WD HDD Industry Will Be Supply Constrained Due to Thailand Flooding

[kitamesume]

well i was just thinking if 2TB of laptop HDDs has less death rate than the 2TB desktop HDDs, since portability means they need extra durability, well i guess my logic on that was wrong.

[Pentium100]

Since laptop HDDs are more expensive than desktop ones if you want reliability, you might as well buy server HDDs.

[nstgc]

Since laptop HDDs are more expensive than desktop ones if you want reliability, you might as well buy server HDDs.

Thats what I would suggest as well. I would like to buy some WD RE4s, but they are expensive. Even then they aren't guaranteed to work properly. I would suggest just getting some inexpensive drives and set them up in a RAID. Thats what I've done. I actually had one of my Samsung F3's die on me, but its okay since it was in a RAID 1 configuration. Replaced it, everything happy.

[edit] Note that of the 8 Samsung drives I've owned only 1 has ever given me problems. This is in contrast to Seagate's ~50%  failure rate and WD's ~30%. Samsung will be missed.

[kitamesume]

well i was planning to setup a portable storage unit. since i got a sleeping rig here, might as well convert it to one. so the 3options are, cheap HDDs in raid-10 array(sadly it doesn't have onboard raid), a bunch of laptop HDDs to save space, or the more unlikely server HDDs. btw, this'll take me a few months or years to accomplish, i havent even bought a new SSD yet -,-

[Proin Drakenzol]

well i was planning to setup a portable storage unit. since i got a sleeping rig here, might as well convert it to one. so the 3options are, cheap HDDs in raid-10 array(sadly it doesn't have onboard raid), a bunch of laptop HDDs to save space, or the more unlikely server HDDs. btw, this'll take me a few months or years to accomplish, i havent even bought a new SSD yet -,-

*twitch* In almost every instance of someone setting up a *10, a *5 would be better. Or a RAID-6 for more than, say, 8 drives in the array.

[nstgc]

well i was planning to setup a portable storage unit. since i got a sleeping rig here, might as well convert it to one. so the 3options are, cheap HDDs in raid-10 array(sadly it doesn't have onboard raid), a bunch of laptop HDDs to save space, or the more unlikely server HDDs. btw, this'll take me a few months or years to accomplish, i havent even bought a new SSD yet -,-

*twitch* In almost every instance of someone setting up a *10, a *5 would be better. Or a RAID-6 for more than, say, 8 drives in the array.

It depends. Raid 10 is less likely to have drop out issues with cheap drives (ones that don't have TLER). Personally, I would just go two 1's if its just going to be used for storage. I don't know if this is a problem with whatever RAID implimentation Kitamesume may be planning on, but I wouldn't try it with my ICH10r chipset, nor with my old (and shitty) High Point (grabs the piece of shit off his desk) 2310 card. Haven't tried it with anything else, but if you don't have drop out problems 5>10 so long as you don't mind super super slow write rates. If you have a card with on-board RAM buffer chances are there will be drop out issues.

[edit] The on-board RAM buffer helps with the write rate A LOT, but those are on high end cards. I wanted to buy a Adaptec 6405, but with my Samsung drives, I would have had drop outs like crazy. In addition to the card, and the battery back up (don't use write-back without a back up of some sort), I would have had to purchase high end drives and tied up 8 lanes of my PCI bus.

[kitamesume]

lol, anything that'll cost me another 200$ would push the project another year or so XD thats how bad my funds are right now =(

well its either clustered drives with no raid at all and raid it later on or pure all out USB/eSATA-HDDs funfest(this is where the laptop HDDs idea came from, hah hah hah...).

[nstgc]

Why not just use RAID 1 for storage? If that's all its form it should be fine, and as far as I know all major desktop and server operating systems offer OS implemented RAID 1.

[kitamesume]

^ eh... i already said it "and raid it later on", because i'll be buying HDDs on piece by piece basis and it'll take months for each to be bought so... you know =D i can't raid something that doesn't have a pair. to begin with, my plan was stock piling external harddrives XD well the 2.5inch ones so there wouldn't be a hassle of an external powersupply, hence the question about laptop HDDs. but since someone replied that they don't have much difference in failure rate then maybe internal drives would be better because they're much more cheaper =P

[AnimeJanai]

I don't use RAID as a substitute for backup.   For backup, I simply copy the files off to another SATA drive that is slid into the hard drive bay slot.  When done, open the bay door and the drive is ejected out and I put the backup drive back on the shelf in its OEM antistatic wrapping.  It's easy, fast, and economical to backup my large files that way.   For other small frequently updated files, I use an external hard drive via USB. 

Hotswap RAID is to reduce downtime for business use.  In my mind, it's not appropriate for home use as backup.

