Enterprise Drives

"mcp6453" <mcp6453.TakeThisOut@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:407805F6.1BC3@earthlink.net...
 > Someone mentioned in a prior post that there is such a thing as an
 > enterprise ATA drive, which I assume means a higher quality drive than a
 > consumer drive. What is the highest quality IDE drive available? Maxtors
 > have not been reliable for me. A friend just lost his entire drive. No
 > warning, no nothing. I guess a head must have fallen off of an arm or
 > something similarly drastic.

Seagate Cheetah, either U160 or U320 SCSI.

Rita<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Enterprise Drives 

mcp6453 <mcp6453.DeleteThis@earthlink.net> wrote in news:407805F6.1BC3@earthlink.net:

 > Someone mentioned in a prior post that there is such a thing as an
 > enterprise ATA drive, which I assume means a higher quality drive than a
 > consumer drive. What is the highest quality IDE drive available? Maxtors
 > have not been reliable for me. A friend just lost his entire drive. No
 > warning, no nothing. I guess a head must have fallen off of an arm or
 > something similarly drastic.
 >

The "enterprise" class of ATA drives for the most part fall into the title
of "near line storage" by most of the drive makers. If the drive maker has
an ATA drive they classify as "near line storage" then those are the ones
intended for enterprise use. Specifically, they are intended to provide
huge amounts of cheap storage, not for main disk usage, but as an
intermediate backup that is faster than tape. Some of these drives, like
the Maxtor 300GB, operate at about 5400 rpm so they are lower heat and
cooler running than your typical 7200 rpm ATA drive. This would help them
last longer too.

Drives of just about every make and model die, so it's not too wise to
write off an entire brand just because of a single drive failure. It's
more important if you are building an entire system, say a multi-terrabyte
storage unit, to know how good the service and support is going to be if
and when you need to replace drives. You would build such a system with
some redundancy (RAID 5 plus hotspares or better) into it to accomodate for
hardware failures.

If drive failure isn't acceptable, then you build for it. In the simplest
example, if your friend can't afford to loose a drive, then he either backs
up to a second drive OR builds a raid-1 array so that he can loose a drive
and keep working.

I've had all sorts of IDE and SCSI drives fail on me. Seagate, IBM,
Micropolis, Western Digital, Quantum, etc. In this PC I've got two Maxtor
160GB and one 40GB as well as two IBM 22GB, and I push them hard and no
problems so far. But then I've got them in a case with 2 incomming and 3
exhaust fans, so they run much cooler than your average case.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Enterprise Drives 

"Eric Gisin" <ericgisin DeleteThis @graffiti.net> wrote in
news:c594sb12li4@enews3.newsguy.com:

 > There are no enterprise ATA drives. The Raptor is, but is sATA.


<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.maxtor.com/en/products/ata/enterprise_applications/index.htm" target="_blank">http://www.maxtor.com/en/products/ata/enterprise_applications/index.htm</a><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Enterprise Drives 

"Mr. Grinch" <grinch.TakeThisOut@hatespam.yucky> wrote in message
news:Xns94C767FA87793grinchhatespamyucksh@24.71.223.159...
 >
  > > There are no enterprise ATA drives. The Raptor is, but is sATA.
 >
 >
<font color=purple> > <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.maxtor.com/en/products/ata/enterprise_applications/index.htm</font" target="_blank">http://www.maxtor.com/en/products/ata/enterprise_applications/index.htm</font</a>>

They say "For near-line and other low-I/O secondary storage applications, they
’re rated at better than 1 million hours MTTF.", but don't define what low I/O
means. It is also 3 year warranty.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Enterprise Drives 

  > > There are no enterprise ATA drives. The Raptor is, but is sATA.
 >
<font color=purple> > <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.maxtor.com/en/products/ata/enterprise_applications/index.htm</font" target="_blank">http://www.maxtor.com/en/products/ata/enterprise_applications/index.htm</font</a>>

Digging thro the specs, they are citing proven in NAS.
--
Dorothy Bradbury<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Enterprise Drives 

What does it matter how they attach? That's all NAS is.

Tom
"Dorothy Bradbury" <dorothy.bradbury RemoveThis @ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:glVdc.15238$4N3.10722@newsfe1-win...
   > > > There are no enterprise ATA drives. The Raptor is, but is sATA.
  > >
<font color=green>  > > <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.maxtor.com/en/products/ata/enterprise_applications/index.htm</font" target="_blank">http://www.maxtor.com/en/products/ata/enterprise_applications/index.htm</font</a>>
 >
 > Digging thro the specs, they are citing proven in NAS.
 > --
 > Dorothy Bradbury
 >
 ><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Enterprise Drives 

"Eric Gisin" <ericgisin DeleteThis @graffiti.net> wrote in message
news:c594sb12li4@enews3.newsguy.com...
 > There are no enterprise ATA drives. The Raptor is, but is sATA.
 >
 > Enterprise drives are built operate 7*24 for years with constant activity,
IDE
 > is not.

