[CentOS] Re: Hard disk recomendation for a software raid 5 array. Does Linux Software Raid support/interacts well with TLER enabled disks.

Mon Jul 30 09:49:29 UTC 2007
Alexander Georgiev <alexander.georgiev at gmail.com>

> Not necessarily from different vendors as much as from different build
> lots, etc.
>
> The theory is ... items build from the same components at the same time
> and the same place should fail/EOL at about the same time (all things
> being equal).
>
> In practice, I have not seen that.  If you are concerned about it,
> getting drives from different factories or lots (but the same
> manufacturer) should be OK.
>

I have seen 18 out of 20 gone in 2 weeks period. Those were 20 PCs
manifactured by IBM. I guess it must have been the famous Deathstar
bug.

I am not sure if I can buy disks of different lots here(I live in
Bulgaria, where a rumour is spread, that hard disk on sale are from
lots that have failed the tests for robustness).

What I can do is to spread the purchase in 4 weeks period - buying
each week a disk. I am not in a hurry on this project.

However I wanted to do this in a 2 weeks period - buying each week one
Barracuda and one Hitachy. As I intend to use software raid which in
theory can even work with volumes on different channel types - like
using one external USB disk and one internal ATA disk, I was not
expecting problems mixing different vendors disks.

BTW According to O'relly's book on linux hardware raid, the only
reason to choose disks from the same vendor is not to jeopardise
performance by combining one less performant disk with a more
performant one.

As this is a rsync server - performance is not a requirement.