Date: Mon, 03 Jan 2000 18:08:25 -0500 From: Mitch Collinsworth <mkc@Graphics.Cornell.EDU> To: jon@welearn.com.au Cc: Andreas Klemm <andreas@klemm.gtn.com>, hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: wanna buy an EIDE harddisk ... 5400 or 7200 for home use (noise) Message-ID: <200001032308.SAA12767@benge.graphics.cornell.edu> In-Reply-To: Message from Jonathan Michaels <jon@welearn.com.au> of "Tue, 04 Jan 2000 09:36:47 %2B1100." <20000104093645.A82450@phoenix.welearn.com.au>
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>> >Now I saw in the Magazine, that there is a similar drive available, >> >with 2 MB cache and another drive which has additionally 7200 U/min. >> > >> >Does somebody know the following drives ? >> >U92720U8, 27.2 GB, 9ms, 2MB cache, 5400 U/min DM 440.- (~ $220) >> >U92732U8, 27.3 GB, 9ms, 2MB cache, 7200 U/min DM 460.- (~ $230) >> >U93652U8, 36.5 GB, 9ms, 2MB cache, 5400 U/min DM 585.- (~ $290) >> >U94098U8, 40.0 GB, 9ms, 2MB cache, 5400 U/min DM 635.- (~ $315) >> > >> >Do you think, the large drives (36.5 or 40 GB) will run under >> >FreeBSD 3.4 and 4.0 current well ??? >> >> >From what we've been hearing they will probably be fine, though with >> 3.4 you will have to either make partitions no larger than 27 GB or >> else use the new IDE driver from 4.0. > >when, if, such ddevices become available for the scsi bus will >the end user require doing anything special, ummm, that is take >sepcial measures like your proposing for the 'ide' type bus >version of these large drive devices ? i've use scsi where ever >possible, because of the inherent reliability and performance >(for my meager requirements) issues, such as they are. when/if? SCSI is ahead of IDE. I have sitting here on the floor by my desk a box containing two 50 GB SCSI drives purchased a couple weeks ago. I have yet to install them but as far as I'm aware from reading the freebsd lists there are no such problems as that above with large SCSI disks and freebsd. >i'm assuming that such 'large' drives are created by increasing >the packing density of cylinders, also the number of sectors >per cylinder and that the scsi host adapter is required to >have ever more processing 'grunt' to keep up with the required >workload ... are these new drives more fragile than thier older >and less dense counterparts, given the increase in >manufacturing and materials technologies over the same period >of time. My understanding as well as personal experience with newer technology drives (9-18 GB capacity), is that the newer drives are much more reliable than their predecessors from the 1-2 GB capacity era a few years ago when failures were much more common. A web page I was just reading states that the newer drives have fewer heads, a lower frictional coefficient, and a higher surface to volume ratio. The result of these differences is less noise and lower heat. And lower heat should directly correlate to fewer drive failures. We used to see the 1 and 2 GB drives fail regularly. I've still not seen any 9 GB or larger drives fail. >is freebsd in the ball park as regards keeping up with the >'trends', as it apreas to be going .. that being single unit >devices with large capacities and little if any, ummm >'scaling', wuummm, er interdevice compatability. i remember the >old ide devices, even the same model from a given manufacturer >would have difficulties existing in a chain of more than one >device, this has (to my knowledge, or experience) not (if ever) >been a probelm with scsi. of the very few that i have heard >about all were replaced as warrentable failures with the >replacements working as expected in chains of 5 or more >devices. I'm still a couple months shy of my first year of being a freebsd user, so I can't offer any long-term observation, but the above item about ide drives larger than 27 GB is the first I've heard of being behind the bleeding edge storage-wise. And that one isn't that bad considering the new ATA driver is in fact already available in 4.0. You have to expect an open-source product to be behind once in a while when new hardware comes out. The developers don't always get a chance to build drivers before the hardware is released, the way they used to in the big companies that sold integrated hardware/software platforms. -Mitch To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message
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