Introduction & A Few Questions

[Zavyre]

Hello all,
I’ve been lurking around these forums off and on for a few years but never spoke up. I have learned Quite a bit about some Snap Servers setup and hardware through my own Troubleshooting and from this forum. So I figured it was about time I started imparting what knowledge I can when needed. I have not been posting on many forums much in the last few years, as, well time usually does not permit (hmm … BS … I can make 5-10 of available time in my day to help out.) But in general I do like to figure out the answers to problems myself; makes that moment when you finally get the project working the way you want all that much sweeter But I’ve noticed a trend in many forums lately (hardware troubleshooting, OCing, & android dev communities) where a few very knowledgeable people are just (understandably) getting burnt out. We can’t lose these people as resources, it would just make life that much harder. So here’s to hoping somebody has a question I can answer , and maybe help out a bit.

Figured I’d give a bit of a background of my experiences with Snap Servers first
(You can just skip this part if you like, I’m sure nobody really cares, but you never know)

A bit of Background … Back in 2006 I found a very distressed Snap 4100 just sitting on the curb on my way home from work one day. I stopped and approached the owner to see if he was just throwing it out with his trash. He told me his work got rid of it and that it did not work, but I could have it, if I wanted to waste my time trying to fix it. I figured it would be an interesting challenge so I tossed it in my trunk. After getting it home I popped off the top to find a PSU & MB; that’s it! No RAM, No HD’s, No Sleds, not even a CMOS bat. OK this will be interesting. Scrounging through my boxes of miscellaneous compy parts I got a few sticks of PC100/133, a battery, and 2 matching WD120’s. Tested the 120’s in a rig to make sure they were good ... hooked everything up and power it on. It took me a bit to find the NAS on the network and I could not login to it; but it was far from a dead unit. After reading a bit about it on these forums I got the info I needed (TY by the way) to get it up and running. Found a copy of SnapOS 4.0.860 and 2 more WD120’s from a friend, flashed the OS and amazingly the server was up and running in a few days. I took the unit to work and used it up until recently as a personal media/file server for me and my employees. While transfer rates were pretty slow it worked well for streaming music and what not. The server however started acting very weird (stuttering while streaming, and hanging on large file directories.) over the last many months to the point we just stopped using it. After having to talk some with employees and remove GB’s of music and personal files from the 3 workstations I figured I’d better fix that old Snap. The biggest and oddest issue is while you can transfer files to the snap, you will not be able to get them off of it. The file transfer just times out unless you do it 1 (maybe 2) file at a time, and anything over 15MB you can just forget about. Thankfully I did a backup of the server in Jan of 2012 so not all is lost and most of the data is replaceable or just not that important. So I got what I needed/could off the server, restored factory settings, and rebuilt the raid. The server is still acting stupid tried 4 diff DIMMS ranging from 64MB to 256 it was still doing the same thing … looked over the FB1 & FB2 areas on the board again ... it’s a factory repair 003 board. I also tried it as 4 individual drives and still the same thing. So feeling as I defiantly got good use out of a supposedly dead unit that I have just some time and spare parts invested into ... Think it’s time to retire the old girl.

Still needing a solution to my employee data problem I started looking for a new NAS. Not wanting spend very much I ran across a Snap 4500 with 4 250’s in it for $90. Seller claimed it was a working unit but did not accept returns. Knowing that some people would consider it a working unit if it just posted, I was a bit Leary of it. But the photos of it looked like it was brand new. So a supposedly tested working 4500 for $90 plus $30 in shipping ... hmmm. After kicking it around for a few days I figured I would take a chance. It paid off! A like New (I mean no scratches, dust, or discernable signs of ever being hooked up new), in the box with everything but the manual, Snap 4500 shows up a week later. And as expected it posted … and then just hung there indefinitely. It would not recognize the second set of drives or go any further then the loading the SCSI Card BOIS. After letting it sit for at least 30min while I worked on something else I tried it a few more times; noda. I decided to remove the Add-on SCSI Card and booted again. This time going straight into the BIOS (noticing this time that the CMOS Bat had died). Looking over the BIOS I also noticed the only 2 HD’s were showing up, the probability of 2 drives dying in a unit in this condition is Highly improbable so I started worrying that the controller board might be bad. But for giggles I figured I’d test all the drives, so I put a post-it on each drive labeling them 1-4 and started moving the possible bad drives around (yes this will piss off and existing raid but I didn’t care about any of the data on it, if any). All the drives worked as suspected. So wtf. Luckily I had a new CR2032 my desk draw; so I shut the server down and swapped the dead battery out, booted, restored defaults and set the time/date, saved settings and rebooted it again this time without the add-on card. And it worked just fine.

