[mythtv-users] The Bigger... Disk contest, Fall 2007 edition

[David Brodbeck]

On Oct 18, 2007, at 12:50 PM, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 18, 2007 at 12:22:47PM -0700, David Brodbeck wrote:
>>> The SCSI drives will; I've done it.
>>
>> Fair enough, but I don't think valid anymore to assume SCSI = "server
>> class" and non-SCSI = "desktop class."  The Seagate Barracudas have a
>> 24x7 duty cycle, whether they're SAS or SATA.
>
> Well, that's what we use, and we had one decide, about a year into  
> it's
> duty, maybe 2 tops, that if you tried to read a certain range of
> sectors, *it would make the IDE controller drop off line, until
> powercycle*.

Well, if you want to talk about the electrical robustness of the  
interface, I agree IDE is not very good.  Neither is SCSI, though --  
one bad device can bring down all of them on the daisy chain, which  
in the case of SCSI can been up to 15 devices instead of just  
two. ;)  I think SATA's "one drive per port" concept is a good one.

I kind of soured on SCSI after a while because it was so difficult to  
get all the devices to agree on proper termination.  Eventually you  
get tired of fiddling with (and losing) the little resistor packs.   
And you can get yourself in trouble in strange ways with external  
SCSI, even do damage to devices with it.  I once had a tape robot  
that kept failing under warranty.  After a few months it would stop  
talking to the computer and have to be sent in for repairs.  After a  
couple of rounds of this, the tech support folks happened to ask how  
long a cable I was using.  We determined it was too long and I  
swapped it for a shorter one.  The tape drive still didn't work and I  
exchanged it, but I kept the shorter cable in place, and it never  
failed again.  Ironically, the too-long cable was the one that had  
shipped with the drive.