On 2 feb 2010, at 16.26, David Dyer-Bennet wrote: > I'm pretty doubtful that the hardware differs from what I can buy from > Newegg or whatever *IF* I buy the same enterprise-grade drive model (WD > S25 or RE-4, say, rather than Caviar Blue) (I don't know what WD drives, > if any, are currently qualified for use in any Sun products.) Just to be > clear, are you asserting that? Or are you only asserting that the drives > that get qualified are not the cheap drive models most easily found at > your handy corner PC store? (I have less trouble believing they might > have non-standard microcode.)
I don't know if this is true anymore, or even if it has ever been, but I have read that after production the drives are classified depending on surface quality, vibrations, heat from bearings and other issues that could shorten service life. The better drives are said to be sold to a higher price to those who are willing to pay, like enterprise system manufacturers. The mid class drives to partners/integrators/system manufacturers that keep a track record and will stop buying from you if you don't keep up to some standards. The low class drives are sold to the rest of us through the cheap channels. Again, I don't know if this is true anymore, or if it has ever been. I maybe would have disregarded it as a silly rumor if it wasn't for the lower-quality, buggy, error-prone, data-loss-prone firmware that they ship in the drives to the mass market. I'd *love* to here the truth about this. /ragge _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