The odd thing about this unit is that it looks like it’s has 2 distinct IDE controllers, as after completing the initial post fining 2 drives it loads another IDE interface (I’m assuming) and then finds the other 2 drives (I have not really looked into the specifics what is actually going on here as I need it running sooner than later, maybe some can tell me). I fortunately or unfortunately forgot to put the drives back in order before I rebooted (oops) but it booted none the less to the “You have to manage the server from the web interface screen.” Interesting and Sweet it works … powering down the server I decided to put the SCSI card back in and see if it was the possible cause of the first couple of boot hangs. After reordered the drives back to their original positions I tried it again and voila it worked. As I did not want to mess with finding the server on an odd address, I finally found the reset button and was good to go. The server had Version 3.X on it which surprised me as my old 4100 had a newer OS on it then that. Any as many of you know finding a solid copy of the 5.2 GSU file is not an easy task, but is ultimately doable. So after the upgraded OS (very simple to do) and a few hiccups with a couple of the drives not reading there usable size at all (probably do to booting with the drives moved around) (FYI for those that do not know – just take the problem drive out and use a good partition manager to wipe all partitions and the remake one big new one, Quick format, and plug back in). All is good and man this thing smokes that 4100 (as well it should). But at ~40+ db it is far from quite, one of my employees has already dubbed it the Hair Dryer (I’m just waiting for him to rename it in windows ... I‘m sure it’s just a matter of time).

Ok so a bit long winded of a read but someone might enjoy it.

Now to the questions.

1. I find it very hard to believe that GuardianOS does not have a simple way of salvaging or undeleting files. I must just be not seeing it as web and forum searches just aren’t pulling up any answers. Is there and extension or something that can be used to recover files that were deleted other then snapshot. Every server I have used has had some nature of a recycle bin up until now. Including the Snap 4100 (iirc been a bit sense i needed to do it). I have not played with SS yet as I really have no need for that nature of a backup on this server. But I do need to be able to undo deleted files, especially in the beginning as we are populating and sorting the new server.

2. Has anyone found any lower db fans that work well for this model server? I am presently running it without the 2 smaller hi-pitched fans and it’s only running marginally hotter well within the specs for a P4. I have also found a few different models of the CPU fan that would probably work just fine at ~ half the noise volume. Also considering using the 2 front fans from the now retired 4100 in place of the 2 aux fans in the 4500. Was mainly curious if anyone has tried to quit one of these units down with success. If not I’ll report back with my results after/went I get around to messing with it.

3. Crude, I can't remember the third oh well I'll edit it later.

I'll try and post a pic later of my fix for lack of HD trays in the 4100. I think it will give some of you a good chuckle, but hey it worked for ~6 years like that.

[Phoenix32]

First of all, WELCOME to the mix... I do hope some join in with you...


I am a hardware guy, so I will leave the operation stuff to the software and IT guys.

As for the hardware, unless you plan to use Tape Backup, you really do not need the SCSI card. Noise? Well, you obviously can swap some fans around and so on and so forth (all kinds of hacking can be done),but remember it is a 1U unit and they can get hot inside under loads. I am fairly certain you would rather mod, based on your style, but the best solution for the noise of a 4500 is to not use one, LOL. When I need lower noise, I use a 4400 (or 410), they are MUCH much quieter.

[Zavyre]

Simple fix for 4100 with no HD trays. This setup worked out very nicely, I was kinda surprised how well it actually did at keeping the drive nice and snug while allowing decent air flow.

