Re: mixing IDE and SATA hard drives on a FreeBSD system
On May 4, 2005, at 10:15 PM, jason henson wrote: Chuck Robey wrote: David Kelly wrote: On Wed, May 04, 2005 at 03:22:25PM -0500, Andrew L. Gould wrote: I was thinking about putting FreeBSD and swap on the ATA100 IDE hard drive and installing a SATA hard drive for home and database data. Is there any reason I shouldn't mix hard drive types? (I've never messed with SATA before.) I have one PATA with FreeBSD installed, and two SATA striped with gvinum. Swap spread across all 3. No particular problems. The SATA drives are fairly recent models in 160G, the PATA is prior generation in 120G, all Hitachi. The SATA drives seem to handle seeks from multiple processes better than the PATA, better even than might expect from striping. At about 4500 hours of runtime one SATA drive developed a bad block which the drive firmware was not able to automagically substitute. gvinum shut down. I see no reason why a SATA drive should be less reliable than a PATA drive. Also remember back when one could purchase the same drive hardware in either PATA or SCSI, so find it hard to accept the interface makes much difference in reliability. I don't know why it's true... I can state that I've had 3 of them so far, and had troubles with 2, and google is chock full of reports. Further, the info about them being the same as their IDE brethren isn't true, at least, the access rate specifications are higher for SATA drives, in general, as compared to IDE. Least they were the last time I checked, maybe it's changed inthe last 6 months. OTOH, when I first bought mine, I was comparing in my mind with SCSI, not IDE, maybe they *do* compare equally with IDE, is IDE that bad? Certainly, SATA is less reliable thant he scsi drives. Don't compare IDE to SCSI. IDE is home/consumer grade. SCSI is commercial/enterprise grade. Just look at the price differences, because you most certainly get what you pay for with SCSI compared to IDE. **Warning, the following contains anecdotal evidence** I built a new rig for my brother with SATA and it has been perfect. I only have IDE in my slightly older machine which runs great 24/7. But this has just been my experience, as always YMMV. One last thing, I would avoid the first generation of most technology because they tend to still have some bugs. So if you buy SATA don't et the discounted drive, look for a newer model and you should be good. Also checkout storagereview.com Most of the first generation SATA drives were actually PATA (aka IDE) drives with a separate SATA <-> PATA converter added (at the board level). Some newer SATA drives have native SATA interfaces and it is possible that the manufacturers do not make a PATA version of the same drive, but in most cases, SATA drives have PATA brethren and these PATA brethren have the same mechanisms. There are exceptions, and the WD Raptor series of SATA drives are more like SCSI in terms of performance and MTBF numbers, and they were designed for the same market as the lower end enterprise SCSI drives. Chad --- Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC Your Web App and Email hosting provider [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: mixing IDE and SATA hard drives on a FreeBSD system
Chuck Robey wrote: David Kelly wrote: On Wed, May 04, 2005 at 03:22:25PM -0500, Andrew L. Gould wrote: I was thinking about putting FreeBSD and swap on the ATA100 IDE hard drive and installing a SATA hard drive for home and database data. Is there any reason I shouldn't mix hard drive types? (I've never messed with SATA before.) I have one PATA with FreeBSD installed, and two SATA striped with gvinum. Swap spread across all 3. No particular problems. The SATA drives are fairly recent models in 160G, the PATA is prior generation in 120G, all Hitachi. The SATA drives seem to handle seeks from multiple processes better than the PATA, better even than might expect from striping. At about 4500 hours of runtime one SATA drive developed a bad block which the drive firmware was not able to automagically substitute. gvinum shut down. I see no reason why a SATA drive should be less reliable than a PATA drive. Also remember back when one could purchase the same drive hardware in either PATA or SCSI, so find it hard to accept the interface makes much difference in reliability. I don't know why it's true... I can state that I've had 3 of them so far, and had troubles with 2, and google is chock full of reports. Further, the