[ale] SATA Hard Drive Issues?

[Lightner, Jeff]

We run entire arrays full of SATA disks.  We do have occasional failures
but replacing 1 disk every 3 months when we have hundreds of them leads
me to the conclusion that the disks aren't that bad.  Of course we also
have occasion failure on SCSI and Fibre drives.

Identical manufacture dates can be a problem for disks.  At a prior job
we had a Sun D1000 array and ultimately were told by Sun that all the
drives in that array needed to be replaced due to "diamond dust" in the
factory at the time of manufacture.  (We had several other of these
arrays that never saw the same level of issues.)  I'm not sure I ever
believed the "diamond dust" explanation as Sun was the same company that
tried to blame "cosmic rays" for the E10K CPU debacle.  However, it is a
fact that after we replaced all the drives in that array it quit having
such a high level of disk failure.

-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
Michael B. Trausch
Sent: Wednesday, January 27, 2010 10:59 AM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux!
Subject: Re: [ale] SATA Hard Drive Issues?

On 01/27/2010 10:51 AM, Jim Popovitch wrote:
> Aren't identical drives subject to similar failures?

Yes, though I don't ever install them at the same time.  When possible, 
I buy the same model, but stagger the purchases by two to three months 
so as to get drives from different lots; at the *very* least, I will buy

them both at the same time, but install the second drive two to three 
months later.  That way, the probability that they'll fail at the same 
time and in the same way is at least reduced.

I have yet to actually replace any drives that have failed in this 
configuration, so I don't yet know if any of these drives are going to 
wind up failing in a similar manner at the same time.  So far, so good 
though, and they are health-checked once per week.

	--- Mike

-- 
Michael B. Trausch                    Blog: http://mike.trausch.us/blog/
Tel: (404) 592-5746 x1                            Email: mike at trausch.us
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