[Tfug] And another one down

[Timothy D. Lenz]

On 9/9/2013 5:58 PM, Bexley Hall wrote:
> Hi Timothy,
>
> On 9/9/2013 2:55 PM, Timothy D. Lenz wrote:
>> I posted on the raid group asking about mixing a WD red with the segates
>> that are there now and it doesn't sound good. First response was about
>> drives being kicked out when they are still good until they where all
>> changed to reds.
>
> Did they say what the *criteria* was that caused the drives to
> be "kicked out"?  I.e., are they seeing higher error rates
> (one would think that would be a configurable threshold)?
> Or, just "seagatophobia" on the part of the software??
>
>> Also, they are saying that enterprise drives are more touchy about
>> vibrations. That some high speed fans can cause them troubles. I would
>> expect them to be more resistant to vibrations because in big servers
>> you are going to have more drives and fans and things to cause
>> vibrations and resonant vibrations which are even stronger.
>
> I've never heard of drives being upset by (what amounts to)
> "fan noise".  A fair number of machines, here, have been
> "servers" over the years.  Never had any of them complain that
> certain types of drives were "required".  As you said, all had
> buckets of fans inside (I think one of my current servers has
> 12? fans)
>
> Disks are considerably more tolerant of vibration than they
> used to be; both "in use" and "in storage".
>
> Any "hard data" that people want to offer?  Or, is this just
> random "conclusions" that someone came up with to explain a problem
> *they* were having (that they couldn't trace to anything else)?
>
> I.e., to *prove* such an assertion, leave the "problem" drive
> in place and replace the fan with other cooling mechanisms.
> If doing this -- AND ONLY THIS -- causes the drive to "work
> reliably" then you have an argument supporting that premise.
>
> OTOH, replacing the drive and leaving the fans in place just
> tells you that the (original) drive "didn't work" (-- in that
> system).

Here are quotes from the post:
----------------------------
"Completely anecdotal evidence, but I was mixing WD Reds and Seagates in 
a QNAP RAID 6 each 3TB for a total of 6TB, and the Seagates kept making 
sounds like they were about to hurl.  Testing each drive individually 
with badblocks and smart came up with all drives OK.  But it kept 
chucking the WDs one by one.  Eventually I removed the Seagates and 
replaced them with WDs and since then no drives have been thrown out.

I can only theorise that there may be a timing issue between WD Reds and 
Seagate. "
----------------------------
"The sneeze story isn't true. Modern enterprise are sensitive, for
example some 24k RPM fans will cause drives to fail within time, but
12k fans won't (40mm).

However, if your room and your servers are normal, you've nothing to
worry about."