You can't trust any hard drive. That's what backups are for :-). Laptop hard drives aren't much worse than desktop drives, and 2.5" SATA drives are cheap. As long as they're easy to swap, then a drive failure isn't the end of the world. Order a new drive ($100 or so), swap them, and restore from backup.
I haven't dealt with PC laptops in years, so I can't really compare models. Scott On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 2:40 PM, JZ <j...@excelsioritsolutions.com> wrote: > Thanks Scott, > I was really itchy to order one, now I just want to save that open $ for > Remy+++. > > Then, next question, can I trust any HD for my home laptop? should I go get > a Sony VAIO or a cheap China-made thing would do? > big price delta... > > z at home > > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott Laird" <sc...@sigkill.org> > To: "JZ" <j...@excelsioritsolutions.com> > Cc: "Toby Thain" <t...@telegraphics.com.au>; "Brandon High" > <bh...@freaks.com>; <zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" > <peter.k...@sun.com>; "Orvar Korvar" <knatte_fnatte_tja...@yahoo.com> > Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 5:36 PM > Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? > > >> Today? Low-power SSDs are probably less reliable than low-power hard >> drives, although they're too new to really know for certain. Given >> the number of problems that vendors have had getting acceptable write >> speeds, I'd be really amazed if they've done any real work on >> long-term reliability yet. Going forward, SSDs will almost certainly >> be more reliable, as long as you have something SMART-ish watching the >> number of worn-out SSD cells and recommending preemptive replacement >> of worn-out drives every few years. That should be a slow, >> predictable process, unlike most HD failures. >> >> >> Scott >> >> On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 2:30 PM, JZ <j...@excelsioritsolutions.com> wrote: >>> >>> I was think about Apple's new SSD drive option on laptops... >>> >>> is that safer than Apple's HD or less safe? [maybe Orvar can help me on >>> this] >>> >>> the price is a bit hefty for me to just order for experiment... >>> Thanks! >>> z at home >>> >>> >>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Toby Thain" >>> <t...@telegraphics.com.au> >>> To: "JZ" <j...@excelsioritsolutions.com> >>> Cc: "Scott Laird" <sc...@sigkill.org>; "Brandon High" <bh...@freaks.com>; >>> <zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <peter.k...@sun.com> >>> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 5:25 PM >>> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? >>> >>> >>>> >>>> On 7-Jan-09, at 9:43 PM, JZ wrote: >>>> >>>>> ok, Scott, that sounded sincere. I am not going to do the pic thing on >>>>> you. >>>>> >>>>> But do I have to spell this out to you -- somethings are invented not >>>>> for >>>>> home use? >>>>> >>>>> Cindy, would you want to do ZFS at home, >>>> >>>> Why would you disrespect your personal data? ZFS is perfect for home >>>> use, >>>> for reasons that have been discussed on this list and elsewhere. >>>> >>>> Apple also recognises this, which is why ZFS is in OS X 10.5 and will >>>> presumably become the default boot filesystem. >>>> >>>> Sorry to wander a little offtopic, but IMHO - Apple needs to >>>> acknowledge, >>>> and tell their customers, that hard drives are unreliable consumables. >>>> >>>> I am desperately looking forward to the day when they recognise the need >>>> to ship all their systems with: >>>> 1) mirrored storage out of the box; >>>> 2) easy user-swappable drives; >>>> 3) foolproof fault notification and rectification. >>>> >>>> There is no reason why an Apple customer should not have this level of >>>> protection for her photo and video library, Great American Novel, or >>>> whatever. Time Machine is a good first step (though it doesn't often >>>> work >>>> smoothly for me with a LaCie external FW drive). >>>> >>>> These are the neglected pieces, IMHO, of their touted Digital Lifestyle. >>>> >>>> --Toby >>>> >>>> >>>>> or just having some wine and music? >>>>> >>>>> Can we focus on commercial usage? >>>>> please! >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> ----- Original Message ----- >>>>> From: "Scott Laird" <sc...@sigkill.org> >>>>> To: "Brandon High" <bh...@freaks.com> >>>>> Cc: <zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <peter.k...@sun.com> >>>>> Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 9:28 PM >>>>> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 4:53 PM, Brandon High <bh...