Thanks much Scott, I still don't know what you are talking about -- my $3000 to $800 laptops all never needed to swap any drive.
But yeah, I got hit on all of them when I was in china, by the china web virus that no U.S. software could do anything [then a china open source thing did the job] So, without the swapping HD concern, what should I do??? z at home still confused ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott Laird" <sc...@sigkill.org> To: "JZ" <j...@excelsioritsolutions.com> Cc: "Toby Thain" <t...@telegraphics.com.au>; "Brandon High" <bh...@freaks.com>; <zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <peter.k...@sun.com>; "Orvar Korvar" <knatte_fnatte_tja...@yahoo.com> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 6:20 PM Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? > You can't trust any hard drive. That's what backups are for :-). > > Laptop hard drives aren't much worse than desktop drives, and 2.5" > SATA drives are cheap. As long as they're easy to swap, then a drive > failure isn't the end of the world. Order a new drive ($100 or so), > swap them, and restore from backup. > > I haven't dealt with PC laptops in years, so I can't really compare > models. > > > Scott > > On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 2:40 PM, JZ <j...@excelsioritsolutions.com> wrote: >> Thanks Scott, >> I was really itchy to order one, now I just want to save that open $ for >> Remy+++. >> >> Then, next question, can I trust any HD for my home laptop? should I go >> get >> a Sony VAIO or a cheap China-made thing would do? >> big price delta... >> >> z at home >> >> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott Laird" <sc...@sigkill.org> >> To: "JZ" <j...@excelsioritsolutions.com> >> Cc: "Toby Thain" <t...@telegraphics.com.au>; "Brandon High" >> <bh...@freaks.com>; <zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" >> <peter.k...@sun.com>; "Orvar Korvar" <knatte_fnatte_tja...@yahoo.com> >> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 5:36 PM >> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? >> >> >>> Today? Low-power SSDs are probably less reliable than low-power hard >>> drives, although they're too new to really know for certain. Given >>> the number of problems that vendors have had getting acceptable write >>> speeds, I'd be really amazed if they've done any real work on >>> long-term reliability yet. Going forward, SSDs will almost certainly >>> be more reliable, as long as you have something SMART-ish watching the >>> number of worn-out SSD cells and recommending preemptive replacement >>> of worn-out drives every few years. That should be a slow, >>> predictable process, unlike most HD failures. >>> >>> >>> Scott >>> >>> On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 2:30 PM, JZ <j...@excelsioritsolutions.com> wrote: >>>> >>>> I was think about Apple's new SSD drive option on laptops... >>>> >>>> is that safer than Apple's HD or less safe? [maybe Orvar can help me on >>>> this] >>>> >>>> the price is a bit hefty for me to just order for experiment... >>>> Thanks! >>>> z at home >>>> >>>> >>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Toby Thain" >>>> <t...@telegraphics.com.au> >>>> To: "JZ" <j...@excelsioritsolutions.com> >>>> Cc: "Scott Laird" <sc...@sigkill.org>; "Brandon High" >>>> <bh...@freaks.com>; >>>> <zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <peter.k...@sun.com> >>>> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 5:25 PM >>>> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? >>>> >>>> >>>>> >>>>> On 7-Jan-09, at 9:43 PM, JZ wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> ok, Scott, that sounded sincere. I am not going to do the pic thing >>>>>> on >>>>>> you. >>>>>> >>>>>> But do I have to spell this out to you -- somethings are invented >>>>>> not >>>>>> for >>>>>> home use? >>>>>> >>>>>> Cindy, would you want to do ZFS at home, >>>>> >>>>> Why would you disrespect your personal data? ZFS is perfect for home >>>>> use, >>>>> for reasons that have been discussed on this list and elsewhere. >>>>> >>>>> Apple also recognises this, which is why ZFS is in OS X 10.5 and will >>>>> presumably become the default boot filesystem. >>>>> >>>>> Sorry to wander a little offtopic, but IMHO - Apple needs to >>>>> acknowledge, >>>>> and tell their customers, that hard drives are unreliable >>>>> consumables. >>>>> >>>>> I am desperately looking forward to the day when they recognise the >>>>> need >>>>> to ship all their systems with: >>>>> 1) mirrored storage out of the box; >>>>> 2) easy user-swappable drives; >>>>> 3) foolproof fault notification and rectification. >>>>> >>>>> There is no reason why an Apple customer should not have this level >>>>> of >>>>> protection for her photo and video library, Great American Novel, or >>>>> whatever. Time Machine is a good first step (though it doesn't often >>>>> work >>>>> smoothly for me with a LaCie external FW drive). >>>>> >>>>> These are the neglected pieces, IMHO, of their touted Digital >>>>> Lifestyle. >>>>> >>>>> --Toby >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> or just having some wine and music? >>>>>> >>>>>> Can we focus on commercial usage? >>>>>> please! >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> ----- Original Message ----- >>>>>> From: "Scott Laird" <sc...@sigkill.org> >>>>>> To: "Brandon High" <bh...