[mythtv-users] 1TB+ drive recommendation?

Mark Knecht markknecht at gmail.com
Tue Mar 2 18:14:21 UTC 2010


On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 3:41 PM, Brian Phillips <brian.phillips at gmx.net> wrote:
> Mark Knecht wrote:
>> I have a WD 1T Drive and like it a lot. It's fast and quiet.
>>
>> Note that the WD 1t+ Drives are all using 4K sectors so make sure you
>> start your partitions on 8 sector boundaries or you'll pay dearly in
>> terms of speed. All the tools still assume the sectors are 512B which
>> isn't true anymore.
>
> Are you sure?  The EADS packages continues to lack the gigantic warning
> paragraph mentioning the WD Align tool and Advanced Format.  I think only
> the EARS drives have that paragraph on their label.

No, I am absolutely NOT sure about that.

None the less, you waste a max of 7 512 byte sectors by making sure
you are at least aligned to 4K, and believe me, the performance hit if
the drive really turns out to be 4K sectors is immense. (anywhere from
3:1 to 10:1 depending on what you are doing.)

Good luck with whatever choice. It's all a bot of a shot in the dark.
Most drives are good. All drives go bad. RAID5 maybe? ;-)

>
> It seems to me EADS continues to use 512 byte sectors.  Why would they not
> put a warning about "advanced format drives"?  Even the AV-GP drive is
> missing it.  I'm assuming lack of paragraph means no 4k sectors.
>
> As for the original question, I'll be getting a WD Green drive for my next
> drive.  My seagates (1.5 TB and 500 GB) have been firmware issue free, but
> they are so blazing hot at 7200 rpm that one of them registered a SMART high
> of 61 C.  That's the very top of the spec, but still much hotter than I'd
> like.
>
> If you have sufficient cooling, your options are wide open (WD Black,
> Seagate 7200.12, etc) but if you're packing your backend drives into a
> mini-tower case, it's probably best to get a cooler drive in the WD Green.
>
> Brian

gandalf ~ # hdparm  -tT /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
 Timing cached reads:   11838 MB in  2.00 seconds = 5922.80 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  314 MB in  3.01 seconds = 104.19 MB/sec
gandalf ~ #

Here's some SMART data from a WD 1T EARS series. The system is new so
there's not much time on the drive at this point...

gandalf ~ # smartctl -a /dev/sda
smartctl version 5.38 [x86_64-pc-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model:     WDC WD10EARS-00Y5B1
Serial Number:    WD-WCAV55464493
Firmware Version: 80.00A80
User Capacity:    1,000,204,886,016 bytes
Device is:        Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is:   8
ATA Standard is:  Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is:    Tue Mar  2 10:09:38 2010 PST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x82) Offline data collection activity
                                        was completed without error.
                                        Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status:      (   0) The previous self-test routine completed
                                        without error or no self-test has ever
                                        been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection:                 (19800) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:                    (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
                                        Auto Offline data collection
on/off support.
                                        Suspend Offline collection upon new
                                        command.
                                        Offline surface scan supported.
                                        Self-test supported.
                                        Conveyance Self-test supported.
                                        Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
                                        power-saving mode.
                                        Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01) Error logging supported.
                                        General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time:        (   2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time:        ( 228) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time:        (   5) minutes.
SCT capabilities:              (0x3031) SCT Status supported.
                                        SCT Feature Control supported.
                                        SCT Data Table supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE
UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   200   200   051    Pre-fail
Always       -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   129   128   021    Pre-fail
Always       -       6525
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age
Always       -       19
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail
Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x002e   200   200   000    Old_age
Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age
Always       -       475
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age
Always       -       0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age
Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age
Always       -       18
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age
Always       -       5
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   196   196   000    Old_age
Always       -       12398
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   121   117   000    Old_age
Always       -       26
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age
Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age
Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   200   200   000    Old_age
Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age
Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   200   200   000    Old_age
Offline      -       0

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining
LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Extended offline    Completed without error       00%       388         -
# 2  Short offline       Completed without error       00%       376         -

SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
 SPAN  MIN_LBA  MAX_LBA  CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
    1        0        0  Not_testing
    2        0        0  Not_testing
    3        0        0  Not_testing
    4        0        0  Not_testing
    5        0        0  Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
  After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.

gandalf ~ #


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