do some drives have issue with RAID in general?

shunx · Post by **shunx** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 6:01 pm

I am trying to go software RAID in Linux but read this: "WD is still having the compatibility issue with EVERY non-RAID edition model if used in RAID... and compatibility issue with RAID edition model used in non-RAID." viewtopic.php?t=51688

The drive I was considering is WD6400AAKS. Any comments?

xan_user · Post by **xan_user** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 9:37 pm

I wish I had read this before mucking around with raid.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=116

Nothing more fun than losing your controller and HAVING to wait for a back ordered replacement for 3 weeks.

KnightRT · Post by **KnightRT** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 1:53 am

I absolutely recommend the link from Xan. As with a lot of things, the rule with RAID is that if you have to ask, it's not for you.

That said, WD drives are just fine in a RAID. The only major difference between the RAID edition and the ordinary version is the Time Limited Error Recovery setting. RAID drives have TLER enabled and set to a short value so the controller won't drop the drive when it takes too long rereading a spot with an error. Non-RAID drives will keep trying much longer.

shunx · Post by **shunx** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 1:55 pm

xan_user wrote:Nothing more fun than losing your controller and HAVING to wait for a back ordered replacement for 3 weeks.

You could have tried Linux or something like FreeNAS instead. No hardware to buy, and you could have had the array back and running in no time. I just set up a RAID 5 array in Ubuntu. It's easy to do and I could move the array to any PC. Total cost was under one dollar (a blank CD-R for OS install).