Best Make of Sata Drive for Linux

[Mickey]

What would be the best MAKE of a 7200rpm Sata harddrive to install Linux 
F14 on ?

[John Mellor]

On Sat, 2011-01-01 at 17:49 -0500, Jim wrote:
> What would be the best MAKE of a 7200rpm Sata harddrive to install Linux 
> F14 on ?

I've got a 1.5TB Western Digital Green drive, and I'm not happy with the
performance of it.  There are also several discussions online about
these drives having an early ageing problem with ext4 filesystems
because of them unloading the heads every 5 seconds and ext4 only
flushing its journal every 30 seconds.

Other than this one negative, I suspect than any other drive will do
well for the first 5 years or so.  Linux is much easier on the drive
than Redmond's products are.

[Michael Miles]

-----Original Message-----
From: [e-mail]
[mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of John Mellor
Sent: Saturday, January 01, 2011 3:24 PM
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Best Make of Sata Drive for Linux

On Sat, 2011-01-01 at 17:49 -0500, Jim wrote:
> What would be the best MAKE of a 7200rpm Sata harddrive to install 
> Linux
> F14 on ?

I've got a 1.5TB Western Digital Green drive, and I'm not happy with the
performance of it.  There are also several discussions online about these
drives having an early ageing problem with ext4 filesystems because of them
unloading the heads every 5 seconds and ext4 only flushing its journal every
30 seconds.

Other than this one negative, I suspect than any other drive will do well
for the first 5 years or so.  Linux is much easier on the drive than
Redmond's products are.

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If it is speed you are after I would highly suggest a SD drive.

Solid State as a boot and see the performance go way up.

32 - 64 gig is on average 100.00

[Andras Simon]

On 1/2/11, John Mellor  wrote:
> I've got a 1.5TB Western Digital Green drive, and I'm not happy with the
> performance of it.  There are also several discussions online about
> these drives having an early ageing problem with ext4 filesystems
> because of them unloading the heads every 5 seconds and ext4 only
> flushing its journal every 30 seconds.

This problem was mentioned in a recent discussion on the Linux Audio
Users list, and  someone mentioned there that there's an alternative
firmware for these drives that  solves this frequent parking of the
heads problem.

Andras

[Suvayu Ali]

On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 3:23 PM, John Mellor  wrote:
> I've got a 1.5TB Western Digital Green drive, and I'm not happy with the
> performance of it.  There are also several discussions online about
> these drives having an early ageing problem with ext4 filesystems
> because of them unloading the heads every 5 seconds and ext4 only
> flushing its journal every 30 seconds.

I have 2 1TB WD Black drives and one 300GB Velociraptor they all have
been working almost flawlessly. Could you please point me to what kind
of symptoms I might see if the above was true for my case?

PS: Did you by any chance get the unloading of heads and ext4 flushing
its journals interchanged? If not, I don't see how that would be a
problem.

[John Mellor]

On Sat, 2011-01-01 at 16:43 -0800, suvayu ali wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 3:23 PM, John Mellor  wrote:
> > I've got a 1.5TB Western Digital Green drive, and I'm not happy with the
> > performance of it.  There are also several discussions online about
> > these drives having an early ageing problem with ext4 filesystems
> > because of them unloading the heads every 5 seconds and ext4 only
> > flushing its journal every 30 seconds.
>
> I have 2 1TB WD Black drives and one 300GB Velociraptor they all have
> been working almost flawlessly. Could you please point me to what kind
> of symptoms I might see if the above was true for my case?
>
> PS: Did you by any chance get the unloading of heads and ext4 flushing
> its journals interchanged? If not, I don't see how that would be a
> problem.

No, the problem is that with 30-second journal flushes to a WD green
drive that unloads every 5 seconds, every time Linux goes to write to
the disk, the heads have already been unloaded.  Loading them again
takes a relatively long time, killing the performance.  Also, if you
look up the green drive specs, they are only good for about 100k
load/unload operations, or a lot less than 2 months unless you do
something about it.

[John Mellor]

On Sat, 2011-01-01 at 16:43 -0800, suvayu ali wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 3:23 PM, John Mellor  wrote:
> > I've got a 1.5TB Western Digital Green drive, and I'm not happy with the
> > performance of it.  There are also several discussions online about
> > these drives having an early ageing problem with ext4 filesystems
> > because of them unloading the heads every 5 seconds and ext4 only
> > flushing its journal every 30 seconds.
>
> I have 2 1TB WD Black drives and one 300GB Velociraptor they all have
> been working almost flawlessly. Could you please point me to what kind
> of symptoms I might see if the above was true for my case?

Both of those drives should be fine.  Its only the green drives that
have problems.

[John Mellor]

On Sun, 2011-01-02 at 00:59 +0100, Andras Simon wrote:
> On 1/2/11, John Mellor  wrote:
> > I've got a 1.5TB Western Digital Green drive, and I'm not happy with the
> > performance of it.  There are also several discussions online about
> > these drives having an early ageing problem with ext4 filesystems
> > because of them unloading the heads every 5 seconds and ext4 only
> > flushing its journal every 30 seconds.
>
> This problem was mentioned in a recent discussion on the Linux Audio
> Users list, and  someone mentioned there that there's an alternative
> firmware for these drives that  solves this frequent parking of the
> heads problem.

Can you point me to a web page or somewhere to get that alternate
firmware and instructions for installing it?

Right now, I'm just updating a couple of chars in a file every 3 seconds
that I've opened using o_sync and doing a fflush() and fsync() in order
to work around the problem.

[Andras Simon]

On 1/2/11, John Mellor  wrote:
> On Sun, 2011-01-02 at 00:59 +0100, Andras Simon wrote:
> > This problem was mentioned in a recent discussion on the Linux Audio
> > Users list, and  someone mentioned there that there's an alternative
> > firmware for these drives that  solves this frequent parking of the
> > heads problem.
>
> Can you point me to a web page or somewhere to get that alternate
> firmware and instructions for installing it?

Unfortunately, no, but this message
http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-audio-users/msg74424.html
(or the surrounding messages in the thread) will hopefully lead you to one.

Andras

[Suvayu Ali]

On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 5:28 PM, John Mellor  wrote:
> On Sat, 2011-01-01 at 16:43 -0800, suvayu ali wrote:
> > On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 3:23 PM, John Mellor  wrote:
> > > I've got a 1.5TB Western Digital Green drive, and I'm not happy with the
> > > performance of it.  There are also several discussions online about
> > > these drives having an early ageing problem with ext4 filesystems
> > > because of them unloading the heads every 5 seconds and ext4 only
> > > flushing its journal every 30 seconds.
> >
> > I have 2 1TB WD Black drives and one 300GB Velociraptor they all have
> > been working almost flawlessly. Could you please point me to what kind
> > of symptoms I might see if the above was true for my case?
> >
> > PS: Did you by any chance get the unloading of heads and ext4 flushing
> > its journals interchanged? If not, I don't see how that would be a
> > problem.
>
> No, the problem is that with 30-second journal flushes to a WD green
> drive that unloads every 5 seconds, every time Linux goes to write to
> the disk, the heads have already been unloaded.  Loading them again
> takes a relatively long time, killing the performance.  Also, if you
> look up the green drive specs, they are only good for about 100k
> load/unload operations, or a lot less than 2 months unless you do
> something about it.

Thanks John for the explanation and the confirmation that I'm safe. :)

[Tim]

On Sat, 2011-01-01 at 20:30 -0500, John Mellor wrote:
> Its only the green drives that have problems.

Which brings the question:  Are any off-the-shelf drive-in-a-box not
"green drives"?  I haven't seen one, yet.