http://k0kkv.org/bbpress/tags.php?tag=raid A place for LARC members to sit and chat. en-US Fri, 24 May 2013 04:12:26 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.0.3 q http://k0kkv.org/bbpress/search.php http://k0kkv.org/bbpress/topic.php?id=153#post-219 Thu, 09 Feb 2012 09:52:44 +0000 kris_KB0STG 219@http://k0kkv.org/bbpress/ <p>Caviar drives don't have an issue with RAID 5/10 in the real world. Unless you are using it for a very busy server, don't be afraid to get Black drives. Green drives park the head too much for most RAID applications. </p> http://k0kkv.org/bbpress/topic.php?id=153#post-202 Tue, 31 Jan 2012 10:12:15 +0000 myron_ng0m 202@http://k0kkv.org/bbpress/ <p>Jim - you were correct - I'm using SATA.</p> <p>Kenyon,</p> <p>Troy sent me a white paper from WD. They say that the Green, Blue, and Black "Caviar" drives are not suited for Raid other than 0 or 1. The Green ones (that I'm stuck with for now) are handling RAID 1 just fine. WD recommends their "RE" line of drives, which is almost double the price of the others. So, instead of 6 terabytes, I have less than 4 :(</p> <p>I have a couple of pretty decent SATA-Raid controllers. One was made by Promise and the other by High-point. </p> <p>I know western Digital says they don't recommend their Caviar drives for anything other than Raid 0/1, but I've had 2 Black Edition drives in a RAID 5 array since 2010 with no trouble at all.</p> <p>The Green drives seem to be content in their current RAID 1 .... I told the guys at DIT about it, because they recommended them for the RAID-5 setup. They won't be making that recommendation again ;) </p> http://k0kkv.org/bbpress/topic.php?id=153#post-201 Mon, 30 Jan 2012 22:51:25 +0000 Kenyon_k0epp 201@http://k0kkv.org/bbpress/ <p>I wonder if the Western Digital Caviar Black series does this as well since these are suppose to be the "performance" series as opposed to the "Green" series.</p> <p>That said, I wouldn't do a Raid 0 setup without a quality Raid controller. I would think you could get better performance using a SSD or some sort of Ramdisk setup. </p> http://k0kkv.org/bbpress/topic.php?id=153#post-199 Sat, 28 Jan 2012 13:23:50 +0000 Jim_NU0C 199@http://k0kkv.org/bbpress/ <p>That's interesting, but not a totally surprising development. I assume we are talking about IDE or SATA drives here? I've only used RAID with SCSI, ATA RAID always seemed like an inadequate, band-aid approach to me. Good info, thanks Myron.</p> <p>73</p> <p>-Jim </p> http://k0kkv.org/bbpress/topic.php?id=153#post-198 Fri, 27 Jan 2012 11:37:15 +0000 myron_ng0m 198@http://k0kkv.org/bbpress/ <p>Just an FYI for those of you thinking about buying Western Digital or almost any other "Green" drive out there - they might not be all they are cracked up to be.</p> <p>I bought 4x 2 Terabyte drives that I was going to put into a RAID 5 array. I had no idea of the headaches I would soon encounter.</p> <p>As I found out, the Western Digital Drives actually park the head (move the arm off of the platters) after about 8 seconds of inactivity. Most hard drives produced these days can only do this 300,000 times. When this timer is activated, the disk disappears to the raid card and your entire volume disappears. </p> <p>Depending on the RAID controller, you may have a mess. Some cards may make you wipe the disk that turned off, and re-instert it to the array - which would then cause it to re-build. My controller just sat at a BIOS screen waiting for me to continue (without the array) or to Destroy (and start over).</p> <p>Well, I found a program that disabled the internal timer. The documentation indicated that the program would only cause a minor increase in power usage, as the drives not park until they were shut off.</p> <p>I was copying my data back to my raid when my volume disappeared again. As it turns out, the Green drives are also missing a feature (TLER I think its called). This feature has something to do with skipping bad sectors of the disk before the disk spends a lot of time trying to get a bit of information. Most "Green" drives lack this feature as well.</p> <p>This stumbling block used to have a solution too - but the newer Western Digital Drives no longer support the method to add this.</p> <p>I'm in the process of trying Software RAID with a Linux computer, but the early results are discouraging at best.</p> <p>If you are going to use a Green drive by itself - I'm sure it will work just fine. But the Green drives, at the very least from Western Digital (now owner of Hitachi drives) do not work so well. </p>