[Discuss] [ OT ] hard drives

[Jerry Feldman]

Recently once of my hard drives in a RAID1 reported an event and was
dropped out of the array. This was a Seagate 1TB that is about 3 - 4
years old. The other drive is a WD 1TB. Initially I was going to buy a
new WD drive because I have had better luch over time. However I have a
WD MyBook that has 2 WD Caviar Green drives. They were used as a backup
system at work until we moved into IBM, and IBM would not allow this in
the datacenter. These have a 32MB cache.

My latest opinion is to simply do a fresh install of Fedora 18 setting
the WD 2TB drives in a RAID1 and discard the Seagate and 1TB WD (after
wiping of course). This alternative is zero cost, but my concern is that
the 2 drives are the same lot June 2009. I would also trash the MyBook.
Essentially, the MyBook earned its keep.

My alternative thought was to buy a new WD 1TB drive to replace the
Seagate, add it into the existing RAID. (Actually 2 RAIDs). This is a
cost but the new drive should outlive the older WD and I am of less risk
of simultaneous failure.

BTW: I have an existing 1.5TB drive that I use for backup.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id:3BC1EB90 
PGP Key fingerprint: 49E2 C52A FC5A A31F 8D66  C0AF 7CEA 30FC 3BC1 EB90