[ale] Which large capacity drives are you having the best luck with?

[Michael Trausch]

On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 11:06 PM, Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com> wrote:

> Raid 5,6 is a waste of time. When one fails a second failure is likely
> before recovery can finish. Raid 10, thanks to cheap drives, is the best
> bet. If you're totally paranoid, do the mirror in triplets.
>
I would agree that RAID 5 is a total waste of time.  For a very small array
(say, 5 disks) I'd say that RAID 6 is acceptable, *IF* you are relatively
proactive about preventing catastrophic failure.  Again, remember that RAID
is not a backup solution, just one to add reliability, and even RAID 5 is
going to be more reliable than no RAID at all (or striped, but not mirrored,
RAID).  Making sure that drives are periodically rotated, that they are all
different ages, that the array is protected from power surges and outages,
making sure that the host system is protected from power surges and outages,
are all required elements, or you _will_ have corruption at some point.

What I do after installing a RAID 5 or 6 setup (well, a RAID 6 setup; I
don't use RAID 5 at all) is I get it going with five or so drives, and then
every three months I replace one drive.  Then every six months I'll replace
one drive.  I expect more failures than a standard setup because of the
additional activity that happens when using RAID {5,6}, particularly in the
regular consistency/health checking process.

   --- Mike
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