Hey guys, Thus far I've installed 9 160gig Seagate and 4 250gig Western digital harddrives. Thus far, the failure rate on all drives have been quite high. SATA is very fast, but the failure rate has been quite disappointing.
2 western digital 250's have either been unwritable or did not detect. Out of the seagate 160gig hdds, 2 power on but werent detected by the bios, 1 was full of bad sectors, and the last one didn't let the computer power on (short circuit). Has anyone else had similar experiences with the PATA drives > 120? Cheers, Steve -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Alexander Samad Sent: Monday, 29 March 2004 2:14 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [SLUG] Is SATA a viable upgrade for aging Linux workstations? On Mon, Mar 29, 2004 at 01:31:15PM +1000, Malcolm V wrote: > On Sun, 2004-03-28 at 17:10, Andrew Lau wrote: > > Hey everyone, > > > > I'm stuck at a crossroads right now. My main Athlon 1.2 Ghz workstation > > with a Promise UDMA5/100 controller is probably on its last legs before > > retirement (its given me 3 years of loyal service -- looking to squeeze > > out 2 more). Seeing as it needs a new harddrive anyway, I'm really > > wondering whether paying an extra $20-$25 per harddrive and an another > > $70 for a Silicon Image Serial ATA Controller [1] is worth it. LKML > > posts also seem to give the general impression that overall SATA driver > > support under Linux is still preliminary. > > My parents wanted a new computer so I used them as guinea pigs for a > software raided SATA Gentoo install. It had its moments but it is > running fine now. > > For the best "bang for your buck", I'd recommend sticking with PATA, > (2 cheap, smaller drives) and software raiding them under Linux. The > ability to mix and match the raid types per partition is a bonus, and as > most on-board/cheap raid is actually software raid (with poorly > supported Linux drivers) the only loss is raid performance in Windows > (if you're dual-booting). I think maybe the only other thing is that SATA handles multples drives on the same bus better than PATA. > > Cheers, > Malcolm V. > > -- > SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ > Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html > -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
