[Novalug] Seagate HD Failures (WAS best hard disk setup for home file server?)

[Richard Ertel]

any opinions on this drive?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152175

presumably, buying 4 of them from 4 different vendors (even though
newegg has a nice price break by getting 2+)

On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 12:02, Richard Ertel <richard.ertel at gmail.com> wrote:
> wow, those are the infamous drives i think. don't know if that is the
> updated firmware, though. your setup scares me :)
>
> anyone have experience with ZFS in ubuntu server?
>
> On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 11:56, Bryan Seitz <seitz at bsd-unix.net> wrote:
>> I've got 8x 1.5TB Seagates in a ZFS RAIDZ configuration with no issues so far.
>>
>> (knock on wood)
>>
>> da0: <ATA ST31500341AS CC1H> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-5 device
>> da1: <ATA ST31500341AS CC1H> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-5 device
>> da2: <ATA ST31500341AS CC1H> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-5 device
>> da3: <ATA ST31500341AS CC1H> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-5 device
>> da4: <ATA ST31500341AS CC1H> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-5 device
>> da5: <ATA ST31500341AS CC1H> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-5 device
>> da6: <ATA ST31500341AS CC1H> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-5 device
>> da7: <ATA ST31500341AS CC1H> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-5 device
>>
>> storage# zpool list
>> NAME      SIZE   USED  AVAIL    CAP  HEALTH  ALTROOT
>> storage  10.9T  5.96T  4.92T    54%  ONLINE  -
>>
>> That being said, ZFS has saved me many times when I've had hardware issues.  I highly recommend it
>> for a home fileserver these days.  Either FreeBSD (my choice) or (Open)Solaris are great options.
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 11:37:35AM -0400, Roger W. Broseus wrote:
>>> Richard,
>>>
>>> As Jon said, there was new about a lot of Seagate HD failures. See
>>>     http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/17/0115207
>>> you might look a bit more to read about this to see if there's a way to
>>> overcome your apparent data loss.
>>>
>>> Seagate probably owes you gig-time! (Seagate is off of *my* list for a
>>> long time - who knows what junk might be sitting on the shelves, etc.)
>>>
>>> Good luck.
>>> --
>>> Roger Broseus
>>>    RogerB at bronord.com
>>>    www.bronord.com
>>>
>>> Ertel said:
>>>
>>> Message: 6
>>> Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:38:00 -0400
>>> From: Richard Ertel <richard.ertel at gmail.com>
>>> Subject: [Novalug] best hard disk setup for home file server?
>>> To: Novalug <novalug at calypso.tux.org>
>>> Message-ID:
>>>         <5f6820c80910130638w2b9e4e1cm140afa82a2e1ceaf at mail.gmail.com>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>>>
>>> in light of the current problems i am having with my home file server,
>>> i want to reconsider my choice for how i configured hard disks in my
>>> server.
>>>
>>> as said before, i currently have two 1.5 TB drives and two 1.0 TB
>>> drives, all standard 3.5" internal disks.
>>>
>>> four 1.0 TB partitions are in RAID-5 configuration, and the remaining
>>> two 500 GB partitions are RAID-1. these two arrays are combined via
>>> LVM into one logical volume of 3.5 TB.
>>>
>>> my current situation has the new brand new 1.5 TB drives dying, which
>>> of course kills all my data. they are identical drives (seagate), same
>>> model number, maybe same manufacturing batch. both dying at the same
>>> time.
>>>
>>> does anyone have any experience RAIDing external USB drives in linux?
>>> should i expect reliability to increase if i move all 4 drives to 4
>>> external SATA to USB enclosures (5.25" enclosures with fans)? are
>>> these enclosures suitable for 24/7 operation? would read and write
>>> speed suffer (all transfers are over gigabit network)?
>>>
>>> if all those USB drives running through a USB hub to a server is ok,
>>> then what about ditching my tower and running them all to a netbook as
>>> a server? i've seen that argument made once before, citing built-in
>>> ups (battery), built-in monitor, low power draw and other factors as
>>> big benefits to a netbook as server.
>>>
>>> or am i worrying too much and what i have on my hands is just a fluke,
>>> and in the future i should mix drive manufacturers/models to avoid
>>> simultaneous failure?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
>> --
>>
>> Bryan G. Seitz
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>