[blue68f100]

Welcome to ProCooling Snap Server threads.........

I'm know a little about both, hardware and software, just enough to be dangerous.

These 4500's are noisey the reason I run them in a cabinet to kill the noise. Cooler your ambient air the quieter they run. They also run hot when used like Phonix32 said. 1 smaller fan is mainly are used to cool the HD's, the other ram if I recall. The blower for the CPU, make sure the heat paste is good, mine run in the upper 80's low 90's. They do not like to be shut down improperly since they cache files so use a UPS to handle power hick-ups.

I do not know of way to recover deleted files without recovering from backups. You may want to create a temp folder to use for trash if you want recovery.

With the GOS there are a lot of cmds that can be run through SSH, that are not on the gui pages. This is actually the best way to do some of the admin, most Unix cmds work. But this can be very dangerous if you don't know what your doing.

The thing that will cause you the most problems is how the GOS handles privileges.

[Zavyre]

Thanks for the info,

A Fourth question ... RAM Upgrade ... Seems that I don't have any PC2100/2700 ECC REG RAM in my surplus compy crap boxes. And with 1 GB sticks @ ~$19 it would not cost much to max out the memory. The question is would I see much if any improvement with only 4 computers accessing the server. Mainly just streaming music or video.

I remembered the 3rd question; it was advice on the raid setup. Basically to use raid 5 with a spare or 6; as if I need to replace any drives I'm just going to convert it to SATA.

I decided rebuilt the raid this morning as a raid 6. The second parity is prob more important at this point then the extra 250 GB and a hot spare just seems kinda wasteful. The main reason for the raid 6 is that I have had raid 5 loose 2 drives within ~4 hours in the past. Probably very uncommon but the it seemed the second failure was do to the HD's being very heavily tasked while rebuilding. We were using tape backups at that time (which I'm not now) so it was not a huge deal. Other then having to send someone out to buy 4 new drives at local prices, and the day lost restoring. But that was on a company server who could afford to spend that kind of cash. This is more a personal server for the employees data so I'm not using any backups save them backing up their own folders to their Portables.

As to the Noise question. I hooked up all the fans again as there is no HD cooling fan other then the small fan that pulls air through the front over the HD's and then over the ram. The second small fan is for cooling the Add-on cards which I forgot to pull while I was in there DOH. As the server is next to my desk now in the Print Shop the noise is not really that bad. With the machines on and idling the server does not sound that loud. And when the machines are running ... well you can't even here it when standing right next to it lol.

Then there is the file recovery / Recycle Bin. After a bit of reading and monkeying around I got the Snapshot Extension working VERY nicely as a recycle bin of sorts. Very similar to Samba and the older SnapOS (never really used it on the older OS but it is there). I have blocked out 10% of the raid leaving me 415GB (138 GB for each employee) of useable space and 46 GB for Snapshots. I have the Snapshot set to a 1 hour interval and duration of 2 days. I'll have to report back on tweaking the interval and duration after I run it for a while. But so far in the test I've run it looks to be a most acceptable solution.

------------------------------

For those who have not played with the Snapshot extension much here are a few pointers for setting it up to easily recover files.

Firstly lets hope when you setup your volume that you either left the snapshot at the default 20% setting for at least gave your self some percentage of the raid to work with. If not you will need to remake the volume. You can check the amount of recovery of space available under ... Storage / Snapshot / Snapshot Space ... in the Web UI.

Next you will need to set up a Share.
- Set your Path & Name.
- Then you will want to click on "Advanced Share Properties" and select just the protocols you need and the most importantly select "Create Snapshot Share". Depending on the knowledge level of the end users you may want to rename the Snapshot folder to "Sharename_Restore", Rescue, Recycle_Bin, or something other then "Sharename_Snap". You can hide this folder and create links to it but I find it easier to leave it visible.
- Click "OK" to make the Share.
- Set your access rights.