info about them being the same as their IDE brethren isn't true, at least, the access rate specifications are higher for SATA drives, in general, as compared to IDE. Least they were the last time I checked, maybe it's changed inthe last 6 months. OTOH, when I first bought mine, I was comparing in my mind with SCSI, not IDE, maybe they *do* compare equally with IDE, is IDE that bad? Certainly, SATA is less reliable thant he scsi drives. Don't compare IDE to SCSI. IDE is home/consumer grade. SCSI is commercial/enterprise grade. Just look at the price differences, because you most certainly get what you pay for with SCSI compared to IDE. **Warning, the following contains anecdotal evidence** I built a new rig for my brother with SATA and it has been perfect. I only have IDE in my slightly older machine which runs great 24/7. But this has just been my experience, as always YMMV. One last thing, I would avoid the first generation of most technology because they tend to still have some bugs. So if you buy SATA don't et the discounted drive, look for a newer model and you should be good. Also checkout storagereview.com ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: mixing IDE and SATA hard drives on a FreeBSD system
Chuck Robey wrote: I don't know why it's true... I can state that I've had 3 of them so far, and had troubles with 2, and google is chock full of reports. Further, the info about them being the same as their IDE brethren isn't true, at least, the access rate specifications are higher for SATA drives, in general, as compared to IDE. Least they were the last time I checked, maybe it's changed inthe last 6 months. OTOH, when I first bought mine, I was comparing in my mind with SCSI, not IDE, maybe they *do* compare equally with IDE, is IDE that bad? Certainly, SATA is less reliable thant he scsi drives. Deskstar T7K250 Highlights Capacity - 250GB and 160GB Rotational Speed - 7200 RPM *** Interface standard - SATA II 3.0Gb/s (Serial) and ATA Ultra 133 (Parallel) ATA-7 streaming feature set Average seek time - 8.5 ms Same drive, different interface. This has been the case as long as I've been checking out specs. If your drives are that bad, try another manufacturer. Are IDE drives more unreliable? They cost significantly less, spin at lower speeds are are and are a mass-market item. Some of the cost difference is interface complexity, the rest, I'm sure, is that SCSIs tend to manufactured to higher tolerances. Ask owners of an IBM Deskstar 75 how reliable an IDE drive is :-) (Then duck). --Alex ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: mixing IDE and SATA hard drives on a FreeBSD system
David Kelly wrote: On Wed, May 04, 2005 at 03:22:25PM -0500, Andrew L. Gould wrote: I was thinking about putting FreeBSD and swap on the ATA100 IDE hard drive and installing a SATA hard drive for home and database data. Is there any reason I shouldn't mix hard drive types? (I've never messed with SATA before.) I have one PATA with FreeBSD installed, and two SATA striped with gvinum. Swap spread across all 3. No particular problems. The SATA drives are fairly recent models in 160G, the PATA is prior generation in 120G, all Hitachi. The SATA drives seem to handle seeks from multiple processes better than the PATA, better even than might expect from striping. At about 4500 hours of runtime one SATA drive developed a bad block which the drive firmware was not able to automagically substitute. gvinum shut down. I see no reason why a SATA drive should be less reliable than a PATA drive. Also remember back when one could purchase the same drive hardware in either PATA or SCSI, so find it hard to accept the interface makes much difference in reliability. I don't know why it's true... I can state that I've had 3 of them so far, and had troubles with 2, and google is chock full of reports. Further, the info about them being the same as their IDE brethren isn't true, at least, the access rate specifications are higher for SATA drives, in general, as compared to IDE. Least they were the last time I checked, maybe it's changed inthe last 6 months. OTOH, when I first bought mine, I was comparing in my mind with SCSI, not IDE, maybe they *do* compare equally with IDE, is IDE that bad? Certainly, SATA is less reliable thant he scsi drives. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: mixing IDE and SATA hard drives on a FreeBSD system