@freaks.com> >>>>>> Cc: <zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org>; "Peter Korn" <peter.k...@sun.com> >>>>>> Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 9:28 PM >>>>>> Subject: Re: [zfs-discuss] ZFS + OpenSolaris for home NAS? >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>>> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 4:53 PM, Brandon High <bh...@freaks.com> >>>>>>> wrote: >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 7:45 AM, Joel Buckley <joel.buck...@sun.com> >>>>>>>> wrote: >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> How much is your time worth? >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Quite a bit. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> Consider the engineering effort going into every Sun Server. >>>>>>>>> Any system from Sun is more than sufficient for a home server. >>>>>>>>> You want more disks, then buy one with more slots. Done. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> A few years ago, I put together the NAS box currently in use at >>>>>>>> home >>>>>>>> for $300 for 1TB of space. Mind you, I recycled the RAM from >>>>>>>> another >>>>>>>> box and the four 250GB disks were free. I think 250 drives were >>>>>>>> around >>>>>>>> $200 at the time, so let's say the system price was $1200. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> I don't think there's a Sun server that takes 4+ drives anywhere >>>>>>>> near >>>>>>>> $1200. The X4200 uses 2.5" drives, but costs $4255. Actually adding >>>>>>>> more drives ups the cost further. That means the afternoon I spent >>>>>>>> setting my server up was worth $3000. I should tell my boss that. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> A more reasonable comparison would be the Ultra 24. A system with >>>>>>>> 4x250 drives is $1650. I could build a 4 TB system today for *less* >>>>>>>> than my 1TB system of 2 years ago, so let's use 3x750 + 1x250 >>>>>>>> drives. >>>>>>>> (That's all the store will let me) and the price jumps to $2641. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Assume that I buy the cheapest x64 system (the X2100 M2 at $1228) >>>>>>>> and >>>>>>>> add a drive tray because I want 4 drives ... well I can't. The >>>>>>>> cheapest drive tray is $7465. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> I have trouble justifying Sun hardware for many business >>>>>>>> applications >>>>>>>> that don't require SPARC, let alone for the home. For custom >>>>>>>> systems >>>>>>>> that most tinkerers would want at home, a shop like Silicon >>>>>>>> Mechanics >>>>>>>> (http://www.siliconmechanics.com/) (or even Dell or HP) is almost >>>>>>>> always a better deal on hardware. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> I agree completely. About a year ago I spent around $800 (w/o >>>>>>> drives) >>>>>>> on a NAS box for home. I used a 4x PCI-X single-Xeon Supermicro >>>>>>> MB, >>>>>>> a >>>>>>> giant case, and a single 8-port Supermicro SATA card. Then I >>>>>>> dropped >>>>>>> a pair of 80 GB boot drives and 9x 500 GB drives into it. With >>>>>>> raidz2 >>>>>>> plus a spare, that gives me around 2.7T of usable space. When I >>>>>>> filled that up a few weeks back, I bought 2 more 8-port SATA cards, >>>>>>> 2 >>>>>>> Supermicro CSE-M35T-1B 5-drive hot-swap bays, and 9 1.5T drives, all >>>>>>> for under $2k. That's around $0.25/GB for the expansion and $0.36 >>>>>>> overall, including last year's expensive 500G drives. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> The closest that I can come to this config using current Sun >>>>>>> hardware >>>>>>> is probably the X4540 w/ 500G drives; that's $35k for 14T of usable >>>>>>> disk (5x 8-way raidz2 + 1 spare + 2 boot disks), $2.48/GB. It's >>>>>>> much >>>>>>> nicer hardware but I don't care. I'd also need an electrician (for >>>>>>> 2x >>>>>>> 240V circuits), a dedicated server room in my house (for the fan >>>>>>> noise), and probably a divorce lawyer :-). >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Sun's hardware really isn't price-competitive on the low end, >>>>>>> especially when commercial support offerings have no value to you. >>>>>>> There's nothing really wrong with this, as long as you understand >>>>>>> that >>>>>>> Sun's really only going to be selling into shops where Sun's support >>>>>>> and extra engineering makes financial sense. In Sun's defense, this >>>>>>> is kind of an odd system, specially built for unusual requirements. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> My NAS box works well enough for me. It's probably eaten ~20 hours >>>>>>> of >>>>>>> my time over the past year, partially because my Solaris is really >>>>>>> rusty and partially because pkg has left me with broken, unbootable >>>>>>> systems twice :-(. It's hard to see how better hardware would have >>>>>>> helped with that, though. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Scott >>>>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>>>> zfs-discuss mailing list >>>>>>> zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org >>>>>>> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >>>>>> >>>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>>> zfs-discuss mailing list >>>>>> zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org >>>>>> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >>>>> >>>> >>>> >> >> _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