Now you need to setup a schedule for Snapshot.
- So go to storage and then Snapshot and "Create Snapshot"
- You can rename it if you like but other then maintenance the name is basically moot.
- Next click "Create Snapshot Later (or schedule recurring snapshots)" and set the start date and time (default is fine as it is the closest to immediately).
- Click "Recurring (creates multiple snapshots that run according to the following repeat interval):" and set the "Repeat Interval". I used 1 hour. So every hour the Snap will take a image of the share. Any deleted files will be stored in the previos images. Now this is far from a recycle bin but still quite handy.
- Next set the duration. I have the duration set to 2 days but I might lower it depending on how quickly the Snapshot volume fills up (Still Tweaking this a bit)
- For this use of Snapshot the "Recovery File" is not needed so leave it unchecked.
- Click Ok

Now when you look in the root of you server in Window Networking you will see the second Snapshot folder. In the event you delete a file that you needed at lets say 3:33 PM; as long as it was there at 3:00 PM your covered just go to the folder called "latest" or the dated & time stamped (24 hr time with seconds) folder. Find the folder where the file was previously stored and just copy and paste it out of the Snapshot.

Now if you Delete a file at 3:33 PM and it was not there at 3:00 PM ... Sorry it's gone unless you wish to run a recovery program to find it (which could take a while). Not Perfect but still very handy.

------------------------------

After looking over this post the instructions might serve better as it's own tread ... Let me know what you all think.

[Phoenix32]

Originally Posted by Zavyre

A Fourth question ... RAM Upgrade ... Seems that I don't have any PC2100/2700 ECC REG RAM in my surplus compy crap boxes. And with 1 GB sticks @ ~$19 it would not cost much to max out the memory. The question is would I see much if any improvement with only 4 computers accessing the server. Mainly just streaming music or video.

I remembered the 3rd question; it was advice on the raid setup. Basically to use raid 5 with a spare or 6; as if I need to replace any drives I'm just going to convert it to SATA.

You do get some gains with 2GB RAM, but anything beyond that is diminishing gains IMO.

I am not a fan of RAID 6 in a 4 drive setup. IMO RAID 6 is for larger arrays. If you want the extra redundancy in a 4 drive setup, I would say RAID 10 would be better. You get the same space as the RAID 6 and better performance, and far less work on the CPU doing all that parity.

[Zavyre]

Thanks Phoenix32,
I reset the raid to raid 10 as the write transfer rates were really bad ~6.4 mb/s. The problem is the write transfer rates on the raid 10 is only ~ 8.5 mb/s. With read speeds of ~50 mb/s. The System Status reports a "1000 Mbps / Full Duplex". Could it be the 512 MB RAM?

[Phoenix32]

Whoa! That is not right at all. Your xfer speeds should be between 30 to 60, both read and write.

The memory can slow things down a bit, but should not be near that much.

You sure your LAN cable is not ^$%#& up?

Maybe a flakey drive? I would say flakey memory maybe as well but you usualy get lock-ups with that. Something's not right.

David? Ideas?

[blue68f100]

If you only have 512 meg of ram that's way to low for the current GOS. It was fine for version 3 and older. You need a min of 1gig, and it's preferred to have the same mfg and size in all used slots.

Your transfer speeds should be a min of 30 like Andy said.

Make sure you don't have some old hardware knocking your buss speed down on your network. Some old switches do not like adding a 10/100 to the works.

[Zavyre]

Yeah doubtful on the bad memory as it would hag and generally misbehave which it's not. Possibility of a bad drive is there, as I did not check each individually before making the raid.



Thought about it but was a bit pressured for time. I did check the one that had the unknown size issue with and it passed OK in separate system (it's #4).

I know of no way to check the drives integrity in while in a raid so I guess I need to move all the info back off the server and take drives 1-3 out. Check each drive individually then put them back in and boot it up. Shut it back down and and then remove and check the #4 and check it again. Correct?

Grrr this is just going to be a pain.

As for the 10/100's on the network; it's quite possible that there are still some here but not on my switch. And my old 4100 is a 10/100 and I don't think it ever really messed with the switches. I have a Dell PowerConnect 2824 going out to a fiber switch which I think goes straight to the main server room. After that I'd have to ask the IT guy here (who is never around lol) but there is a fair amount of antiquated equipment still in use in other parts of the complex.

