> I have to wonder in a large storage system if the > money is better spent on SCSI or on more disks > intelligently arrayed. Given the huge differential > in price between SCSI systems and ATA/SATA then I > would need to see a serious engineering economic > study to know which way wass better (including of > course differntial costs of support.) There are > I believe sufficient reasons not to discount > immediately large clusters of low cost disks. > > Color me skeptical. I have _not_ done my homework but > a quick scan of Google's studies suggests that the > conventional wisdom about hard disks may be wrong.
Well... that Google report hands misunderstandings on a plate, alone about how temperature affects disk life. In general one would think an array of cheap disks would provide more security since one failed disk in a raid5 can be replaced and all is well again, and that's just the point: this only works when you _know_ a disk failed and from my experience some ATA drives don't even recognize if you stab them in the eye, chop off a leg and kick them square in the balls. Had a Samsung here once on which presumably a preamplifier in the drive 'tronics gave out, in a 9 day (!) session with Stellar Phoenix (plugging, ahem :) ) I was able to recover about 70% of that 120 gig. The funny thing about it is that SMART *still* claimed the drive was ALL FINE. (On another note I noticed that RAID has it tripwires elsewere and linux software raid particularly blows chunks big style. Check your disk for bad block regularly or you're in for a surprise when the day come you really need to resync.) Anyway, if your data are invaluable the best drives on the most solid raid controller with a nuclear UPS won't save you in the long run but backups will even if your disk is a second hand... Maxtor.. or.. Excelstore... Dex -- -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GCS d--(+)@ s-:+ a- C++++ UL++ P+>++ L+++>++++ E-- W++ N o? K- w--(---) !O M+ V- PS+ PE Y++ PGP t++(---)@ 5 X+(++) R+(++) tv--(+)@ b++(+++) DI+++ D- G++ e* h>++ r* y? ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ http://www.stop1984.com http://www.againsttcpa.com -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
