Re: Advice requested re: hard drive setup for RAID arrays

[Phil Turmel <philip@turmel.org>]

Hi Edward,

On 11/04/2015 02:36 PM, Edward Kuns wrote:

> Is there a reasonable way of finding out if a shorter setting is 
> appropriate for any specific drive?

When I first learned all this (the hard way) with Seagate drives, 120
seconds was enough.  You'll find that in old archives, 2011-ish.  I
don't remember who, but someone had a drive that took longer and
suggested 180 seconds.

> Or would you say in general it's not worth the effort of trying to
> find out?

Not worth the effort.  It's a work-around for unsuitable devices until
such time as you can retire them.

> Would you expect this behavior to be any different for an SSD?

I'd expect an SSD's worst case error recovery to be much shorter --
there's no positioning to wait for, nor any mechanical effects that'll
make retrys meaningful.

Phil