HD price, performance, price survey - Fantasy

[P5-133XL]

For a massive non-raid, single volume storage solution. Which is the most important criteria Price, Speed, size, safety?

Do note that multiple drives are using W2k's Extended partitions to make a single partition. If one drive fails then all data is lost.

 

[P5-133XL]

I didn't include the number of drives in the survey.

The 250GB should be 8x250GB
All 500GB should be 4x500GB
All 1000GB should be 2x1000GB
and the 2000GB should be 1x2000GB

 

[blakerwry]

I chose:
30ms access, 40K STR, 1000GB, $1200

Less reliablity but it was half the cost of the single 2TB drive

I guess it all depends on the performance needs and whether or not you require high availability/backups....

 

[Howell]

How does MS dynamic disk function handle fragmentation? Does the OS try to keep parts of the file together or is it possible that you could end up part of the 1E6th file on the first and part on the last drive?

 

[P5-133XL]

Dynamic disks have nothing to do with fragmentation. You could easily have a portion of a file at the start and end of a disk and with extended partitions, you could have a part on the first disk as well as then last disk.

With extended partitioning you could theoretically get raid-0 like performance as portions of a file stored on different disks are accessed in parallel. My experiance is that with NTFS is that while fragmentation still occurs it is less of a problem than with FAT. If you need to assume that you are using NTFS.

 

[Jake the Dog]

I voted 15ms access, 40K STR, 250GB.

 

[Tea]

I'd have to go away and look up how many GB there are in a TB first. Yesterday we sold our very first ever drive over 100GB. (A Seagate S-ATA 120.) No-one has showed the slightest interest in even a single 200GB drive yet.

Next question please.

 

[P5-133XL]

Tea,

The question actually has little to do with size - All the sizes are the same. The question is what drive trade-offs matter the most to people Access speed, Data Streaming, Cost, or Reliability.

I find it interesting that in this poll reliability is horibily loosing to the other characteristics. It is a very small sample so my conclusions could be invalid, but Currently 42% are picking bad reliabilty with good performance and good cost. It tells me that people attitudes have changed since the IBM 75GXP scare where there was a poll at SR and the most important characteristic was reliability. I think that if this is true we are returning to an attitude that allows for more IBM 75GXP events.

I do note that perhaps peoples attitudes are not changing, but rather, the polls were biased/flawed.

 

[P5-133XL]

Perhaps people are being confused, the prices were intended to be per drive. Thus the 8x250@$300 = $2400 just like the 2@1000GB@$1200 = $2400.

 

[Jake the Dog]

my concern for reliabilty has lessened now that I have a DVD burner to do large backups on. perhaps others have, since the IBM 75GXP scare, implemented better and/or more regular back-up schemes as well.

 

[Mercutio]

Backing up meaningful amounts of data on DVD isn't any more useful or appealing than backing up meaningful amounts of data on CD-R three years ago.

 

[Jake the Dog]

it is for me since I don't have a mass amount of large files to back up. 5 DVD's holds all I want saved. I do one a DVD backup a week and just rotate through the backup set.

 

[Mercutio]

As far as cost v. reliability: I am presently working under the assumption that every drive I buy will fail within three years (and I'm willing to give WD's stuff only about 9 months at this point). I believe this is true because changes in warranty policies suggest that a "modern" hard is not designed for the same type of reliability that those being made a year ago were.
Given that as a foundation, it makes sense to store data on multiple drives, and also to accumulate more drives for even more redundancy.

I wouldn't use a JBOD strategy with any current combination hard disk, either.

 

[P5-133XL]

Merc,

I don't think you can make the automatic assumption that reliability and warrentee's are proportional. If that were the case Hyundai's and Kia's (10 Year, 100,000 mile warrentee's) make cars that last 3x longer, and have less problems than Toyota's and Honda's (3 Year, 36,000 mile Warrentee's)

 

[Mercutio]

If a company is prepared to drop from a three year warranty to a one year, without stopping at, say, 2 years or 18 months, that suggests to me that there's a large drop off in reliability - such that the incremental cost is greater than the "goodwill" and/or market advantage accumulated by a longer warranty - at something just over 365 days.
Anecdotally, I've never had as many drives fail in a one year period as I have in the last 12 months. The number of drives that pass through my hands in a given year hasn't particularly increased, but the number that die has. I can't say what I see is a trend. I still only see 70 or 80 drives a year, but that's WAY more than most. My gut reaction, though, is that somewhere, somehow, there HAS been a change in standards and quality.

 

[Howell]

Perhaps people are being confused, the prices were intended to be per drive. Thus the 8x250@$300 = $2400 just like the 2@1000GB@$1200 = $2400.

Was the 2000GB drive supposed to be $2400? Do you want the poll edited?

 

[Mickey]

Guess I voted incorrectly, then. I was thinking the 250 GB option was in a RAID5 array instead of a single contiguous RAID0 partition. Too bad I can't "unvote" my selection. Serves me right for casting a vote when I'm too tired to think straight.

 

[P5-133XL]

Yes, I would actually like the poll edited. On the other hand, since it was misleading it might be better to start it fresh and allow people to re-vote. It is also not a big deal - I was just curious and thus it interest level here is no longer signifigent so that it should die.

Opinions?

 

[P5-133XL]

Which drives would you pick if 2TB were needed ?

15ms access, 40MB/s STR, 8x250GB, $2400
30ms access, 40MB/s STR, 4x500GB, $2400
15ms access, 20MB/s STR, 4x500GB, $2400
15ms access, 40MB/s STR, 4x500GB, $4800
30ms access, 40MB/s STR, 2x1000GB, $2400
15ms access, 20MB/s STR, 2x1000GB, $2400
15ms access, 40MB/s STR, 2x1000GB, $4800
30ms access, 20MB/s STR, 1x2000GB, $4800

This is what I should have placed in the poll. I think it is more clear.

 

[CougTek]

It greatly depends on the data to be stored on those drives. If it was important data, JBOD wouldn't be used to begin with. So I'll vote with the assumption that this data isn't of critical importance. The more spindle = the more speed. Sure, having more drive means greater chances to have one fail and lose everything. But since the data isn't all that important, I would place speed above reliability for this one. I originally voted for 8x250MB, 15ms seeks. With your new options, my vote wouldn't change.

The only thing I would see that could be so large and not too important would be steaming audio or video. Or maybe a very large picture collection. No way any kind of database should be stored in a JBOD array.

 

[mubs]

The "40K STR" and "20K STR" confuse me. What are we referring to? Surely not transfer rates? Can't be MTBF's either. So where is the "safety" or "reliability" data listed?