Think I'm just going to take it home tonight and test it on a simple switch and see what happens. Here's hoping that it's not a switch problem as I can't fix that.

I'll order (2) 1GB PC2100 DDR 266MHz ECC Registered DIMMs Monday as that should be more than sufficient for this unit. And yes I'm going to run just the 2 new sticks as I too have noticed that some servers have odd issues with mixed sizes of ecc ram.

[Zavyre]

Well it was a error issue with drive 3. It's not functioning 100% correctly. SMART reports no errors but when I reconditioned it but it still seems to be having delay issues

So I rebuilt the array into a 3 drive raid 5 and put the iffy drive into slot 4 as a spare.
It will function OK for an emergency backup but then I'll need 2 drives pronto.
The good news is that transfer rates are solid in at 50+ for both R/W now. Still going to do the memory upgrade as I imagine it will help keep them up there when 4 compys are hitting it.

On a side note the 4100 is back up and running as well but it's drives are is worse shape but functioning at least ... rocking a good 5 mb/s LOL gotto love 10/100's. It's still getting retired as I just can't find a use for it.

Now the main question is whether to just bit the bullet and do a sata conversion or deal with buying used 1-2 250 IDE's and hoping there good. It just does not make sense to mae to pay >$60 for a new 250.

Phoenix32 you don't by any chance still have 4 of those converters for sale do you
I need to look over newegg for some inexpensive drives and see what this will cost.

[Phoenix32]

I had a hunch you were going to find a bad drive...

To do a SATA conversion or not is only a question you can answer. We all have our opinions on this, but that is all they are, opinions.

Yes, I still have a set of those adapters if you want some.

[Phoenix32]

Originally Posted by Zavyre

Phoenix32 you don't by any chance still have 4 of those converters for sale do you

They take a couple days to get set up, modified, and tested, so let me know.

[Phoenix32]

Originally Posted by Zavyre

Phoenix32 you don't by any chance still have 4 of those converters for sale do you

I was kind of hoping you would jump when you asked (I had some time to spare). I now have a bunch of projects on the burners, so it will take me a bit of time to get set up and then modify and test some adapters.

[Zavyre]

Well as it stands I had to use the money I was going to put into this NAS into a Compy for the GF's daughter, she just started college. Kinda a bummer there on the NAS project, not the college

On a similar note the I retested all the drives while building/fixing some new compys; and all the drives checked out save a few relocated sectors on one of them. So I rebuild the raid as a 10 and it's been running for over a week with no errors... weird. I do still need to get the ram, as any transfers approaching and over a gig are pretty slow, 10 - 18 MB/s, but anything under 500 mb is at 50+. I assume this could be linked to the RAM, but the network here at work is kinda wonky for the lack of a better term.

So until I get over $500 saved up again, I'm going to have to put off the SATA conversion, which is a def bummer.

The main issue I seem to be posed with right now is the need for a NAS at home. I dismantled the one I had because I needed some of the parts to finish 3 other computers for GF's kids and a friends kids (man, help out one, and they all bitch that the others is better). It was a FreeNAS setup on a P4 with a promise raid controller and (4) 2 TB barracuda's (will never use those in a raid again, bad failure rate, chirping drives, but they were cheap at the time and use to have spares). I was never very pleased with the performance of that setup, but it also doubled as my firewall (endian) and a media server so it was handy to have.

So I updated the DD-WRT router to replace the firewall. I'm OK with that until I can find a freebie on Craigslist to use for endian (not even sure I will bother, but I might get bored).

But the NAS MUST get replaced. I only have one of the 2 TB drives left and it's sitting in may main with (2) 1 TB's being mirrored with Goodsync and they are way to close to full. Burned some data to Bluray but ran out of discs. As it stands I'm not losing to much sleep over it but, data lose in this setup is never completely out of my head (annoying).

