Re: Are linux-fs's drive-fault-tolerant by concept?

[Stephan von Krawczynski <skraw@ithnet.com>]

On 19 Apr 2003 23:04:36 +0100
Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:

> On Sad, 2003-04-19 at 18:00, Stephan von Krawczynski wrote:
> > Ok, you mean active error-recovery on reading. My basic point is the
> > writing case. A simple handling of write-errors from the drivers level and
> > a retry to write on a different location could help a lot I guess.
> 
> It would make no difference. The IDE drive firmware already knows about
> such things.

Hm, maybe this is only another field where "knowing" differs from "doing" (the
right thing) sometimes.

> > Just to give some numbers: from 25 disk I bought during last half year 16
> > have gone dead within the first month. This is ridiculous. Of course they
> > are all returned and guarantee-replaced, but it gets on ones nerves to
> > continously replace disks, the rate could be lowered if one could use them
> > at least 4 months (or upto a deadline number of bad blocks mapped by the fs
> > - still guarantee but fewer replacement cycles).
> 
> I'd be changing vendors and also looking at my power/heat/vibration for
> that level of problems. I'm sure google consider hard disks as a
> consumable but not the rest of us 8)

Maybe I have something in common with google, I am re-writing large parts (well
over 50%) of the harddrives capacity on a daily basis (in the discussed setup).
How many people really do that?

Regards,
Stephan