SATA SCSI SAS Reliability? 3

[Law1213]

So I've had another SATA drive fail on me! I'm currently using the said machine as a server on which more and more people are starting to depend.

I've heard if I want something ultra reliable, I should go down the SCSI drive route. However, after doing a bit of reading SAS drives seem to be getting fairly popular.

I'm just wondering what the general opinion is for hard drives and reliability between SATA, SAS and SCSI. This is for a small server which would be best? I'm not too worried about speed, I want reliability, cost is also important.

I was fairly set on SAS until one professional told me it's just the interface that's different, the disk itself is pretty much the same, any truth in that? The statistics I've seen show SCSI as the most reliable drives around, followed by SAS (which haven't had much time to prove themselves).

I'm actually using SSD as a boot drive, wouldn't mind some opinions on SSD in the mix too.

Anyone?

 

[goombawaho]

For reliability, I wouldn't focus so much on the TYPE of drive interface. I'd focus on having redundancy. Redundancy as in RAID.

Something like a RAID 1 for you OS and a RAID 5 for your data. Or you could lump the whole thing on a RAID5 to keep it simple.

I wouldn't care anything about the theoretical reliability of one drive type over another or one brand over another. It's redundancy that saves your bacon when there is a problem. Any type of drive or any manufacturer can have bad batches of drives or contamination at the manufacturing facility at any time, so reputation is nothing if you get one of the bad ones.

Having any type of single point of failure in a "server" machine that people are depending on is kind of crazy. You could buy a server with built-in RAID capability or you could certainly buy an add-in RAID card.

The benefit of a "real" server is that it will have the option of having redundant power supplies or at least a heavy duty power supply.

 

[adilux]

the professional who said this: "it's just the interface that's different" is so wrong.
SATA aren't as reliable as SAS or SCSIs, but between SAS/SCSI, i don't know which is more reliable, but don't go with SATA. I've had a server running RAID5 3x 150GB SATA drives, and had a power outage, sure enough, it had to be 2 SATA drives that fried. Luckily, i had a backup. Never again will i get SATA for Business servers.

 

[goombawaho]

adilux - 1. Why are you bumping old threads??

2. If you had a server running without a UPS to protect it, you shouldn't be posting here with advice!!! That's a crazy risk and no wonder things were "fried". Don't blame the drive type or brand - blame yourself for not having power protection.

 

[adilux]

goombawaho, Why are you assuming i don't put UPSs on my server? who doesn't?

I used the wrong word, the drives weren't fried, the drives sort of work, they turn off every now and then while transferring, so now i've been using them as USB drives

 

[Law1213]

Thanks for the reply. The issue is still relevant for me. I did some research and it does appear SAS is more reliable. Due to costs I've stuck with SATA though, but will try to migrate to SAS when I can.

I too have UPS not that it always saves the day mines pretty cheap. Also when I had power interruptions it was partly due to a fault PSU.

Anyway the solution I came up with aside from regular back ups to NAS was to use LVM mirroring since I was already using LVM for the existing filesystems which gives a raid 0 type setup. Doesnt help if you lose two drives at once but good enough for this scenario.

The server is just a small business server in my case, and I'm just trying to avoid all the disruption and heartache of a difficult recovery.

 

[goombawaho]

I'm not trying to start anything, but I'm quoting you here:

"I've had a server running RAID5 3x 150GB SATA drives, and had a power outage, sure enough, it had to be 2 SATA drives that fried."

That sounds to me like you had a server with NO UPS and you had a power issue and the drives got fried (whatever that means. Regardless, they don't function properly any longer - correct??!!).

In that case, you can't blame the drives or the drive type for poor reliability. Or am I missing something??? That's like saying a laptop is not reliable because you dropped it three times and then it has some sort of issue.

From my limited research yesterday, it appears that SAS drives are somewhat more reliable than SATA, are faster and are meant more for "server duty".

http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/whitepaper/SASSATA_TP581-1-0709US.pdf

 

[adilux]

goombawaho
yes, the drives do somewhat work, but the 2 drives' power goes out and then comes back as if they reboot, so they're not working properly, but i had a UPS on the server.
i had other servers running SAS and SCSI and they were fine.
I have a separate APC 1000VA UPS on each server

my input in this thread were 2 things.
1.guy who said it's just the interface that's different, the disk itself is pretty much the same, I said was wrong.
2.SATA drives aren't as reliable as SAS/SCSI

 

[adilux]

sorry if i sounded offensive or however you're taking it, but i'm just sharing what I have from experience.

 

[goombawaho]

Otay.