[Discuss] Striping is bad

[richard.pieri at gmail.com (Richard Pieri)]

On Feb 18, 2012, at 9:55 AM, markw at mohawksoft.com wrote:
> 
> Most of us have been in the business for some time now and know, wuite
> well, the does and don'ts of technology. As we all know, sometimes you do
> things that you think will "be ok." "It won't happen to me." etc. I set up
> the system with striping (RAID0) with no redundancy.

And that's your own fault.  You can't blame it on Hitachi.  A Western Digital or Seagate disk could have failed in that time span and you'd be in exactly the same situation.  I've had WD and Seagate disks die after less than a year in operation.  I've had all three brands' disks operational in 24x7 servers for 8+ years.  This is not data.  This is anecdote, nothing more than single isolated data points.  It's like the feedback about Hitachi disks on NewEgg's site.  There may be hundreds of reported failures but that ignores the tens or hundreds of thousands of disks that don't fail before their warranties expire.

Disk fail.  It is a simple fact.  Some fail sooner than others; some seem to last forever.  The same can be said about all mechanical devices from CD-ROM drives to automobiles.  For example: a few months ago I saw a Datsun 280ZX parked at the local Target.  Is this single car, one that's been running for 30-odd years, indicative of the reliability of the 280ZX?  Not a chance.  It's a single data point, and given the number of ZX's I see on the roads today it is definitely an aberration.

Same with disk drives.  Your one failure after two years is just a single data point.  Just because the vendor puts a 5 year warranty on it does not mean that you can expect it to last 5 years.  It means that the manufacturer has an acceptable estimated failure and return rate for that time span.  Certainly some of those drives are going to last more than 5 years.  Some won't.  That's a fact regardless of who makes your disks.

--Rich P.