[kwlug-disc] Bundling HD's. LVM vs mdadm vs ???

[Cedric Puddy]

On 2013-04-12, at 10:55 AM, Khalid Baheyeldin wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 2:46 AM, unsolicited <unsolicited at swiz.ca> wrote:
> On 13-04-11 09:17 AM, Khalid Baheyeldin wrote:
> 
> Is 3TB enough? Because there are reasonablly priced 3TB disks out
> there.  I got two WD Green ones for backups.
> 
> It has been reported in this list that WD Greens have been problematic /
> sleep issues.
> 
> Had them for a few months, and have not noticed anything.

RE: WD Green -- I say "Depends on your controller" -- I've tried them on several "proper" raid controllers, over the past little while, and had no luck.  (a couple LSI MegaRaid, and a couple HP ccispp type boards.  I keep expecting that they'll update the cards so that they can at least work with the drives, so I check when occasion allows. :)

For example, I plug a WD Green drive into a HP Proliant server, turn it on.  The drive spins up, but has turned itself off by the time the Raid controller is doing device detection, and for whatever reason, between the controller and drive, there is nothing that triggers the drive to spin up again.  True, I *can* get the drive to detect by physically hot-pulling and re-plugging the drive *while* drive detection is happening, but then it turns itself off again, so that doesn't really help much.

When they are plugged into USB enclosures and consumer motherboards, it all seems to work, but as you wander into the realm of specialized storage devices (raid controllers, multi bay NAS devices, etc) the green drives become an increasingly unsafe bet.  The WD RED drives, and the other hand, become an *excellent* bet; currently they are beating Seagate nicely, for the following reasons:
	- 2/3 the price of the ES/Constellation series
	- longer warranty
	- good speed
	- anti-vibration feature (for when you have lots of units together, e.g.: 12 in a box, vibrations from drives can sync up and amplify, which reduces drive lifespan.  For a small number of drives, this is widely agreed to not matter.)

Of course, Seagate has just introduced high capacity 3.5in hybrid devices, which could be pretty interesting too.  I look forward to testing one soon!

-Cedric


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