Judging external HD reliability

[dsr-mzpnVDyJpH4k7aNtvndDlA at public.gmane.org (Dan Ritter)]

On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 10:21:30AM -0600, Jack-rp9/bkPP+cDYtjvyW6yDsg at public.gmane.org wrote:
> When working for a bank, we built our own 'NAS Server' by putting a hardware
> RAID card and as many and the biggest drives we could afford.  The servers
> didn't need a LOT of CPU but memory always helped.  We did use 1G NICs.
> And yes, we still backed it up to a tape backup system.  These were used
> for low performance NAS needs (storing check images at 200bpi and PDFs
> of statements).
> 
> It worked and was cheap.  The highest $$ single component was the Adaptec
> RAID card, but it works.  Also use software to monitor your RAID and its
> drives, because things do fail.  And buy a spare drive whether you keep it in
> or not.

I am now totally enamored of the HP P800 controller. It is unfortunately
expensive, but it is totally awesome in a hardware sense. Good Linux
drivers in-kernel, and an external monitoring program called cpqarrayd
available on Sourceforge.

-dsr-



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