensive ones with long warrantys.

These ones that are failling are 640GB WDC "Caviar Blue" disks. Bloody fast for the price, but maybe just not up to the job. (And yes, the client was on a budget - with the emphasis on speed)

Can't really vouch for Hitachi drives, although I've not personally had a problem with any of my Hitachi drives, they aren't running 24/7 (they're in the wife's PC) and I have seen other Hitachi drives fail after about 18 months. Also had no luck with Samsung drives, I've had 3 identical 160GB drives all fail within 12 months with the same problem, and these were bought at different times.

It doesn't bode well for low-end servers running 24x7. This is in an air conditioned server room too - all fans going OK, disk temperatures stable, etc.

Maybe there's a case for drives from different manufacturers in the same server now... Anyone do this as a matter of course?

Gordon

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