Hard Drives Made for RAID Use

An anonymous reader writes "Hard drive giant Western Digital recently released a very interesting product, hard drives designed to work in a RAID. The Caviar RE SATA 320 GB is an enterprise level drive without native command queueing and uses an SATA interface. In works better in RAID than other drives because of features like its time-limited error recovery and 32-bit CRC error checking, so it is an option when previously only SCSI drives would be considered."

Comments

About time

[Tuor]

While I've been a proponent of SCSI for a long time -- Apple really was thinking ahead when it had it in Macs all those years -- it has been getting thread-worn. Ultra-wide-tall-double-hex-SCSI is just getting to be too much!

SATA is the right technology, especially for controllers since each channel is dedicated. The only alternative is Firewire, and there are no native controller drives.

Re:Slashdot: Stories Made For Ad Use

[fimbulvetr]

On the newegg link they list the MTBF as 1 million hours. Google tells me that that is about 114 years. How can it have such high mtbf? Is that newegg just not having correct data or is there something special about these drives (or are they designed to be "used" less)?

native command queueing

[garat]

Here's an interesting quote from Tom's Hardware:

"In sum, we must state that all Command Queuing enabled drives have an advantage over those that do not support this feature. At the same time, CPU load is also slightly higher when Command Queuing technologies are used. However, considering the performance of today's processors, the additional CPU load is a marginal factor."

Basically, you put some load on the processor for increased disk performance... Why not include it?

looking for an inexpensive raid5 tower

[v1]

These buggers are hard to find for anywhere near decent cash. I've found one model that is fairly popular, going by several different names and brands, but nobody seems to have them in stock. They look like a GREAT deal and loaded with most or alll of the best features of raid5. (hot swap, live rebuild, live GROW, etc) Has anyone seen one IN STOCK anywhere?

Same exact models:

http://www.raidweb.com/fb605fw.html
http://www.micronet.com/General/prodList.asp?CatID =45&Cat=Product
http://www.firewiremax.com/fire-wire-1394-ilink/mi harasyfor5.html
http://www.pcrush.com/prodspec.asp?ln=1&itemno=779 19&refid=1057
http://www.cooldrives.com/firewire-raid-5-enclosur e-mini.html
http://www.topmicrousa.com/combo-205.html

same internals, different enclosure:

http://fwdepot.com/thestore/product_info.php/produ cts_id/657
http://www.cooldrives.com/fii13toatade.html

Everyone I call says they have them in stock. Then I ask them to check and they suddenly change their mind and say no it's not really in stock, (despite what their web page says) and they expect it in the generic "1-2 weeks". (retail-speak for "we don't know when it'll be in, please call back later")

Two of them actually told me they have yet to receive any of these units, so I don't think they've shipped from the manufacturer yet? (vaporware?)

Network RAID?

[Eccles]

Is there a reasonable cost, relatively low power RAID-5 setup for home networks? I'd love to set up a file server with gigabit ethernet and RAID-5 to serve as the home directories for my multiple machines. Things like the Buffalo LinkStation are a step in the right direction, but no RAID, etc. Is my only solution a Celeron or Pentium-M based PC? If so, is it possible to set up such a system to act as home directories for a combo of Windows, Mac, and /or Linux machines?

Re:Slashdot: Stories Made For Ad Use

[whoever57]

An MTBF of 114 years doesn't mean that half of the drives will survive for 114 years without a failure; it means that if you run 114 drives for a year, you should expect to have 1 failure.

That is a good explanation. Many people confuse MTBF with lifetime.

Most products (and especially electronics) have a failure rate that when plotted over time looks like a bathtub. There is a high initial failure rate (infant mortality) that drops over time to a base rate (the random failure rate described by MTBF), this low failure rate continues until one reaches the end of useful life of the product, when the failure rate rises once again as age and wear effects cause the device to fail.

Note that most extended warranties are designed by the seller to kick in after the early failure rate has droped, but expire before the end-of-life failures.

Re:earth to 11 year old kid

[alc6379]

Mod me offtopic, or whatever, but this has to be the most dumb-ass review I've ever read. It's a drive meant for RAID use, as in RAID 5 or RAID 1, in servers, where data integrity is very important. But what does this guy do?

...he puts it through the paces of a desktop hard drive. Where's the test of how it could run under mySQL? It's been replaced by a comment about how you can never have too much space "in this age of DVD-burning, file-sharing, and 40 GB MP3 players." Who the fuck cares about that on a server?

Where's the review of how well it facilitates serving pages through Apache? Oh, that's replaced by "Look how neat the drive looks!"

...Nope. This FA was a waste of time, not just for the reader, but for the author, and for Western Digital to have even sent the drives to this guy. He should go back to playing UT2k4OMFGBF2, and find someone who actually knows something about industry usage patterns on hard drives like this to write a thoughful review.

Re:Western Digital is synonymous for crap

[rizzo320]

Wow, did Western Digital plot to have your family killed? What a vendetta!

All hard drive manufacturers have gone through cycles of poor quality and reliability. Maxtor, Seagate, IBM/Hitatchi (remember the "DeathStar") have all had the same problems. In all my years of repairing and building desktops, I can say I have had the most problems with Seagates and (the now owned by Maxtor) Quantum drives. If you ask someone else, they'll give you a different answer too.

This drive has a 5 year warranty. Most other Western Digital's have a 3 year warranty, even if you buy the OEMs (in most cases). And read the articles above for what 1 million hrs MTBF means!