[NTLUG:Discuss] NAS devices

[Chris Cox]

MadHat Unspecific wrote:
> Ralph wrote:
>> Howdy,
>>   I get to spec out and probably buy a NAS for the office.  I see some 2
>> U servers that have 8 exposed 2.5 inch drive bays.  When I think of 2.5
>> inch hard drives, I don't think of drives that can take heavy use.  Are
>> these new drives built better than laptop drives?  Is SAS better than
>> SATA?  SAS drives seem to go up to 146 GIG and SATA up to 500 GIG.  At
>> least, that is what Pogo Linux says.  I don't need huge amounts of
>> throughput.  But, reliability is very important.  Any comments?
> 
> I can only speak from personal experience.  I do IT consulting and I 
> have installed several 1U servers for clients over the past few years. 
> I have seen more and more starting to use the 2.5" drives.  They can fit 
> 3-4 drives in the 1U to use RAID 5, where before it would only hold 2 
> drives.  In the time I have used these, I have only had 1 drive fail out 
> of 50 or so.  The speed and size of these drives has seemed fine.  I was 
> shocked when I first saw them as well, but have been happy with the lack 
> of issues I have seen.
> 
> 

BUT, in all fairness Lee, they haven't been around long enough.
I mean, how old are you oldest 2.5" SAS based units?  (they'll be Sun
boxes since they were the first to deploy)

I think we need another year or two before I'll say anything about
their reliability over 3.5" SCSI.