Grex needs to buy a new disk, pronto

Feb 19 04:28 UTC 2007

   Grex has a failing disk at the moment.  I'm pleased to say that
it didn't just crap out as we've had in the past, but it's definitely
sick and we're living on borrowed time.

   This last Saturday I spent time on Grex first making backups of
nearly al the system, and then replaced the failing disk with the
replacement disk we got from Seagate when we had our last disk
disaster.  This replacement was a "certified repaired" disk we got,
which of course was certified bad--in the process of restoring
data to our new disk all sorts of random errors cropped up, and
playing with it more only revealed more weirdness.  At this point
it was getting close to 7pm, so I put the original dying disk
back in service.

   So once again we've managed to skirt around a disk disaster,
at least today.  We need to get a new disk, and soon.

   We can't get an 18G disk, they aren't made any more.  We can
still however get a 36G disk, just like last time, for about $250.
This isn't a bad thing, as the three partitions on the disk are
/tmp (4g), /c (5g) and /var/mail (8g).  Having a 36G disk there
would mean we could have a 24G /var/mail partition, so we could
hold more spam. ;-)

   We've been talking about getting a raid system, so in a way
this is spending money only to change things later, but I think
we don't have much of a choice here.  We need a replacement now,
and given the problems with the lack of /var/mail space, getting
a 36G disk makes a lot of sense.  Add the fact that "certified
repaired" disks are all too often not, getting a new disk is the
most reasonable thing.

   I sent mail to Leeron Kopelman to see if his place still
sells disks, since we've gotten things from him in the past.
If he doesn't Newegg.com has them for $250.

   We need to act on this in the next day or two.  We're
being given extra time here.  When we get a replacement I'll
take time off from work to install it if I have to.

response 2 of 26:

Feb 19 13:33 UTC 2007

Thanks Steve for spending so much time, and for being willing to take time
off to make sure we stay running!

response 4 of 26:

Feb 19 16:12 UTC 2007

That sounds like a good idea to me. I am fully in support of that

response 6 of 26:

Feb 19 16:26 UTC 2007

Regarding #3, #4; Is there a reason why either of you disagree with #1?

response 8 of 26:

Feb 19 17:35 UTC 2007

    Dan has a most excellent idea.  I am abashed to say that I had
forgotten all about the /b partition.  I'm used to thinking of /b
as the picospan code, rather than a partition for users.

   With that, I think Dan is right and we have the space to make
the alt partitions usable for other things.  The /tmp space would
be 1/4 the size, but I think we can live with that for the time
being.  /var/mail would be within a few percent of its original
size, and moving /c to /b is about the same thing.

   Thanks Dan -- I think we can do this.  Let me do work work
for a bit as I ponder this; if it didn't work out we can always
get a new disk.

response 10 of 26:

Feb 19 21:11 UTC 2007

$250 for 18G sounds excessive to me, even for Scuzzy.
Best Buy has hard drives on sale this week:

    160GB Westerd Digital EIDE or SATA, $59.99
    320GB WD (probably EIDE) for $109.99
    250GB Seagate for $99.99
    Instant savings, no rebates involved.

I've been happy personally with Western Digital.

Don't modern motherboards have built-in EIDE controllers? Get a
160GB drive from Best Buy, put it in, and move the whole system
to /dev/hda[1-n].

response 12 of 26:

Feb 21 14:39 UTC 2007

If y'all don't mind me asking...  $250 *IS* outrageously expensive.. why don't
you hit ebay for a replacement drive?  Thre are *MANY* listings for 18 gig,
15k RPM U160 drives on ebay.  

response 14 of 26:

Feb 22 04:03 UTC 2007

Interesting, but believable.  Eric, do you have a cite?

response 18 of 26:

Feb 24 23:59 UTC 2007

   The study Eric is talking about compares the normal disks to 
"extended duty" disks.  IBM's travelstar disks in laptops were
like that.  The bottom line is that all of them are getting
better, such that the differences between those two flavors
didn't amount to much.

   However, the type of disk does matter.  You can see it today
in the length of the warranty offered.  IDE disks are typically
1 year warranty.  Their rock-bottom price coupled with ever
increasing performance meant something had to give, and that
was, sadly, quality.  SCSI disks are a lot more, offer much
better transfer rates (well, they used to) and had better
warranties.  The newest kind of disk, SATA are interesting:
they are cheap, have some pretty decent transfer rates, and
have a failure rate in the field of about 0.5%.  I'm trying
to get that study so I can post it.  SCSI disks of the kind
we have are still the fastest disks, in that they rotate at
15K rpm and are ultra-320 speed, for 300Mb/sec rates.  But
they cost a *lot* more, and I'm not sure that Grex's next
generation of disks needs to be SCSI any more.  Time
marches on.

   We're now off of the defective sd2 disk, using other
partitions that wern't used.  Thanks to Dan for that
idea, as now we have a little breathing room without
spending money on another scsi disk.

response 20 of 26:

Feb 25 04:10 UTC 2007

Whoops, here's the pointer to the Seagate page:
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/before_you_buy/speed_consideration
s/

response 22 of 26:

Mar 27 13:46 UTC 2007

Yep.  Hardware mirroring with hot spares, and good OS support would be
the way to go.  Speed increase on reads.  Auto reliability.  Cheap.

I like 3btech as well.

response 24 of 26:

Apr 2 18:10 UTC 2007

I guess that depends on if it's a good reputation, and how severe
the bargain is.