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

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

On Sun, 20 Apr 2003 14:59:00 +0100 (BST)
John Bradford <john@grabjohn.com> 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.
> 
> A filesystem is not the place for that - it could either be done at a
> lower level, like I suggested in a separate post, or at a much higher
> level - E.G. a database which encounters a write error could dump it's
> entire contents to a tape drive, shuts down, and page an
> administrator, on the basis that the write error indicated impending
> drive failiure.

Can you tell me what is so particularly bad about the idea to cope a little bit
with braindead (or just-dying) hardware?
See, a car (to name a real good example) is not primarily built to have
accidents. Anyway everybody might agree that having a safety belt built into it
is a good idea, just to make the best out of a bad situation - even if it never
happens - , or not?

> Are you using the disks within their operational limits?  Are you sure
> they are not overheating and/or being run 24/7 when they are not
> intended to be?

No. The only thing we do is completely re-writing them once a day (data gets
exchanged). So our usage pattern is not: dump data on it and thats it (like
most of the people might do with big disks).

Regards,
Stephan