[SWLUG] Re: Intermittent Hard disk problem

[Bryn Reeves]

On 13:29 Thu 11 Mar     , Rhys Sage wrote:
> 
> Is Western Digital perhaps not a good brand of disk? I
> had a DOA Maxtor Fireball 3 40GB once, which prompted
> me to RAID my server. Looks like I'll be RAIDing my PC
> too!
> 
> Rhys
> 

I can't say whether or not this is a general thing, but I have had 
problems with a couple of WD 40GB drives I used to use in a server 
with a raid 0 (striped) array. They were running on a promise 
fasttrack IDE raid controler, and over 3 years moderate use 
developed perhaps a half dozen bad sectors. 

This shouldn't be a problem with modern drives and SMART, but thanks
to a botched SMART implementation on the promise card, and a 
hardware issue that causes the controller to lock up if it encounters
a bad sector, it was a pretty unsatisfactory situation.

BTW, these drives were also in caddies, the pricier metal ones, and I
found them to be unreliable if they were swapped regularyl.

Cheers,

Bryn.