[BNM] Reliable hard disks

[David Pashley]

On Jun 04, 2008 at 07:03, Derek Clarke praised the llamas by saying:
> 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!

Right, which is why it's half as reliable as one drive.
> 
> 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...

Or you can use a more reliable RAID level.
> 
> 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.

-- 
David Pashley
david at davidpashley.com
Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione.