In article , payer3389
@mypacks.net says...

Canuck57 wrote:
On 28/04/2011 6:53 AM, Harryk wrote:
I'm putting together a new server and was about to order four 2-terabyte
Western Digital "Green" enterprise hard drives for it.

I've never really thought about why these drives are called "green,"
other than they are supposed to use less power than "non-green" drives.
Obviously, they do this by shutting the drive down when it isn't being
accessed.

Apparently, though, when you use "green" drives in a server, you end up
with a dramatically high Load/UnLoad Cycle Count, and this can lead to
premature ejac-, er, drive failure.

There is a way to turn off the "green" on the WD drives, by adjusting
the drive's idle timer to lower the Load/Unload cycle rate, but it is a
pain in the ass, involving preparing a DOS boot disk, installing the
drive in a computer, and running a program. Not difficult, but I don't
have a "Windoze" computer anymore that can boot up into DOS. :)

I'm guessing the "green" drives of other vendors will behave similarly.

Sheesh, I never learned any of this stuff in my college English classes.
Even an O.F. like me is not too old to learn.

Failure of drives is exclusive to the (lack of) quality of the drives.
How much power they use is not a factor. If anything, lower power, less
heat and slower access times for less vibration should actually be better.

I would use Seagate drives. And forget DOS/MS products. Use Linux.
Ubuntu or Fedora. No way to turn off green, they run slower, consume
less juice by design.

Use HW RAID on the boot disks if the mobo supports it.


Oh, just for your edification, I just ordered four Seagate Constellation
ES 2 TB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s 64 MB Cache 3.5 Inch Internal Hard Drives,
Model # ST32000644NS.

The new server runs under LINUX, I believe. The company selling them has
a nice interface for it. As for RAID, I'm still deciding what flavor to
use. The vendor has something called Synology Hybrid RAID, about which I
have just started to read. Crikey, it is dull stuff.

RAID 5 or RAID 10. Or just buy storage on the Internet. If your purpose
is backup and recovery then having it at home is not what you want. You
can't access it when you go somewhere else.

BAR wrote:
In articlesrKdnQox1YQ3MiTQnZ2dnUVZ_hCdnZ2d@earthlink .com, payer3389
@mypacks.net says...
Canuck57 wrote:
On 28/04/2011 6:53 AM, Harryk wrote:
I'm putting together a new server and was about to order four 2-terabyte
Western Digital "Green" enterprise hard drives for it.

I've never really thought about why these drives are called "green,"
other than they are supposed to use less power than "non-green" drives.
Obviously, they do this by shutting the drive down when it isn't being
accessed.

Apparently, though, when you use "green" drives in a server, you end up
with a dramatically high Load/UnLoad Cycle Count, and this can lead to
premature ejac-, er, drive failure.

There is a way to turn off the "green" on the WD drives, by adjusting
the drive's idle timer to lower the Load/Unload cycle rate, but it is a
pain in the ass, involving preparing a DOS boot disk, installing the
drive in a computer, and running a program. Not difficult, but I don't
have a "Windoze" computer anymore that can boot up into DOS. :)

I'm guessing the "green" drives of other vendors will behave similarly.

Sheesh, I never learned any of this stuff in my college English classes.
Even an O.F. like me is not too old to learn.
Failure of drives is exclusive to the (lack of) quality of the drives.
How much power they use is not a factor. If anything, lower power, less
heat and slower access times for less vibration should actually be better.

I would use Seagate drives. And forget DOS/MS products. Use Linux.
Ubuntu or Fedora. No way to turn off green, they run slower, consume
less juice by design.

Use HW RAID on the boot disks if the mobo supports it.

Oh, just for your edification, I just ordered four Seagate Constellation
ES 2 TB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s 64 MB Cache 3.5 Inch Internal Hard Drives,
Model # ST32000644NS.

The new server runs under LINUX, I believe. The company selling them has
a nice interface for it. As for RAID, I'm still deciding what flavor to
use. The vendor has something called Synology Hybrid RAID, about which I
have just started to read. Crikey, it is dull stuff.

RAID 5 or RAID 10. Or just buy storage on the Internet. If your purpose
is backup and recovery then having it at home is not what you want. You
can't access it when you go somewhere else.


Every single work, photo, music, & movie file on the server will be
accessible to me from "somewhere else."

Harryk wrote:
BAR wrote:
In articlesrKdnQox1YQ3MiTQnZ2dnUVZ_hCdnZ2d@earthlink .com, payer3389
@mypacks.net says...
Canuck57 wrote:
On 28/04/2011 6:53 AM, Harryk wrote:
I'm putting together a new server and was about to order four
2-terabyte
Western Digital "Green" enterprise hard drives for it.