So any advice on a 4 bay Snap that is quiet enough (19-20 dba ish) and would not break the bank (under a grand with drives, looking to buy in about 6 weeks). Was also curious if I SATA converted a older Snap unit how well the WD AV drives would work it. I need about 4-6 TB of storage, but might be able to justify 6-9 with the price of the AV drives. We have been using the PS3's (3 in the house) to stream video apposed to burning it; allot more frequently. To the point of not wanting to go back to discs. So the media folders are getting quite Massive.

I was looking at possibly getting a Synology DS412+ with (4) 3TB Western Digital AV-GP's. But at $1400 right now, that's more then I wanted to spend. I do how ever like a lot of the features of the Synology OS.

Any thoughts are wanted and welcome.

Oh yeah ... Nice to have the forum back up .. was wondering if it was coming back up there for a while.

[Phoenix32]

Originally Posted by Zavyre

Well as it stands I had to use the money I was going to put into this NAS into a Compy for the GF's daughter, she just started college. Kinda a bummer there on the NAS project, not the college

Yup, know the feeling...

Originally Posted by Zavyre

On a similar note the I retested all the drives while building/fixing some new compys; and all the drives checked out save a few relocated sectors on one of them. So I rebuild the raid as a 10 and it's been running for over a week with no errors... weird.

Uh, relocated sectors is a failing drive. Replace the drive ASAP...

Originally Posted by Zavyre

So until I get over $500 saved up again, I'm going to have to put off the SATA conversion, which is a def bummer.

Been there, done that...

Originally Posted by Zavyre

The main issue I seem to be posed with right now is the need for a NAS at home. I dismantled the one I had because I needed some of the parts to finish 3 other computers for GF's kids and a friends kids (man, help out one, and they all bitch that the others is better).

Originally Posted by Zavyre

But the NAS MUST get replaced. I only have one of the 2 TB drives left and it's sitting in may main with (2) 1 TB's being mirrored with Goodsync and they are way to close to full. Burned some data to Bluray but ran out of discs. As it stands I'm not losing to much sleep over it but, data lose in this setup is never completely out of my head (annoying).

Well, my many years of experience has taught me at least one valuable lesson over and over. The probability of failure is directly proportional to the lack of backups. I think it is one of the Murphy's Laws. And sadly, it has always held true.

Originally Posted by Zavyre

So any advice on a 4 bay Snap that is quiet enough (19-20 dba ish) and would not break the bank (under a grand with drives, looking to buy in about 6 weeks). Was also curious if I SATA converted a older Snap unit how well the WD AV drives would work it. I need about 4-6 TB of storage, but might be able to justify 6-9 with the price of the AV drives. We have been using the PS3's (3 in the house) to stream video apposed to burning it; allot more frequently. To the point of not wanting to go back to discs. So the media folders are getting quite Massive.

Any thoughts are wanted and welcome.

I have not tested any with a sound meter, but in my opinion, a Snap 4400 or Snap 410 would be the right ticket for you. I myself prefer the 4400 as I think it is a more solid unit and a bit quieter. These are 4 drive GOS units and are quiet enough for my living room serving up my media files.

I have a 4400 I was going to put up for sale later this fall (since I have two SanBloc S50 units) if you are interested. It has 4 x 500 GB WD AV drives in it and GOS 5.2. If you are interested, shoot me a reasonable offer.

[Zavyre]

I myself prefer the 4400 as I think it is a more solid unit and a bit quieter.

I find it funny that the 4400 is that much quieter then the 4500. It looks like they use the same Delta fan, which can't be the case. I looked at replacing my 1012VH with a 1012L but I'm not sure if it will be enough to cool it. And the power requirement between the two are radically different.

I have a 4400 I was going to put up for sale later this fall (since I have two SanBloc S50 units) if you are interested. It has 4 x 500 GB WD AV drives in it and GOS 5.2. If you are interested, shoot me a reasonable offer.

That unit is a definite possibility; and answered my question about the AV's. I assume it's still the IDE interface with the 500's. They will get replaced with 2(ish) TB SATA's. I'll have to see what I can come up with here in a few weeks.

