Re: OT: silent data corruption reading from hard drives

On Wed, 01 Aug 2012 19:56:50 -0500
Stan Hoeppner [off-list ref] wrote:

On 8/1/2012 7:02 AM, matt wrote:

quoted

Is silent data corruption like this simply to be expected when using cheap
commodity hardware?

When you pay less than 1/4th the price of one drive for the controller
card directing all your drives, is it really necessary to ask this question?

Two large pizzas cost more than a Syba/Rosewill/Koutech/etc SATA card.
The pizza is consumed in one night, maybe some for breakfast.  Would you
trust a day worth of pizza with your RAID?  With your data?

One tank of gas for the average car today costs $50, the same as two of
these SATA cards.  The gas is gone in a week or two.  You want the cards
to run for 2-4 years.

Your drives cost anywhere from $400-$1000, yet your controller maybe
$50.  Do I really need to say any more?  Spend $150-250 on a decent
SAS/SATA controller such as an LSI or Adaptec and you won't have to
worry about this kind of thing.

While you're at it also don't forget to get yourself some quality
Ethernet cabling, you don't want any data corruption on your LAN, do you
http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Link-Cable/dp/tech-data/B000I1X6PM/ref=de_a_smtd

It's not a matter of "just pay more and all your problems will be solved".

There are some really crappy controllers even in the "enterprise" range
(e.g. those using the mv_sas driver). And there's a lot of $15 models giving
zero problems whatsoever (e.g. the ahci-compliant Marvell 88SE912x, JMicron
JMB36x). 

Also, if you only use the mdadm software RAID, getting an enterprise hardware
RAID controller is truly a waste of money, unless you really need the extra
port density.

-- 
With respect,
Roman

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Stallman had a printer,
with code he could not see.
So he began to tinker,
and set the software free."