[Ultra_Magnus]

I don't use RAID as a substitute for backup.   For backup, I simply copy the files off to another SATA drive that is slid into the hard drive bay slot.  When done, open the bay door and the drive is ejected out and I put the backup drive back on the shelf in its OEM antistatic wrapping.  It's easy, fast, and economical to backup my large files that way.   For other small frequently updated files, I use an external hard drive via USB. 

Hotswap RAID is to reduce downtime for business use.  In my mind, it's not appropriate for home use as backup.

Honestly, RAID is a decent backup, and is no worse than backing up to another drive in the same building, if the is a fire they are both gone anyway.

Important files should be backed up somewhere else, I keep mine on several SD cards I keep with me, I don't trust the security of the "cloud".

[nstgc]

I don't use RAID as a substitute for backup.   For backup, I simply copy the files off to another SATA drive that is slid into the hard drive bay slot.  When done, open the bay door and the drive is ejected out and I put the backup drive back on the shelf in its OEM antistatic wrapping.  It's easy, fast, and economical to backup my large files that way.   For other small frequently updated files, I use an external hard drive via USB. 

Hotswap RAID is to reduce downtime for business use.  In my mind, it's not appropriate for home use as backup.

[edit=oops hit post before I typed anything]

I'm too lazy to do regular back ups, but I also have a HDD bay and an assortment of drives sitting on a shelf (although they aren't in anti-staic plastic...which they should be). I use the RAID so that I don't have my system down in case of a drive failure. Still, if I had the money, I would have a computer dedicated to just data and have it in a RAID 5.

[Lupin]

RAID is a decent backup

No. It offers data redundancy not data restoration in case of failure. It's not a backup replacement.

and is no worse than backing up to another drive in the same building, if the is a fire they are both gone anyway.

Put the drives in a fireproof safe. Carrying drives (or tapes) will also be lighter than carrying your entire system

[Ultra_Magnus]

and is no worse than backing up to another drive in the same building, if the is a fire they are both gone anyway.

Put the drives in a fireproof safe. Carrying drives (or tapes) will also be lighter than carrying your entire system

That would obviously be preferable, but I was responding to AnimeJanai's comment about home users, not many home users have fire safes.

[kitamesume]

is there a way to merge two drives without using raid? i mean making it virtually look like a single drive but in actual its two drives.

[Ultra_Magnus]

is there a way to merge two drives without using raid? i mean making it virtually look like a single drive but in actual its two drives.

That is usually called JBOD, or "just a bunch of disks".

[kitamesume]

^ OH, found it instantly, thanks.

Edit: ok... comparing JBOD with RAID-0 and it looks like they don't have a difference, including the volume's contents dying when a part of the volume disappears except one that RAID-0 being faster.

well i thought it was like a "notebook" where ripping a page doesn't ruin the other pages and their contents.

Edit2: cant they make a software that makes a ghost drive and writes the files put on it on the drives assigned to the ghost drive? so that if the other drives dies the files would just go AWOL without touching the files written on the other working drives.
in layman's term, a secretary sorting your files on many drawers.

[Lupin]

Edit2: cant they make a software that makes a ghost drive and writes the files put on it on the drives assigned to the ghost drive? so that if the other drives dies the files would just go AWOL without touching the files written on the other working drives.
in layman's term, a secretary sorting your files on many drawers.

Uh, typical unix-like systems use a virtual filesystem. All files in all devices are seen by the user as a single hierarchy. Files saved on folders are written on whichever drive was mounted for that folder.

On windows, the closest ways I can think of is to use Libraries (in Win 7) extensively.

[Pentium100]

You can mount drives as folders in an NTFS volume too (just like on Linux). To me, however, it does not solve the problem of having the free space divided into many drives (so I have enough free space for a new series, but I do not have enough free space on a single drive, so I have to write 2 episodes to drive 1, 3 episodes to drive 2 etc)

Anyway, if you use JBOD and one drive fails, it is the equivalent of a lot of bad sectors appearing on a single drive. You will lose all files that are in that drive (and all files that are partially on that drive). However, if the drive that failed, contained the filesystem information (MFT on NTFS), then you will lose all files.

However, I found FlexRAID. While the main function of it is o create a RAID of HDD image files, it also has a "flexraid-view" function, which creates a new drive letter, which combines all selected drives, that is, imagine I have two drives with these contents:

E:\anime\ep1.mkv
E:\anime\ep2.mkv
F:\anime\ep3.mkv

With flexraid-view I can create a new drive letter that combines these drives, so I get:
G:\anime\ep1.mkv
G:\anime\ep2.mkv
G:\anime\ep2.mkv

The only downside of it is IIRC that this is read only, if you want to write a new file, you have to find the drive with enough free space manually, otherwise flexraid will just write it to one drive and fail if that drive does not have enough free space.

[kitamesume]

@lupin
yea thats the problem, windows hardly has one.

@Pentium100
oh nice find, i'm looking into it right now XD.