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

[Pasi Kärkkäinen]

On Sat, Aug 06, 2011 at 07:45:31PM +0200, 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
> 

What exact chassis / backplane / SAS-expander is that? (with Intel SAS expander).

-- Pasi