Hi All, We run a couple to 18 TB File Servers using 8 x 3TB drives in a RAID6 array (no LVM). We use the 5400 RPM Hitachi Deskstar drives and get great performance, life, and power usage. We chose these drives based off a recommendation and the data collected here: http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/20/petabytes-on-a-budget-v2-0revealing-more-secrets/. They run a 1000+ Petabyte data center, so I figure they know a bit about which hard drives work best...
If you are using Linux MD (software) RAID, you can pretty much get away with using any hard drive you can find. It's a very robust implementation and is not prone to the "drive-drop" errors that some hardware RAID chipsets experience with certain drives. If you are using hardware RAID, you probably want to avoid using any "green" drives or other drives with aggressive power saving modes, as some RAID chipsets will pick up these modes as a drive failure. In my experience, "Enterprise" level drives are a marketing ploy. They're all more or less the same as the equivalent consumer level drives; they just cost a lot more and occasional have slightly different firmware to disable power saving and other modes that can cause issues with cheap hardware RAID implementations. Both Ubuntu 10.04+ and Windows XP+ have no problem supporting GPT drives over 2TB. The GPT support issue only really comes into play if you need to boot off a GPT drive or array. Again, Windows 7 and Ubuntu 11.10 support GPT booting with no real issues, although more importantly, you'll need a new motherboard with a UEFI based BIOS. Almost any OS released in the previous 5 years will support drives larger than 2 TB, just not for booting. If you're going to run your data drives as a separate array from your boot/OS drive, you don't need to worry too much about GPT boot compatibility. (Yes, Linux does support GPT for general purpose use and has for years.) We get really nice throughput from our RAID6 array using these drives on Ubuntu 11.10. With modern multi-core processors the software RAID overhead is negligible, and our Linux MD Arrays regularly outperform expensive hardware array setups. We have also used these drives in a Windows Server 2008 R2 hardware RAID array using Areca controllers and they work fine there too. As a final note, you may wish to hold off on buying new drives for a while if you can. The recent flooding in Thailand has driven prices up 50%-150%. We bought our Hitachi 3TB drives about 6 months ago for $110 each. They are currently $210 due to the supply shortage. Good luck with the new system. Let me know if I can provide any additional thoughts or advice. -Andy Sayler WMFO Tufts University Freeform Radio 91.5FM Medford On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 08:24, Isaac Betancourt <[email protected]>wrote: > I have 2 drive of 3 TB [HITACHI DESKSTAR] each one in Mirror Raid; using a > [HighPoint RocketRAID 620] controller; this is SATA v3.0 at 6GB/s. > > Now when you use more than 2.5 TB Drives this work with a new way to > manage partition called GPT [Guided Partition Table] unsupported on major > versions of Linux, only "SuSE Enterprise, CentOS 6, RedHat 6, and New > Versions of Debian; I found a way to make it work on CentOS 5.5 following a > guide that I found googling but you need to make a new Rivendell Appliance > removing the GPT warning and bypass the File System Setup; once you install > with sucess you need install a new Version of Grub; for Boot using a > "Rescue Linux Distro", you must be carefull with CentOS autoupdater, > because if you update CentOS 5.5* to CentOS 5.7, this will update the > kernel modules used by RocketRAID and won't boot anymore... > > You have to make a partition for booting like; 100 MB > > And LVM to manage the rest of Space > > [swap, var, home,root] > > > This is my Experience with BIG HARD Drives > > > > Isaac Betancourt > > Sonido 104.3 FM > > > > _______________________________________________ > Rivendell-dev mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.rivendellaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/rivendell-dev > >
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