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

[Richard Ertel]

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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