[Pc_Support] Re: Spindled?

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Wed, 2006-08-30 at 22:42 -0400, Bruce Metcalf wrote:
> Aha, that makes sense!
> I shall have to look into obtaining a small utility that does that. 
> My present collection of drives were all purchased before Leap lead 
> me to understand that there were two classes of drive.

Actually, there are many classes of drives.

- Commodity and Near-Line Enterprise

First off, what you get in the stores are Commodity Consumer 8x5 disks.
They are the "middle barrel" which are those that tested well enough to
offer a Consumer retail warranty (typically 3-5 years) for 8x5
operation.  Some vendors even keep statistics in firmware to see if you
have used them regularly for more than 14x5, ambient, etc...

Secondly, many of the newer 24x7 "Near-Line Rated" or "RAID" disks still
come off the _exact_same_ assembly lines as the "Commodity" 8x5 disks.
They are just tested to better tolerances.  But they are certainly the
"top of the barrel."  You can _only_ find them in OEM flavors, but they
_always_ have a 5-year warranty and using them 24x7 does _not_ void it.

Third, desktops from tier-1 OEMs (like Dell) get the "bottom of the
barrel."  Expect a _significant_portion_ of them to go "belly up" rather
quickly.

- True Enterprise

*NOW* for *TRUE* "Enterprise Rated" disks, you typically need to spend
$1+/GB.  These are the 73, 146GB and newer 292GB (sometimes labeled
300GB) capacities and have spindle speeds of 10+Krpm.  They have easily
5-10x less vibration due to their superior construction and materials --
at the added cost.  They are typically available in only SCSI, FC or SAS
flavors, although a few vendors offer them as non-SAS SATA.

E.g., the SATA version of the Hitachi UltraStar 10k is the Western
Digital Raptor 10k.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith          Professional, technical annoyance
mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org    http://thebs413.blogspot.com
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