MindSupport
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Has anyone used the Western Digital 3TB Caviar Green Hard Drives with a RAID controller that sees the drives in CentOS 5.5?
Hello,
I recently purchased four of the Western Digital 3TB Caviar Green Hard Drive to put in a DB server. I have tried to configure CentOS 5.5 with both an Areca ARC-1210 and a HighPoint RocketRAID 2710 both to no correct function. The ARC-1210 sees the drives as 800GB drives so that doesn't work and the HP RocketRAID sees the drives allows me to configure them in a RAID just will not see the RAID when I am installing CentOS. I have looked and looked but HP does not have drivers for Cent 5.5 for this RAID card so I ask... Has anyone used these drives and configured a RAID and had the OS see the Drives correctly? Please let me know what RAID cards you used if so.
Thank you,
Phil
I recently purchased four of the Western Digital 3TB Caviar Green Hard Drive to put in a DB server. I have tried to configure CentOS 5.5 with both an Areca ARC-1210 and a HighPoint RocketRAID 2710 both to no correct function. The ARC-1210 sees the drives as 800GB drives so that doesn't work and the HP RocketRAID sees the drives allows me to configure them in a RAID just will not see the RAID when I am installing CentOS. I have looked and looked but HP does not have drivers for Cent 5.5 for this RAID card so I ask... Has anyone used these drives and configured a RAID and had the OS see the Drives correctly? Please let me know what RAID cards you used if so.
Thank you,
Phil
The rocketraid + caviar green is totally unsuitable. It pretty much guarantees data loss. WD also buries in their documentation that the caviar Greens are not only unsupported on RAID controllers, but it will "void the warranty" if used with RAID5. Look at some of my earlier posts on this, I posted a link to the WD document more than once.
the Linux software RAID works quite well, and is the de-facto recommendation for software-based RAID using desktop drives. It will also outperform many of the controllers out there (until you start paying hundreds of dollars).
the Linux software RAID works quite well, and is the de-facto recommendation for software-based RAID using desktop drives. It will also outperform many of the controllers out there (until you start paying hundreds of dollars).
Drat, I saw this Q and was going to post "you can't run Caviar Greens on a RAID controller" but I got beaten to it, Good call dlethe.
You shouldn't call it an HP RocketRaid either, nearly gave me a heart attack thinking HP would put a fast board that took data risks in their servers.
You shouldn't call it an HP RocketRaid either, nearly gave me a heart attack thinking HP would put a fast board that took data risks in their servers.
To be fair, WD has no problems with RAID10 on the greens, and LINUX md driver is architected to tolerate this. I won't get too high on a soapbox about running disks designed for a whole 2400 hours use per year, 8 hours a day, 300 days a year on a server. Maybe the server is being installed at the post office where such things don't matter as much :)
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The problems you will see won't show up right away. The WD Green drives have a "feature" that tries to recover data on a sector that might be going bad on the disk rather than quickly marking it bad and remapping it. That "feature" is fine for desktop drives, but in RAID, it usually takes too long blocking IO and the RAID controller marks the drive as bad.
With these drives and Windows, you may not have much of a choice, but with Linux, the built in software RAID is really a better bet.
With these drives and Windows, you may not have much of a choice, but with Linux, the built in software RAID is really a better bet.
Respectfully, MindSupport, I think WD has just a tiny bit more experience testing and certifying WD disk drives then you do. if the manufacturer puts on their literature that they will void warranty using something that you are doing, and that your data is at risk, doesn't that concern you?
In fact, if your company or a client loses data and the powers-that-be find out that you knowingly put their data at risk doing something that the manufacturer specifically tells you not to do, wouldn't that cost you a job? If your company falls under HIPAA or Sarbox or any other regulatory agency, are you aware that you open yourself up personally to fines and even jail time?
I am not going to be politically correct, so am laying it out. This behavior borders on criminal.
In fact, if your company or a client loses data and the powers-that-be find out that you knowingly put their data at risk doing something that the manufacturer specifically tells you not to do, wouldn't that cost you a job? If your company falls under HIPAA or Sarbox or any other regulatory agency, are you aware that you open yourself up personally to fines and even jail time?
I am not going to be politically correct, so am laying it out. This behavior borders on criminal.
ASKER
After testing this was the way we setup everything correctly.
http://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/Deployment_Guide-en-US/s1-raid-config.html
Or more detailed:
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO.html