Re: raid10 hard disk choice

On Thu, 21 May 2009, Robert Schnabel wrote:

> A word of warning for anyone out there considering the Seagate 1.5TB
> SATA drives (ST31500341AS)...I'm going through a fiasco right now with
> these drives and I wish I had purchased more when I did.

Those drives are involved in the worst firmware debacle Seagate has had in
years, so no surprise they're causing problems for you just like so many
others. I don't think you came to the right conclusion for how to avoid
this pain in the future though--buying more garbage drives isn't really
satisfying.

What you should realize is to never assemble a production server using
newly designed drives. Always stay at least 6 months and at least one
generation behind the state of the art. All the drive manufacturers right
now are lucky if they can deliver a reliable 1TB drive, nobody has a
reliable 1.5TB or larger drive yet. (Check out the miserable user ratings
for all the larger capacity drives available right now on sites like
newegg.com if you don't believe me) Right now, Seagate's 1.5TB drive is 7
months old, and I'd still consider it bleeding edge for server use.

--
* Greg Smith gsmith(at)gregsmith(dot)com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD