They are HP 10K SAS drives, and yes I had already come to the conclusion its not worth trying to utilise them.

 

To be honest, if you have other servers with the same drives in that are end of warranty etc, then I'd keep them on the shelf as spares for when one dies.

To be honest, if you have other servers with the same drives in that are end of warranty etc, then I'd keep them on the shelf as spares for when one dies.

 

We have instant replacement support and with Hotswap spares in Raid 5 redundancy it seams highly unlikely i will ever need them.

We have instant replacement support and with Hotswap spares in Raid 5 redundancy it seams highly unlikely i will ever need them.

Wait until your warranty runs out and you see the cost of branded drives.

As for RAID 5... that's quite risky these days, because you can only have one drive fail, so the sooner you have a spare available, the better.

 

Is the instant replacement the on site spares or their 2/4 hour support?

Isn't the risk from RAID 5 mainly because with the read error rates on modern drives of 2TB+, you can't guarantee that you won't hit a read error rate during the rebuild? Not so much of a problem on 300GB drives, I wouldn't have thought, particularly if they're SAS.

 

Of course, RAID 5 still sucks for other reasons such as speed etc, but for the size of disk we're talking about here, I wouldn't have thought the reliability aspect was particularly bad.

Isn't the risk from RAID 5 mainly because with the read error rates on modern drives of 2TB+, you can't guarantee that you won't hit a read error rate during the rebuild? Not so much of a problem on 300GB drives, I wouldn't have thought, particularly if they're SAS.

 

Of course, RAID 5 still sucks for other reasons such as speed etc, but for the size of disk we're talking about here, I wouldn't have thought the reliability aspect was particularly bad.

 

If you have n drives in an enclosure then all of them will have had similar read/write, start up cycles, temperature and vibration etc.

As such when one fails, (Due to environment) there's a fairly good chance another will follow shortly after.

 

With a 2TB drive, yes the rebuild time is going to be large, but even with a 300GB drive, if the server is in use, you've got a reasonably good chance of it all going pete tong before the rebuild is finished.

 

Certainly enough to make it worthwhile sticking in an extra drive and going R6 if the data is more than transient.

If you have n drives in an enclosure then all of them will have had similar read/write, start up cycles, temperature and vibration etc.

As such when one fails, (Due to environment) there's a fairly good chance another will follow shortly after.

 

Fair point, I hadn't considered that at all

I Think your all over-estimating the importance of these drives. This is just a data raid the ops system is on another raid and our support agreement means they keep stock of replacement drives to be installed next day at the latest. Our data is backed up by barracuda to a physical backup disc and the cloud (so we can access it remotely even if there is a power cut)  and I take a physical tape back up everyday as a fail safe using Symantec. These drives are surplus to requirements but using them for something else is pointless given that they are SAS. Thanks for all your contributions but you have only confirmed what I was already thinking. Think I might but the cordless drill through them and throw them in the pond to be on the safe side.

I Think your all over-estimating the importance of these drives. This is just a data raid the ops system is on another raid and our support agreement means they keep stock of replacement drives to be installed next day at the latest. Our data is backed up by barracuda to a physical backup disc and the cloud (so we can access it remotely even if there is a power cut)  and I take a physical tape back up everyday as a fail safe using Symantec. These drives are surplus to requirements but using them for something else is pointless given that they are SAS. Thanks for all your contributions but you have only confirmed what I was already thinking. Think I might but the cordless drill through them and throw them in the pond to be on the safe side.

 

Over-estimating/over-thinking is a common trait amongst good IT people, I find

I Think your all over-estimating the importance of these drives. This is just a data raid the ops system is on another raid and our support agreement means they keep stock of replacement drives to be installed next day at the latest. Our data is backed up by barracuda to a physical backup disc and the cloud (so we can access it remotely even if there is a power cut)  and I take a physical tape back up everyday as a fail safe using Symantec. These drives are surplus to requirements but using them for something else is pointless given that they are SAS. Thanks for all your contributions but you have only confirmed what I was already thinking. Think I might but the cordless drill through them and throw them in the pond to be on the safe side.

 

Well you didn't say that...

 

BTW an SDS drill could be fun, but as a laugh, sticking them in a forge is interesting.

This claims to support SAS II disks, although I'm not sure if that is what you have.

 

http://www.ebuyer.com/708940-startech-4-bay-aluminum-trayless-hot-swap-mobile-rack-backplane-for-3-5in-hsb4satsasba

This claims to support SAS II disks, although I'm not sure if that is what you have.

 

http://www.ebuyer.com/708940-startech-4-bay-aluminum-trayless-hot-swap-mobile-rack-backplane-for-3-5in-hsb4satsasba

 

Yeah, but it fits in a chassis and so will still need a SAS card to connect to, which will cost more than the equivalent SATA SSD capacity.

As such not much use :(

 

Plus while the backplane has SAS compatible connectors, I don't see any dual port SAS connectors on the back. You could use a SAS x4 to 4* connector split cable to do the work, but only if they're direct connections and there are no odd chips in the way of the data path.

 

Sure SATA drives work on SAS, but SAS drives do not work over sata.

Edited 19 January, 201610 yr by cheezemonkhai

Take them apart and destroy them that way. Separate the disks from the casting and motors and then destroy the buggers. You can score the media quite easily with simple tools and scrape the surface up bad so a head won't fly over them.. 

 

I'd listen to Mark (cheezemonkhai) as he knows a thing or two about HDDs. I can vouch for his knowledge in this area.....

Take them apart and destroy them that way. Separate the disks from the casting and motors and then destroy the buggers. You can score the media quite easily with simple tools and scrape the surface up bad so a head won't fly over them.. 

 

I'd listen to Mark (cheezemonkhai) as he knows a thing or two about HDDs. I can vouch for his knowledge in this area.....

 

As do you