Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:

I think the 4k sector size on WD20EARS (for instance) is supposed to 
add more ECC information but I'm not sure how this will affect the 
10^14 error rate. I think the manufacturers need to work a bit more on 
it, I don't see how these drives can be used in single drive 
configuration with the current 10^14 value.

I don't have experience with any other drives than the WD20EADS but 
they develop read errors at a rate higher than any other drive I've 
experienced before....

We are thinking about buying a large number of WD2002FYPS RE4-GP for a 
large array (raid-6)

Anyone knows if the error rate is so high on those drives too?
Do they also use 4k sectors? Mikael, how do you find this out?

Is the 4k sectors a RMW emulation as written in
    http://lwn.net/Articles/322777/
or Linux sees them really as 4k block devices?
And if it's the second, were there side effects on this?

Thank you