On Wed, May 04, 2005 at 03:22:25PM -0500, Andrew L. Gould wrote: > > I was thinking about putting FreeBSD and swap on the ATA100 IDE hard > drive and installing a SATA hard drive for home and database data. Is > there any reason I shouldn't mix hard drive types? (I've never messed > with SATA before.) I have one PATA with FreeBSD installed, and two SATA striped with gvinum. Swap spread across all 3. No particular problems. The SATA drives are fairly recent models in 160G, the PATA is prior generation in 120G, all Hitachi. The SATA drives seem to handle seeks from multiple processes better than the PATA, better even than might expect from striping. At about 4500 hours of runtime one SATA drive developed a bad block which the drive firmware was not able to automagically substitute. gvinum shut down. I see no reason why a SATA drive should be less reliable than a PATA drive. Also remember back when one could purchase the same drive hardware in either PATA or SCSI, so find it hard to accept the interface makes much difference in reliability. -- David Kelly N4HHE, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: mixing IDE and SATA hard drives on a FreeBSD system
On May 4, 2005, at 3:27 PM, Andrew L. Gould wrote: On Wednesday 04 May 2005 03:25 pm, Chuck Robey wrote: Andrew L. Gould wrote: My AMD K6-2 computer is in the shop getting upgraded to AMD64. If FreeBSD 5.4 is released next week, the timing couldn't be better. I was thinking about putting FreeBSD and swap on the ATA100 IDE hard drive and installing a SATA hard drive for home and database data. Is there any reason I shouldn't mix hard drive types? (I've never messed with SATA before.) YMMV, but for myself, I notice that SATA is notably less reliable than straight SCSI drives are. Less than Ide also. I don't know why. Thanks, Andrew Thanks for the warning. I just did a google search on "sata reliability" with lots of interesting results. The expected lifespan (MTBF) of a sata is lower than the scsi; but I haven't found any comparisons to ide yet. they should be the same as IDE as almost all the SATA drives use the same mechanisms as their comparable IDE brethren. SATA is just the interface. SCSI drives are different in that the market for the SCSI interface also demands a different mechanism. They could, if they wanted to (and used to) add SCSI interfaces to the same mechanisms as the IDE mechanisms and you'd have a lower SCSI MTBF Chad ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: mixing IDE and SATA hard drives on a FreeBSD system
On Wednesday 04 May 2005 03:25 pm, Chuck Robey wrote: > Andrew L. Gould wrote: > > My AMD K6-2 computer is in the shop getting upgraded to AMD64. If > > FreeBSD 5.4 is released next week, the timing couldn't be better. > > > > I was thinking about putting FreeBSD and swap on the ATA100 IDE > > hard drive and installing a SATA hard drive for home and database > > data. Is there any reason I shouldn't mix hard drive types? (I've > > never messed with SATA before.) > > YMMV, but for myself, I notice that SATA is notably less reliable > than straight SCSI drives are. Less than Ide also. I don't know > why. > > > Thanks, > > > > Andrew Thanks for the warning. I just did a google search on "sata reliability" with lots of interesting results. The expected lifespan (MTBF) of a sata is lower than the scsi; but I haven't found any comparisons to ide yet. Andrew ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: mixing IDE and SATA hard drives on a FreeBSD system
Andrew L. Gould wrote: My AMD K6-2 computer is in the shop getting upgraded to AMD64. If FreeBSD 5.4 is released next week, the timing couldn't be better. I was thinking about putting FreeBSD and swap on the ATA100 IDE hard drive and installing a SATA hard drive for home and database data. Is there any reason I shouldn't mix hard drive types? (I've never messed with SATA before.) YMMV, but for myself, I notice that SATA is notably less reliable than straight SCSI drives are. Less than Ide also. I don't know why. Thanks, Andrew ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
mixing IDE and SATA hard drives on a FreeBSD system
My AMD K6-2 computer is in the shop getting upgraded to AMD64. If FreeBSD 5.4 is released next week, the timing couldn't be better. I was thinking about putting FreeBSD and swap on the ATA100 IDE hard drive and installing a SATA hard drive for home and database data. Is there any reason I shouldn't mix hard drive types? (I've never messed with SATA before.) Thanks, Andrew ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
