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reliability of 1.5 & 2TB drives
My IT guys are telling me that 1.5 & 2TB SATA drives are not as reliable as 1TB drives for a Raid config. Is this true? Maybe it was at one time?
I’d love to get an extra 4 or 8 TB out of this raid 5 box. But don’t want issues either.What about software to alert me of a failure. Is there something built into the xserve with OSX 10.6 or maybe a third party app.?
Thanks,
-dMR -
3 Replies
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I’ve not read anywhere where the larger drives are less reliable in and of themselves… but do consider the fact that if you do lose one, you lose more data in the bargain. So it makes sense to be using them in a raid configuration you can rebuild if need be. Raid 5 or 6…
Jerry
Apple Certified Trainer, Producer, Writer, Director Editor, Gun for Hire and other things. I ski. My Blog: https://blogs.creativecow.net/Jerry-Hofmann
8-Core 3.0 Intel Mac Pro, Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D, AJA Io HD, 17″ MBP, Matrox MXO2 with MAX Cinema Displays
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Early 1.5TB models pushed the platter density to rather obscene levels, which is where this idea of them being more finicky comes from. Now, manufacturers are taking away platters from some models so they can say their drives draw less power. This combination should raise fail rates dramatically, but that doesn’t seem to have happened. All my 1.5 and 2TB drives are humming along nicely and all my friends and contacts running them haven’t had any issues either. My fail rate for these drives is lower than for my 1TB drives, right now.
I’d personally say there isn’t that much reason to have cold feet. If you’re running RAID5, you’re always protected from a single drive failure anyways. Don’t buy “Green” drives or drives that use the “very low power consumption” selling point, as these are more likely to have high areal densities and have mechanisms that stop and start the platters often.
As for software that monitors drives, mechanical checks are pretty much limited to SMART status tests. Most drive maintenance software (DiskWarrior, Techtool, Onyx) has this included and your RAID enclosure itself probably has the function. I don’t know of any affordable software that goes beyond that. SMART is still enough to alert you to issues before they become major. Sometimes.
IHTH
JC Boulay
Technical Director
Audio Z
Montreal, Canada
http://www.audioz.com -
Good info. I listen to the corporate IT guys, but I like to confirm with media people before proceeding.
Since it’s cool to throw in 2TB drives, I can probably config for raid 6 now that I have the extra space. So that would probably put the nail in the coffin. BTW, this is for network near-line storage. I know I’ve been talking about this for awhile, but I finally got the OK to spend.
Thanks guys!
-dMR
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