The Terabyte Hard Drive is Here (1 Terabyte=1,000 GB; What's the Limit? Terabytes, Petabytes, Exabytes?)

Previously Mike Redrobe wrote:
Arno Wagner wrote:
Previously wrote:
Well, the Terabyte Hard Drive is no longer imaginary (1 Terabyte =
1,000 Gigabytes):

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10188

You should not believe everything you read on the Internet.

It's 2x 500gb drives configured as usb raid 0, better than the
previous "1TB lacie bigger disk", which was 4x 250gb drives
as usb raid 0 (frightening).

Nice, now its MTBF is only the square-root of the MTBF of the
individual disks instead of the 4th root.

Still scary, IMO.

Do 3 * 500GB with RAID5 and add good cooling, _then_ you have a solid
product. As it is, it just exploits the lack of knowledge on the
customer side.

Arno

Lady Margaret Thatcher wrote:

On Sun, 06 Nov 2005 12:06:11 +0000, Odie Ferrous
wrote:



All they've done is stick 2 x 500GB drives in an enclosure that is bound
to have inadequate cooling - despite their claim to the contrary.

Grief, I've been using an external 2TB firewire drive for a couple of
months.

Only difference is mine will outlast the LaCie.

No doubt!! Homebuilt?

Say I wanted to build a file server for my home LAN. A sort of "set
it and forget it" type affair. What OS? Linux? Windows? 2003
Storage Server?

Linux, BSD, or Solaris.

Thatcher

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Impmon wrote
Lady Margaret Thatcher wrote

Say I wanted to build a file server for my home LAN.
A sort of "set it and forget it" type affair. What OS?
Linux? Windows? 2003 Storage Server?

I'd go with Linux. Once you figure out how
to use Linux, you can simply set it and forget.

You can with XP and 2003 SS too.

Not bloated like Windows

A bit of bloat is irrelevant compared with farting around with linux.

(and free to boot!)

So is Win.

plus Linux is generally not prone to software problems and viruses.

Bull****. And its completely trivial to avoid both with a file server.

Mike Redrobe wrote
Impmon wrote
Lady Margaret Thatcher wrote

Say I wanted to build a file server for my home LAN. A sort of "set it and
forget it" type affair. What OS? Linux? Windows? 2003 Storage Server?

I'd go with Linux. Once you figure out how to use Linux, you can simply set
it and forget.

Commodity devices run linux, for the same reason: users don't need to know
/what/ it runs since it /just works/.

Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesnt.

One dinosaur that I was cleaning up ran Win fine, wouldnt run
any of the linux off CD except one or two of the True Image builds.

Most users and companies like to have an OS that they are already comfortable
with, and is similar to their desktop OS - this is where microsoft wins.

It does indeed. In spades with something you only touch
rarely like a file server. The last thing you need is a whole
new OS where you cant even do the most basic maintenance
because you arent familiar with the basics with it.

I just wanted to quickly delete some deep directory trees
when the dinosaur dos app that comes on the Ultimate
Boot CD was taking ages to do it. I gave up doing something
as basic as that with a linux booted from CD, it was going
to take longer to fart around and work out how to do it than
it took just letting the dinosaur dos app take its mindless time
when the linux apps with a decent user interface wouldnt even run.

It's 2x 500gb drives configured as usb raid 0, better than the
previous "1TB lacie bigger disk", which was 4x 250gb drives
as usb raid 0 (frightening).

Nice, now its MTBF is only the square-root of the MTBF of the
individual disks instead of the 4th root.

Where did you get the idea that MTBF of two drives in RAID0 is equal to
square root of the MTBF of the individual disk?

On Sun, 06 Nov 2005 20:40:26 -0500, "J. Clarke"
wrote:

Lady Margaret Thatcher wrote:

On Sun, 06 Nov 2005 12:06:11 +0000, Odie Ferrous
wrote:



All they've done is stick 2 x 500GB drives in an enclosure that is bound
to have inadequate cooling - despite their claim to the contrary.

Grief, I've been using an external 2TB firewire drive for a couple of
months.

Only difference is mine will outlast the LaCie.

No doubt!! Homebuilt?

Say I wanted to build a file server for my home LAN. A sort of "set
it and forget it" type affair. What OS? Linux? Windows? 2003
Storage Server?

Linux, BSD, or Solaris.

Solaris 86. Yeah. I worked for Sun for a number of years. That was
about four major OS releases ago, but I still remember basic Solaris
administration.



