[ale] Best 2TB drives to extend my RAID array?

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Thu, 2011-03-03 at 09:46 -0500, Derek Atkins wrote:
> My 1.8TB RAID(10) array is close to filling, and I'm looking to buy
> some additional drives to extend it.  I was thinking that I'd buy a
> pair of 7200RPM 2TB drives to effectively double my raid size, which
> should last me several years at the current usage rate.  Anyone have
> recommendations for currently-available drives?  All else bring equal
> I'm thinking about buying this drive:
> 
>   http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145473
> 
> Has anyone else been in the market for large drives and/or have
> opinions?

Just keep in mind that HDDs have the same failure rates (in terms of the
physical platters) as similar drives of smaller capacity in the last
several years.  That means that the probability that you will encounter
significant errors is vastly increased.

An error in the physical space that 1 sector took up in a 120 GB drive
is likely to be an error that sits in the space of a great many sectors
on a 2 TB drive.  It's unlikely that the spare sectors area is much
larger than in older drives, as well, though I cannot say for sure
either way.

Just plan for failure on drives that big and you should be fine.  How do
you backup such a large amount of data on a regular basis?

	--- Mike
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