[OpenIndiana-discuss] [zfs-discuss] Question about WD drives with Super Micro systems

[Alex Smith (K4RNT)]

I try to avoid Western Digital drives like a bad cliche. I've had a
big first, second and third experience with their consumer drives.
Literally dying the day after their warranty expires!

Seagate and Fujitsu for me all the way! :)

On Sat, Aug 6, 2011 at 22:30, Mark <mark0x01 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 07/08/2011 5:45 a.m., Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk wrote:
>>>
>>> Might this be the SATA drives taking too long to reallocate bad
>>> sectors? This is a common problem "desktop" drives have, they will
>>> stop and basically focus on reallocating the bad sector as long as it
>>> takes, which causes the raid setup to time out the operation and flag
>>> the drive as failed. The "enterprise" sata drives, typically the same
>>> as the high performing desktop drive, only they have a short timeout
>>> on how long they are allowed to try and reallocate a bad sector so
>>> they don't hit the failed drive timeout. Some drive firmwares, such as
>>> older WD blacks if memory serves, had the ability to be forced to
>>> behave like the enterprise drive, but WD updated the firmware so this
>>> is longer possible.
>>>
>>> This is why you see SATA drives that typically have almost identical
>>> specs, but one will be $69 and the other $139 - the former is a
>>> "desktop" model while the latter is an "enterprise" or "raid" specific
>>> model. I believe it's called different things by different brands:
>>> TLER, ERC, and CCTL (?).
>>
>> I doubt this is about the lack of TLER et al. Some, or most, of the drives
>> ditched by ZFS have shown to be quite good indeed. I guess this is a WD vs
>> Intel SAS expanders issue
>>
>> Vennlige hilsener / Best regards
>>
>> roy
>> --
>
> The other overlooked thing is the different topology ie. native sata against
> sas translated sata and then sas expander as well.
>
> I have had seagate ST3000641's just refuse to run with expanders, but work
> diecty connected to the sas controller.
>
> It's funny how all this reminds me of fibre channel behaviour in it's early
> days.
>
> Mark.
>
>
>
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- Alex Smith (K4RNT)
- Sterling, Virginia USA