[BNM] Reliable hard disks

[Derek Clarke]

Actually, while the theoretical MTBF is halved, if you think about it
the array is just as reliable as one of the drives, you just can't
predict which one!

You can try to select drives for reliability by buying the enterprise
versions, sometimes called RAID Editions. Look especially in the specs
for 24x7 operation, desktop drives often assume 8 hour days...

On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 10:00 PM, David Pashley <david at davidpashley.com> wrote:
> On Jun 03, 2008 at 20:34, andrew holway praised the llamas by saying:
>> Does anyone have any data on desktop hard drive reliability. I want to
>> replace the 36 GB disks in RAID 0 with something like 2 500GB disks.
>>
> RAID0 is a really bad plan if you're after reliability, as the array is
> half as reliable as a single drive. RAID 1 with two drives is just under
> twice as reliable as a single drive, but wastes half your diskspace.
>
> Google released a paper on hard drivve reliablity some point in the last
> couple of years. From what I remember, drives tended to fit into one of
> three categories: dead on arrival, failed in the first year, failed
> after 5 years. Sadly you don't know which you've bought until it fails.