Re: FreeBSD 7.0-RC2 Available

Thus Björn König <bkoenig_at_alpha-tierchen.de> spake Sat, 16 Feb 2008
19:02:38 +0100 (CET):

> Timo Schoeler wrote:
> > Thus Dag-Erling Smørgrav <des_at_des.no> spake Sat, 16 Feb 2008
> > 17:56:58 +0100:
> >> Don't blame me for your decision to use the most expensive type of
> >> storage available, especially when it has been conclusively shown
> >> that expensive server-grade disks are no more reliable than cheap
> >> consumer- grade disks.
> >
> > Hm. During the last ten years I for myself installed about 1,200
> > SCSI HDs at customers (plus those that were installed by EMC in
> > storage systems at customers' sites) and at least thrice the amount
> > IDE/SATA HDs.
> >
> > There were hundreds (!) of defects of the consumer grade IDE/SATA
> > HDs, beautifully spreading over the whole spectrum of brands and
> > models used.
> >
> > Number of SCSI drives dead: Nine.
> >
> > I tend to believe there *is* a reason for companies to build
> > SCSI/SAS-only products, be it 'Workstations', Workstations, Servers
> > or storage systems.
> 
> I think the interface is not responsible for the reliability of the
> hard disk drive.

Indeed, not the interface itself. But the ball bearings (if any,
more and more use liquid technology) are of much better quality. Well,
one pays a premium for that (not only for that), no question.

(And, besides that, SCSI always had nice features as TCQ etc that now
appear in SATA land...)

> There are SATA drives and controllers out there that
> are supposed to be as reliable as SCSI/SAS drives and controllers.
 
The 'server grade' SATA drives appeared during the last years (like
WD's 'RAID Edition'); before that, IDE/SATA was just plain 'consumer
grade' stuff. In fact, most IDE/SATA drives were never specified to run
24/7, in contrast to SCSI (server) HDs.

> Björn

Timo