[Beowulf] what defines "enterprise class" hard drives?

[Jon Forrest]

On 8/5/2010 2:47 PM, Rahul Nabar wrote:
> I wanted to buy some 1 Terabyte SATA drives for our storage array and
> wanted to stay away from the cheap desktop stuff. But each
> manufacturer has some "enterprise class drives". But is there
> something specific to look for? Most of those seem to have a MTBF of
> around 1.2 million hours and a URE of about 1 in 10^15. The S.M.A.R.T.
> abilities seem fairly standard.  Is there a list somewhere of well
> tested drives? Or any recommendations?

We've talked about this topic on this list
before. There are several schools of thought.
Some people base their opinions on the manufacturer's
claims, and some people base their opinions
on the famous papers from Google and CMU that
came out a couple of years ago that described
how very large numbers of drives really work.

It's an interesting topic, no doubt.

Cordially,

-- 
Jon Forrest
Research Computing Support
College of Chemistry
173 Tan Hall
University of California Berkeley
Berkeley, CA
94720-1460
510-643-1032
jlforrest at berkeley.edu