I've never really thought about why these drives are called "green,"
other than they are supposed to use less power than "non-green"
drives.
Obviously, they do this by shutting the drive down when it isn't
being
accessed.

Apparently, though, when you use "green" drives in a server, you
end up
with a dramatically high Load/UnLoad Cycle Count, and this can
lead to
premature ejac-, er, drive failure.

There is a way to turn off the "green" on the WD drives, by adjusting
the drive's idle timer to lower the Load/Unload cycle rate, but it
is a
pain in the ass, involving preparing a DOS boot disk, installing the
drive in a computer, and running a program. Not difficult, but I
don't
have a "Windoze" computer anymore that can boot up into DOS. :)

I'm guessing the "green" drives of other vendors will behave
similarly.

Sheesh, I never learned any of this stuff in my college English
classes.
Even an O.F. like me is not too old to learn.
Failure of drives is exclusive to the (lack of) quality of the drives.
How much power they use is not a factor. If anything, lower power,
less
heat and slower access times for less vibration should actually be
better.

I would use Seagate drives. And forget DOS/MS products. Use Linux.
Ubuntu or Fedora. No way to turn off green, they run slower, consume
less juice by design.

Use HW RAID on the boot disks if the mobo supports it.

Oh, just for your edification, I just ordered four Seagate
Constellation
ES 2 TB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s 64 MB Cache 3.5 Inch Internal Hard Drives,
Model # ST32000644NS.

The new server runs under LINUX, I believe. The company selling them
has
a nice interface for it. As for RAID, I'm still deciding what flavor to
use. The vendor has something called Synology Hybrid RAID, about
which I
have just started to read. Crikey, it is dull stuff.

RAID 5 or RAID 10. Or just buy storage on the Internet. If your purpose
is backup and recovery then having it at home is not what you want. You
can't access it when you go somewhere else.


Every single work, photo, music, & movie file on the server will be
accessible to me from "somewhere else."

Not if your house burns to the ground.

On 4/28/11 8:53 AM, Harryk wrote:
I'm putting together a new server and was about to order four 2-terabyte
Western Digital "Green" enterprise hard drives for it.

I've never really thought about why these drives are called "green,"
other than they are supposed to use less power than "non-green" drives.
Obviously, they do this by shutting the drive down when it isn't being
accessed.

Apparently, though, when you use "green" drives in a server, you end up
with a dramatically high Load/UnLoad Cycle Count, and this can lead to
premature ejac-, er, drive failure.

There is a way to turn off the "green" on the WD drives, by adjusting
the drive's idle timer to lower the Load/Unload cycle rate, but it is a
pain in the ass, involving preparing a DOS boot disk, installing the
drive in a computer, and running a program. Not difficult, but I don't
have a "Windoze" computer anymore that can boot up into DOS. :)

I'm guessing the "green" drives of other vendors will behave similarly.

Sheesh, I never learned any of this stuff in my college English classes.
Even an O.F. like me is not too old to learn.


For someone who says he doesn't want to share info in rec.boats, you
sure seem to share every aspect of your life, except your "New"
Imaginary boat, just like you didn't share info on your old Imaginary
Lobster Boat. Now the boats you actually did own, you took photos of
everything, including a photo or your hour meter to show everyone how
much you used it in the first month.

wrote:
On Thu, 28 Apr 2011 08:53:18 -0400,
wrote:

I'm putting together a new server and was about to order four 2-terabyte
Western Digital "Green" enterprise hard drives for it.

I've never really thought about why these drives are called "green,"
other than they are supposed to use less power than "non-green" drives.
Obviously, they do this by shutting the drive down when it isn't being
accessed.

Apparently, though, when you use "green" drives in a server, you end up
with a dramatically high Load/UnLoad Cycle Count, and this can lead to
premature ejac-, er, drive failure.

There is a way to turn off the "green" on the WD drives, by adjusting
the drive's idle timer to lower the Load/Unload cycle rate, but it is a
pain in the ass, involving preparing a DOS boot disk, installing the
drive in a computer, and running a program. Not difficult, but I don't
have a "Windoze" computer anymore that can boot up into DOS. :)

I'm guessing the "green" drives of other vendors will behave similarly.

Sheesh, I never learned any of this stuff in my college English classes.
Even an O.F. like me is not too old to learn.

I imagine when they say "DOS disk" they really are talking about
loading W/D Data Lifeguard tools from a Dr DOS disk. It is self
contained and does not depend on what your normal OS is.
You are just booting it.
You have the same deal with MaxBlast on Maxtor drives or SeaTools on
Seagate drives. The install disk is a self loader. They use Dr DOS
because it can handle NTFS drives right out of the box and the license
is cheaper.
This can also partition, format and clone your drives a lot easier
than Windoze Disk Manager.

That's pretty much it...I decided against these drives, though, and went
with four "non-green" enterprise drives.