[TriLUG] TriLUG Digest, Vol 992, Issue 1

[John Brier]

> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:05:42 -0400
> From: tj <bimasakti at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [TriLUG] Best 2TB drive for RAID-6 array
> To: Triangle Linux Users Group General Discussion <trilug at trilug.org>
> Message-ID:
>        <168889081003170905p24e8e5c5j28a1b1a25ac0f3f at mail.gmail.com>
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>
> Based on my experience, Samsung F3 is very reasonable.
>
> WD Green EARS version is "ok" for a backup systems.
>
> Seagate seems  having quality issues in recent years. I  just RMA'd
> Seagate Barracuda 1T that only had 1 1/2 years life-span in my RAID 5.
>
> On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 2:08 PM,  <OlsonE at aosa.army.mil> wrote:
>> In order of my personal preference (and past exp):
>>
>> #1 Samsung Spinpoint F3EG
>> #2 WD Green WD20EARS
>> #3 Seagate Barracuda ST32000641AS
>>
>> Based off of #1 - least amount of failures, #2 - less noise/heat produced, and #3 - 5 year warranty. Prior to this, I would have said Seagate hands down, but have had a few failures in my 250gb drives purchased ~3 years ago. I use a few WD Green series drives for some home backup... and they work like a champ.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: trilug-bounces at trilug.org [mailto:trilug-bounces at trilug.org] On Behalf Of Ron Kelley
>> Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2010 12:11 PM
>> To: Triangle Linux Users Group General Discussion
>> Subject: [TriLUG] Best 2TB drive for RAID-6 array
>>
>> Greetings all,
>>
>> I need to build a large storage array for our lab (16 drives in RAID-6) and have been looking into 2 TB SATA drives. ?We need capacity over speed, so SAS drives won't be used. ?So far, the current version of Seagate 2 TB drives don't seem to be reliable as the 1 TB drives, and the Western Digital drives appeared to be just as bad (according to the reviews @ newegg.com and other places).
>>
>> From what I can tell, the best brand of high-capacity drives is Samsung. Specifically the "SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3EG" model (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152202). ?I looked ?the Hitachi desk star drives and they also appear to have decent ratings.
>>
>> Does anyone have a good opinion on which are the best 2 TB drives in production currently?
>>
>>
>> -Ron
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Re: Best 2TB drive for RAID-6 array

Interesting topic..

I am researching some new 2 TB drives for my personal file server at
home and I started learning about these new Western Digital Green
drives that use 4k sectors instead of 512 byte sectors. Apparently
Western Digital tested them and concluded only Windows XP and similar
OSes would have issues with them while Linux, Mac OS X and newer
Windows (like Windows 7) would work fine.

http://anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3691

here is an older LWN article on the 4k issue:
http://lwn.net/Articles/322777/

However further reading shows that by default most Linux distros will
have problems:
http://www.osnews.com/story/22872/Linux_Not_Fully_Prepared_for_4096-Byte_Sector_Hard_Drives
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=563218

I'm guessing the work around for this would be to create your
partition setup manually with a live CD or rescue environment and
align the partitions properly in fdisk as explained in the osnews
article. Then install the OS and use the existing partition table,
don't let the installer modify the partition table.

I think I would be fine using that work around, and i'm sure
installers will be able to handle the 4k blocks in the future.. the
only remaining concern is, how does mdadm based RAID handle a drive
spinning down? My current RAID5 is based on three Seagate ST31000340AS
which don't spin down AFAIK.

I like the lack of 4k sectors on the Samsung F3 mentioned in the above
thread and the reviews on newegg which seemed to indicate people had a
lot less trouble with them in Linux than the WD Green drives.

so how does MDADM handle spinning down? It seems the Samsung probably
spin down as well because they are low power drives (newegg reviews
said 1 watt more than WD Green drives, though).

JB