[mythtv-users] OT: help selecting drives for server

[David Brodbeck]

On Mon, May 18, 2009 10:28 am, Brian Wood wrote:
> I'd be curious as to why WD doesn't suggest using the cheaper drives for
> RAID
> systems, other than the obvious fact that most RAID systems are used in
> enterprise systems where the user can afford to pay more.

My understanding -- which may be incorrect -- is that the RAID drives
won't try as hard to recover bad sectors.  A large number of retries is
desirable in a standalone drive, but can cause a drive to time out and be
kicked out of a RAID array.  In a RAID situation it's better to just fail
the sector and move on, since the controller will recover the data using
the other drives.