5TB Drive

[dibl]

...

Either use RAID0 with excellent backups (speed), RAID1 with moderate backups (zero down time), or RAID1+0 speed and redundancy.

Or a 2-drive BTRFS filesystem in default configuration.

[oshunluvr]

Exactly!

[anika200]

Or a 2-drive BTRFS filesystem in default configuration.

Yep, this is going to be good.
Hopefully it does not have the pitfalls of RAID, I just started testing this on another pc.

[oshunluvr]

anika200: dibl and I have been using btrfs in single and multi-drive configurations for years. Search the forum for our posts...

[anika200]

anika200: dibl and I have been using btrfs in single and multi-drive configurations for years. Search the forum for our posts...

Will search, thanks.
Have you been using it on your boot volumes for years too?

[oshunluvr]

Yes.

Some things to note:

Ubiquity (the Kubuntu installer) and grub-install cannot install to full disk btrfs filesystems, but can to partitioned filesystems. I wrote a how-to on installing multiple distros to a single btrfs filesystem - something I still do.

Last I checked: You have to have a separate /boot for multi-disk btrfs filesystems, but I haven't checked on that in years. This is not an issue for me as I use a stand-alone grub partition instead.

[claydoh]

Me, I just am happy seeing ssd drives get more affordable in the somewhat larger sizes.

Somehow I live well with a 64 gb one in my laptop, but see 120 or so gb drives selling for fairly low prices now. I really wanna bigger drive in this rig, the current drive would do well in my Kodi/Steam pc, since all my media is on a 1tb external usb drive anyway. I do not know what I would use 5 tb for, though.

[dibl]

Have you been using it on your boot volumes for years too?

I have never used BTRFS for the system partition or boot partition -- I don't know of any persuasive reason to do so. It is my data that I seek to safeguard, not operating systems.

[SteveRiley]

Personally, I wouldn't buy a drive with only a one year warranty unless it's use was going to be very casual.

On their blog, Backblaze has been writing for a while about their experiences with hard drive reliability. Very illuminating.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-data-feb2015/
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive/

[SteveRiley]

I did see the 5TB Western Digital "Green" drive is $229 on Tiger so this drive really is a good deal if the storage need wasn't too critical. For example; it would make a great backup device for your media - rarely accessed, low priority, and the likelihood of it failing simultaneously with your primary storage is extremely low.

"Green drives" came up recently on the tech chatter mail list at work. The consensus is: don't use these in a SAN or NAS! They aren't designed for continuous operation.

[oshunluvr]

"Green drives" came up recently on the tech chatter mail list at work. The consensus is: don't use these in a SAN or NAS! They aren't designed for continuous operation.

Yeah, I my "research" reveals the same. Interestingly, the ZDNET article claims the WD 2TB green drives have a predicted failure rate exponentially less than the industry standard. Standard being 10^14 and the green drives at 10^15. Maybe because they spin down more than their counterparts in a normal desktop machine?

My personal experience is they either fail in the first few weeks/months or much, much later. I have 4 WD "Blue" 500GB sata II drives that I used to run RAID0 on, Now, because of their age I use them for backups and playground. They're about 6-7 years old and report 39000+ hrs. of power-on time. One of them has 4 bad sectors, but all still report healthy and old-age - like me . One time - 3 years ago, when I was re-configuring my computers, one of the four blue drives failed to start. When I opened the case and powered on, I could hear it clicking. Soooo, being an old-school shade-tree mechanic from way back, I did the only fix I knew to try: I powered it down, rapped it on it's sides with the handle of a screw driver, and powered it back up. That drive is still running perfectly even after moving across country!

Brand wise, I've come to buy only WD since I had 2 Seagate's in a row die (like 8 years ago). In that time I've had one WD die when it was like 3 months old, all the others (9) are still running. I'm close to replacing/upgrading HD's again (3-year cycle ) so I based on the article you linked, I might look at HGST's, a wholly owned subsidiary of WD, lol. I had a Deskstar once, but it was noisy. Of course, 5-6 years pass and things change a bit in the PC world - just a bit.

The move to SSDs has played out just like hard drives did; My first one failed in weeks, warranty replaced it and second one is OK, but lightly used. All the others since have been fine. I moved to SSD's when the prices became reasonable and the warranties went from 1 to 3 years. Anecdotally, I figure no manufacturer would triple the warranty unless they were reasonably sure of the product.

Now some enterprise class hard drives have 5 yr. warranties, which is way I usually spend the few extra $s to move up. I think the article you linked supports this.

BTW: Welcome back - your absence was missed!

[SteveRiley]

I did the only fix I knew to try: I powered it down, rapped it on it's sides with the handle of a screw driver, and powered it back up.

I've done this too! Well, something similar. During college I was the "PC guy" in the engineering department at a chemical company. The guy who authorized PC purchases (not me) fell in love with those crappy Hardcard drives. After about a year, they all developed the same problem: failure to start at boot. The platters simply wouldn't rotate. I figured out that I could lift the front of the PC about two inches off the desk and then let it drop. The resulting impact jarred the mechanics loose and the platters loose and they would begin to spin.

BTW: Welcome back - your absence was missed!

Thanks! Another one of those extended periods of biz travel. I miss this place a lot when that happens.

[vsreeser]

While working for a small company a few years back, we had 2 drives fail. one had bad spinle, the other bad voice coil. So, we took them apart and moved voice coil from one to the other and copied the data off. It failed after that, but we got the data first

[MoonRise]

"Green drives" came up recently on the tech chatter mail list at work. The consensus is: don't use these in a SAN or NAS! They aren't designed for continuous operation.

I vouch on that! They aren't much use in many places I would use them. I've had the WORST time with those drives. Horrible design!