Re: [9fans] Recovering a venti from disk failure



erik quanstrom wrote:
Various studies seem to indicate failure rates are highly
correlated with drive model, vintage and manufacturer.
Assuming a RAID is built from similar disks, when one fails
the others are more likely to fail.

while it is true that some disks vintages are better than others, when
one drive fails, the probability of the other drives failing has not
changed. this is the same as if you flip a coin ten times and get ten
heads, the probability of flipping the same coin and getting heads, is
still 1/2.

i think this corelation gives people the false impression that they do
fail en masse, but that's really wrong. the latent errors probablly
happened months ago.
Yes but if there are many latent errors and/or the error rate
is going up it is time to replace it.

maybe. the goggle paper you cited didn't find a strong correlation
between smart errors (including block relocation) and failure.

This is a good idea. We did this in 1983, back when disks
were simpler beasts. No RAID then of course.

even a better idea back then. disks didn't have 1/4 million
lines of firmware relocating blocks and doing other things to^w
i mean for you.

- erik



And - lest we forget - a RAID array actually has a higher statistical chance of failure, and a *lower* MTBF than a single drive. Simple math.

What we gain is a reduced risk of *unrecoverable* damage, not fewer failures, per se.

Bill



.



Relevant Pages

  • Re: RAID array for home
    ... for speed of data access and redundancy. ... RAID 1 is duplication, and there should be no speed improvement. ... If one disk fails you ... And this assumes your controller hasn't copied the cr&pped version to the second drive too, or that the power spike didn't take out both drives at the same time. ...
    (uk.comp.homebuilt)
  • Re: raid - final leat expensive config confirm
    ... * RAID 1 is no substitute for having backups - it protects against single ... RAID drives do fail. ... succession so if / when a drive fails, ... of some throw away data on it), then shutdown, power off, pull out the power ...
    (microsoft.public.win2000.hardware)
  • Re: RAID 1 remote diagnostic
    ... and if it fails, have it send you an e-mail ... Do the same thing off the remote machine, hitting the RAID drive. ... I know the real deal hot-swappable drives have lights on ...
    (alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt)
  • Re: RAID support different size hard drives
    ... If only one fails and you replace it before a second one fails, yes, you are ... SuperGumby [SBS MVP] wrote: ... The drives should not only be the same size but the same geometry ... supporting configuring different size hard drives. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)
  • Re: iPod authorization
    ... I'm convinced that if a mirror drive in my raid array ... > fails, I'll notice. ... What happens when two drives fail within minutes of each other if you're ...
    (comp.sys.mac.apps)