Thatcher

Lady Margaret Thatcher wrote:

On Sun, 06 Nov 2005 20:40:26 -0500, "J. Clarke"
wrote:

Lady Margaret Thatcher wrote:

On Sun, 06 Nov 2005 12:06:11 +0000, Odie Ferrous
wrote:



All they've done is stick 2 x 500GB drives in an enclosure that is bound
to have inadequate cooling - despite their claim to the contrary.

Grief, I've been using an external 2TB firewire drive for a couple of
months.

Only difference is mine will outlast the LaCie.

No doubt!! Homebuilt?

Say I wanted to build a file server for my home LAN. A sort of "set
it and forget it" type affair. What OS? Linux? Windows? 2003
Storage Server?

Linux, BSD, or Solaris.

Solaris 86. Yeah. I worked for Sun for a number of years. That was
about four major OS releases ago, but I still remember basic Solaris
administration.

And the current release is free for personal use (although if you don't have
fast broadband you might want to spring for the media--it's about a 2.6 gig
download).

Thatcher

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Previously Peter wrote:
It's 2x 500gb drives configured as usb raid 0, better than the
previous "1TB lacie bigger disk", which was 4x 250gb drives
as usb raid 0 (frightening).

Nice, now its MTBF is only the square-root of the MTBF of the
individual disks instead of the 4th root.

Where did you get the idea that MTBF of two drives in RAID0 is equal to
square root of the MTBF of the individual disk?

Let mtbf_1 be MTBF of drive i. Then the failure probability of
drive i is pf_i = 1/mtbf_i. The failure probability
of two identical drives is 1 - ((1 - pf_1)^2), i.e. the MTBF of
a RAID0 is 1/(1 - (( 1 - 1/mtbf)^2)).

You are correct my claim was wrong. Should not do math in
my head late in the evening.

Example number: 1 drive 500.000 h MTBF
RAID0 2 drives 250.000 h MTBF
RAID0 4 drives 125.000 h MTBF
...

Makes sense. With these high numbers the event that more than
one disk fails is neglible and you can approximate by dividing
the individual MTBF by the number of disks.

Arno

On Mon, 7 Nov 2005 12:44:29 +1100, Rod Speed wrote:

Impmon wrote
Lady Margaret Thatcher wrote

Say I wanted to build a file server for my home LAN.
A sort of "set it and forget it" type affair. What OS?
Linux? Windows? 2003 Storage Server?

I'd go with Linux. Once you figure out how
to use Linux, you can simply set it and forget.

You can with XP and 2003 SS too.

Not bloated like Windows

A bit of bloat is irrelevant compared with farting around with linux.

(and free to boot!)

So is Win.


Huhhh??? Windows is free??? Have you run this opinion by Bill Gates?? Or
the lawyers where you work? I think they would strongly disagree with you.

I can build a file server with used parts and a new 250 gig hard drive for
about what it will cost to buy one legal license for XP Pro. Windows 2003
Server will cost quite a bit more than that.

On Mon, 7 Nov 2005 12:50:31 +1100, Rod Speed wrote:

Mike Redrobe wrote
Impmon wrote
Lady Margaret Thatcher wrote

Say I wanted to build a file server for my home LAN. A sort of "set it and
forget it" type affair. What OS? Linux? Windows? 2003 Storage Server?

I'd go with Linux. Once you figure out how to use Linux, you can simply set
it and forget.

Commodity devices run linux, for the same reason: users don't need to know
/what/ it runs since it /just works/.

Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesnt.

One dinosaur that I was cleaning up ran Win fine, wouldnt run
any of the linux off CD except one or two of the True Image builds.

Most users and companies like to have an OS that they are already comfortable
with, and is similar to their desktop OS - this is where microsoft wins.

It does indeed. In spades with something you only touch
rarely like a file server. The last thing you need is a whole
new OS where you cant even do the most basic maintenance
because you arent familiar with the basics with it.

I just wanted to quickly delete some deep directory trees
when the dinosaur dos app that comes on the Ultimate
Boot CD was taking ages to do it. I gave up doing something
as basic as that with a linux booted from CD, it was going
to take longer to fart around and work out how to do it than
it took just letting the dinosaur dos app take its mindless time
when the linux apps with a decent user interface wouldnt even run.

" rm -rf"

is a pretty straight forward command. Granted, it is not intuitively
obvious if you have no familiarity with any form or flavor of unix. But
there are more and more people who DO have at least a modicum of experience
with unix. If you are completely unfamiliar with unix, and have absolutely
no desire to gain any such knowledge, then it might, repeat MIGHT be worth
the cost to use Windows instead of Linux. But contrary to what you stated
in another post, Windows is NOT free.