Uh, relocated sectors is a failing drive. Replace the drive ASAP...

Yes and no, the relocated sectors have not changed in a week or so it may last for while(none critical data in this raid). I have a line on a Maxtor 250 locally for 35 bucks, so I'll swap it out in a bit. I do have a Samsung F1 that has had the same 32 (iirc) sectors relocated for the last 2 years .. the drive is still solid .. unsure if it was just a minor defect in manufacturing or what but I have seen many drives last quite some time with small numbers of relocated sectors. I have also seen odd differences in programs reading smart data, that I don't even remotely understand.

Well, my many years of experience has taught me at least one valuable lesson over and over. The probability of failure is directly proportional to the lack of backups. I think it is one of the Murphy's Laws. And sadly, it has always held true.

Agreed, I was considering getting a 3TB USB as a inexpensive backup for the NAS's but I have not looked into if a GOS unit can make use of it or not. If not well time to buy more Blurays (but that's like 30+ discs to burn .. not really thinking that's the best option).

There's a lot of data I can dump but again Murphy's Law kicks in ... I'll dump 200 GB of HD images and one of those people will call me needing there computer fixed again. And then it's time to start from scratch again LOL. I also find it laughable that when I rebuild & tweak a computer for someone and give them the restore images 6/10 people will misplace the media within a very short period of time.

[Phoenix32]

I hear ya, but trust me, the 4400 is a lot quieter than a 4500. The fan is similar, but a different model. Also, while it spins up pretty good when booting, once it gets up and running, that fan slows way way down.

So make me an offer. If the offer is decent enough, I might consider throwing in a set of adapters.

BTW, do not count your chickens on the AV drives before they have hatched. That is in a 4400 (which seems to be less sensitive to timing issues). MANY, and I do mean MANY, of the Non RAID or Non Red WD drives, including the AV drives, do not work well in RAID arrays. This set works great in this unit, but I cannot vouch for others units or other WD AV drives.

JMO, but in my experience, if you have ANY relocated sectors, the drives life is limited after that.

I used to do the same thing. I gave people restore disks, then they would lose them. After a long time with that headache, I came up with a solution. Simple. With restore disks they could do the restore themselves. If they needed me to do it, it was cheap. If they needed me to to do it, and they had lost the restore disks, it got expensive. Funny how they started keeping track of the disks after that. Now before you tell me about the friends and family that you do it for free, I used to do that too. But if they lost the disks, I told them I wouldn't do it free anymore. They learned too.

[Zavyre]

Yeah I'm still a little leery of the odd (non disclosed) spindle speeds and timing in a raid is kinda important. But the WD Reds have gotten such varying reviews I'm not sure I want to go that route either ... Which leaves the RE4's, Constellation's, & Ultrastar's (Samsung seems to not want to play in this arena any longer). Non of which are cheap, but all are good investments. While I have seen way to many Cuda's fail, anyone know how the Cuda XT's are fairing. (see off semi topic rambling moved to bottom) I know some people are using the WD blacks in raids with good success but for the price diff the RE4's are not that much more.

JMO, but in my experience, if you have ANY relocated sectors, the drives life is limited after that.

Overall I agree, but exp has shown it's not a forgone conclusion it will die soon. It should be monitored to see if it's an isolated occurrence or not. Not sure why I'm fighting this point ..... Loss of sectors = Bad. Your basically gambling from that point forward.

It's going to be a bit until I can make an offer, but I am interested.

As for the charging friends & family, I use to not do it, but for a while now it's a pretty low figure but just enough to make it so not everyone is constently bugging me. And I started taping the restore disks (2 to a sleeve) to the inside of the cases. But only for the family and friends. Others get recharged; I love those because I'll still charge you for the full rebuild even if I have the image. Not my fault you lost the media.