@freaks.com> wrote: >>>>>>> >>>>>>> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 7:45 AM, Joel Buckley <joel.buck...@sun.com> >>>>>>> wrote: >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> How much is your time worth? >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Quite a bit. >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Consider the engineering effort going into every Sun Server. >>>>>>>> Any system from Sun is more than sufficient for a home server. >>>>>>>> You want more disks, then buy one with more slots. Done. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> A few years ago, I put together the NAS box currently in use at home >>>>>>> for $300 for 1TB of space. Mind you, I recycled the RAM from another >>>>>>> box and the four 250GB disks were free. I think 250 drives were >>>>>>> around >>>>>>> $200 at the time, so let's say the system price was $1200. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> I don't think there's a Sun server that takes 4+ drives anywhere near >>>>>>> $1200. The X4200 uses 2.5" drives, but costs $4255. Actually adding >>>>>>> more drives ups the cost further. That means the afternoon I spent >>>>>>> setting my server up was worth $3000. I should tell my boss that. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> A more reasonable comparison would be the Ultra 24. A system with >>>>>>> 4x250 drives is $1650. I could build a 4 TB system today for *less* >>>>>>> than my 1TB system of 2 years ago, so let's use 3x750 + 1x250 drives. >>>>>>> (That's all the store will let me) and the price jumps to $2641. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Assume that I buy the cheapest x64 system (the X2100 M2 at $1228) and >>>>>>> add a drive tray because I want 4 drives ... well I can't. The >>>>>>> cheapest drive tray is $7465. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> I have trouble justifying Sun hardware for many business applications >>>>>>> that don't require SPARC, let alone for the home. For custom systems >>>>>>> that most tinkerers would want at home, a shop like Silicon Mechanics >>>>>>> (http://www.siliconmechanics.com/) (or even Dell or HP) is almost >>>>>>> always a better deal on hardware. >>>>>> >>>>>> I agree completely. About a year ago I spent around $800 (w/o drives) >>>>>> on a NAS box for home. I used a 4x PCI-X single-Xeon Supermicro MB, >>>>>> a >>>>>> giant case, and a single 8-port Supermicro SATA card. Then I dropped >>>>>> a pair of 80 GB boot drives and 9x 500 GB drives into it. With raidz2 >>>>>> plus a spare, that gives me around 2.7T of usable space. When I >>>>>> filled that up a few weeks back, I bought 2 more 8-port SATA cards, 2 >>>>>> Supermicro CSE-M35T-1B 5-drive hot-swap bays, and 9 1.5T drives, all >>>>>> for under $2k. That's around $0.25/GB for the expansion and $0.36 >>>>>> overall, including last year's expensive 500G drives. >>>>>> >>>>>> The closest that I can come to this config using current Sun hardware >>>>>> is probably the X4540 w/ 500G drives; that's $35k for 14T of usable >>>>>> disk (5x 8-way raidz2 + 1 spare + 2 boot disks), $2.48/GB. It's much >>>>>> nicer hardware but I don't care. I'd also need an electrician (for >>>>>> 2x >>>>>> 240V circuits), a dedicated server room in my house (for the fan >>>>>> noise), and probably a divorce lawyer :-). >>>>>> >>>>>> Sun's hardware really isn't price-competitive on the low end, >>>>>> especially when commercial support offerings have no value to you. >>>>>> There's nothing really wrong with this, as long as you understand that >>>>>> Sun's really only going to be selling into shops where Sun's support >>>>>> and extra engineering makes financial sense. In Sun's defense, this >>>>>> is kind of an odd system, specially built for unusual requirements. >>>>>> >>>>>> My NAS box works well enough for me. It's probably eaten ~20 hours >>>>>> of >>>>>> my time over the past year, partially because my Solaris is really >>>>>> rusty and partially because pkg has left me with broken, unbootable >>>>>> systems twice :-(. It's hard to see how better hardware would have >>>>>> helped with that, though. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Scott >>>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>>> zfs-discuss mailing list >>>>>> zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org >>>>>> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >>>>> >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> zfs-discuss mailing list >>>>> zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org >>>>> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >>>> >>> >>> > > _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
