On Thu, 15 Jan 2004, Alvin Oga wrote: > i "claim" that one should just buy better drives ... > than to monitor for it to fail > ( buy it brand new from the local pc store ) > ( vs letting the ups/fedex gorillas toss it onto the shelf/floor > ( during transport/deliveries > > - different disks have different degree of success > in its machines/environment > > - i always add 1 fan per 7200rpm disk for cooling that puppy... > way better than letting that disks run hot > spend $3-$10now to save 100GB of data in 6months/years > > haven't had 7200rpm disks go bad except for those bad > "ibm deathstars" ( deskstar ) made in thailand or hungry > > - i use seagate, maxtor, wd ... 10GB - 300GBs...
Thanks for the information. I also have my hard drives cooled (in this case, each hard drive has three fans blowing across it.) I also buy my hard drives locally and generally use Western Digital or Maxtor. These drives are great; however, _any_ drive will fail eventually. I'm just wondering if accessing /dev/hda and /dev/hdb when they're in a software RAID (/dev/md) is possible when using a tool like smartctl to retrieve the SMART information from each drive. Even with all the cooling I have currently in the system, I've had drives fail. I would like them monitored so that I can have a new drive ready before the old drive dies. Using RAID mitigates the problem to some extent, but it's not a complete solution. I would test this out myself except that I have only one software RAID system and it's in 24/7 production right now, so I don't really want to mess with it without knowing exactly what will happen. Thanks. -- Robert -- Robert James Kaes --- Flarenet Inc. --- (519) 426-3782 http://www.flarenet.com/consulting/ * Putting the Service Back in Internet Service Provider * -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]