(Rambling cont.)
I got a 750 Momentus XT a while back and have tested/used it in many diff scenario's. It's a rather interesting/impressive little drive. Runs very cool even with it's rather large power requirements. It out performed (2) striped seagate 7200.2's in my laptop; and is currently being used in a CFW PS3 with great success. Yes it's very much a waste of a hybrid SATA 3 but the 8 GB SSD does actually make a noticeable difference in load times when put head to head with a another CFW 7200 PS3. Tho the main benefits are it's size & lack of heat in the PS3. Only real issue with the Momentus XT is I have not been able to get an image restored to it that functions. Guessing that hybrid's and imaging software are not going to workout that well.

[Phoenix32]

The whole hard disk question is one of concern to me as well, and I am sure others.

From all appearances, reading user reviews and so forth, here is where it looks like we stand...

WD decided to throw all of us wanting RAID solutions under the bus unless we were willing to pay a very serious premium for RAID Edition drives (and now RED also). They did this on purpose because it is nothing more than a timing issue in firmware that you used to be able to patch, but they stopped allowing it.

Maxtor always sucked with much higher failure rates, but now belongs to Seagate.

Seagate used to have okay drives, but ever since they bought out Maxtor, their failure rates have increased by leaps and bounds. The customer reviews have taken very deep spiral downwards.

Hitachi drives are rated by people as running much hotter. Anyone who has been in electronics very long knows that Heat = Higher Power being used which in turn means more cooling and noise, but even more importantly shorter life spans. This appears to be held true when reading many reviews of these drives.

That leaves Samsung, which -WAS- a good option. I have used them and they were great, but do not let the mass high ratings on places like newegg fool you. Dig deeper. You will find that Seagate quietly bought them out a while back. They are now Seagate drives with Samsung labels. If you look at only the more recent reviews of the drives, you will notice a very clear trend. They are getting the same reviews as the Seagate/Maxtor drives were/are. The high rating is based on a very large base of much earlier reviews when they were Samsung.

And just to pour heaping amount of salt and iodine to the wounds, the Tailand floods a year or so ago drove HD prices through the roof. Then of course, the HD manufacturers are milking it for all it's worth, even though they have been back to full production for some time now and prices are still nowhere near where they were before the floods.

All in all, IMO, the HD market sucks VERY BAD right now, has for a while, and does not appear to have any light at the end of the tunnel. I am VERY negative towards the hard drive market these days. It is all bad, to even worse... So bad, I have considered giving the Hitachi drives a try out of desperation as the least of evils.

I would welcome as many opinions as possible to this topic on current hard drives.

[Terry Kennedy]

Originally Posted by Phoenix32

The whole hard disk question is one of concern to me as well, and I am sure others.

All in all, IMO, the HD market sucks VERY BAD right now, has for a while, and does not appear to have any light at the end of the tunnel. I am VERY negative towards the hard drive market these days. It is all bad, to even worse... So bad, I have considered giving the Hitachi drives a try out of desperation as the least of evils.

I would welcome as many opinions as possible to this topic on current hard drives.

The hard drive manufacturers simply don't care about end user customers who only buy a few drives. They sell the vast majority of their drives to OEM customers, who get the customizations and warranty periods they ask for.

I used to be one of those customers - I'd get a monthly visit from my Seagate rep who would give us the firmware updates we'd asked for, talk about future products to gauge our interest, and swap any defective drives for us.

As an end user or reseller of smaller quantities of drives, I can't get that level of support from any drive manufacturer these days. I eventually managed to get a communication channel going with WD, but it took many months of effort and a statement that I was going to publish my unsatisfactory experience on a major tech site. That finally got someone's attention and they had the right person in WD contact me. After shipping about 200 drives back and forth, I finally got drives that worked reliably.

But that isn't something the average user should have to do, in order to get a working drive. Part of the problem is the brief life cycle of a given product these days - the drive is usually obsolete before the warranty period ends. Normally, very little is changed in the design between the first revenue shipment and the last drive produced. In past times, you might see a change to better bearings and use of higher-density platters during a particular model's lifetime.

We'll have to see how WD reacts to Seagate's position that "green" drives are not worthwhile. I've posted here earlier that I'd like to see a single drive family with a utility that lets the user select economy / standard / RAID profiles, as well as allowing the user to order the drive with whatever warranty they want (1 / 3/ 5 years).