From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1SSAi3-0004vu-UX for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Wed, 09 May 2012 17:29:56 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id A8F27E077A; Wed, 9 May 2012 17:29:40 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-qa0-f52.google.com (mail-qa0-f52.google.com [209.85.216.52]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B031BE077A for ; Wed, 9 May 2012 17:28:03 +0000 (UTC) Received: by qabj34 with SMTP id j34so726295qab.11 for ; Wed, 09 May 2012 10:28:03 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to :content-type; bh=cz1VhG54v7lTea+qCeBYu+hTyny9FWpcRZSasUnS/gk=; b=ydbnfxmd46STj52eFfg9AwaIX8sG8G1X6Eh5b7eX0biAnKkT/541eW5dGRlaT1J03J 7+KD7ahjZUXVFrOK0SV3BCak72W7xmTZo/K/qsq0FQLRs18uiJIhcaroi0G96YGIPFRD BocN0sOTNoTkFtZ/BO1bIf+AfZTysEug1l6efohIWRvQR7xTxZ/ErkY++GoIHkPby77j TJ7/SoSegCUMBRjCfHv+lwStibCnkZecotmXRgbxnojMy7ndNeMLFNEjrEFh1g0/aLbB zyH2YgD9YuR3WpM9GWe1eYgID8gjRZz/mWl+1WYw6y5fQ/DdmdkZWXo65oYoReFZCetl Ctrg== Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.224.77.19 with SMTP id e19mr6342822qak.86.1336584483157; Wed, 09 May 2012 10:28:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.229.236.136 with HTTP; Wed, 9 May 2012 10:28:03 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: References: <4FAA2F0D.8080900@gmail.com> <4FAA595A.4040202@libertytrek.org> Date: Wed, 9 May 2012 10:28:03 -0700 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Are those "green" drives any good? From: Mark Knecht To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 X-Archives-Salt: 9121c02d-f826-46e0-aee3-98760f9f3c5e X-Archives-Hash: 0cb8d1163ed8863566f8fbc8fd450721 On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 9:39 AM, Pandu Poluan wrote: > > On May 9, 2012 7:36 PM, "Mark Knecht" wrote: >> >> As for RAID, +100 to not use them. The WD Green drives do not support >> time-limited error recovery (TLER) and spin down based on their view >> of trying to save power. For me anyway they simply didn't work well in >> any RAID configuration. I switched my home compute server to >> Enterprise drives which have worked perfectly for 2+ years. >> > > I can understand how 'green' drives can fcuk up hardware RAID arrays. > > But what about software RAID, e.g., dmraid? Can't we just configure it to be > 'more forgiving'? > > Rgds, Possibly. Someone with more experience with mdadm probably could do a better job but I'd never done RAID of any type at that time (I'm just a home user who taught myself whatever little I know about Linux through this list) and built this server with 5 drives to run a number of Windows VMs so I was pretty sure I wanted RAID. I bought the WD Green 1TB drives a little over 2 years ago and had multiple problems. First problem was the 4K sector size issue which was fairly new at that time, and then once I got past that I tried RAID and it still didn't work well at all. The best answer at the time was some piece of low level software from WD called something like wdtwiddle or something silly as I remember it but I decided to cut my storage in half and replaced the 1TB Green drives with 500GB Enterprise drives. Since then I've heard of people using Green drives for RAID and doing fine but it didn't work with the ones I purchased. - Mark