No, the SATA Raptor is 5 years warranty and is for 24*7. The length of the
warranty is based on the target market and price point and nothing about
drive reliability may be inferred from it.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Enterprise Drives 

"Eric Gisin" <ericgisin DeleteThis @graffiti.net> wrote in message
news:c598jv02plp@enews3.newsguy.com...
 > "Mr. Grinch" <grinch DeleteThis @hatespam.yucky> wrote in message
 > news:Xns94C767FA87793grinchhatespamyucksh@24.71.223.159...
  > >
   > > > There are no enterprise ATA drives. The Raptor is, but is sATA.
  > >
  > >
<font color=green>  > > <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.maxtor.com/en/products/ata/enterprise_applications/index.htm</font" target="_blank">http://www.maxtor.com/en/products/ata/enterprise_applications/index.htm</font</a>>
 >
 > They say "For near-line and other low-I/O secondary storage applications,
they
 > ’re rated at better than 1 million hours MTTF.", but don't define what low
I/O
 > means. It is also 3 year warranty.

Warranty means little here.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Enterprise Drives 

Sure Ron, whatever you say. Everyone believed you re the 75GXP, didn't they?

"Ron Reaugh" <ron-reaugh.DeleteThis@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:FC4ec.12148$i74.238104@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
 >
 > "Eric Gisin" <ericgisin.DeleteThis@graffiti.net> wrote in message
 > news:c594sb12li4@enews3.newsguy.com...
  > > There are no enterprise ATA drives. The Raptor is, but is sATA.
  > >
  > > Enterprise drives are built operate 7*24 for years with constant activity,
 > IDE
  > > is not.
 >
 > No, the SATA Raptor is 5 years warranty and is for 24*7. The length of the
 > warranty is based on the target market and price point and nothing about
 > drive reliability may be inferred from it.
 >
 >
 ><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Enterprise Drives 

Mr. Grinch wrote:

 > mcp6453 <mcp6453.RemoveThis@earthlink.net> wrote in news:407805F6.1BC3@earthlink.net:
 >
 >
  >>Someone mentioned in a prior post that there is such a thing as an
  >>enterprise ATA drive, which I assume means a higher quality drive than a
  >>consumer drive. What is the highest quality IDE drive available? Maxtors
  >>have not been reliable for me. A friend just lost his entire drive. No
  >>warning, no nothing. I guess a head must have fallen off of an arm or
  >>something similarly drastic.
  >>
 >
 >
 > The "enterprise" class of ATA drives for the most part fall into the title
 > of "near line storage" by most of the drive makers. If the drive maker has
 > an ATA drive they classify as "near line storage" then those are the ones
 > intended for enterprise use.

Uh, that may be the definition in your mind, but HD vendor's don't agree.
Western Digital, for example, labels their 10K RPM SATA HDs as ESATA
(for Enterprise SATA), and their 7200 RPM SATA HDs as just plain SATA.

It is not clear that the "enterprise" adjective means anything at all
in terms of quality. While WDC may use "enterprise" to denote faster,
it may be that, for other vendors, "enterprise" only means more expensive.
--
Cheers, Bob<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Enterprise Drives 

 > What does it matter how they attach? That's all NAS is.

That's not what I meant:
o They cite proven in NAS - in terms of application
o NAS being a storage device which has reliability as key criterion

However, since NAS tends to use RAID-1 at the minimum it's moot.

So it comes back to whether the distinction is marketing or engineering:
o If the difference in engineering - it's likely to be tiny
---- a QC process change, minor assembly or part change
---- insignificant in cost yet a statistically quantifiable benefit
o That statistically quantifiable benefit excites marketing
---- be it in headline MTBF or in failures over 1,000 drive installed base

Reality is the gain may be insignificant compared to other system factors,
such as PSU quality, power quality, temperature - re system reliability.

"Low I/O" is an interesting statement - since they say proven in NAS.
Basically sounds like d2d backup to disk, with subsequent backup to tape.

Which is where the cost/capacity of those drives does well.
--
Dorothy Bradbury<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Enterprise Drives 

Bob Willard <BobwBSGS RemoveThis @TrashThis.comcast.net> wrote in
news:pwbec.111156$gA5.1447506@attbi_s03:
 >
 > Uh, that may be the definition in your mind, but HD vendor's don't
 > agree. Western Digital, for example, labels their 10K RPM SATA HDs as
 > ESATA (for Enterprise SATA), and their 7200 RPM SATA HDs as just plain
 > SATA.
 >
 > It is not clear that the "enterprise" adjective means anything at all
 > in terms of quality. While WDC may use "enterprise" to denote faster,
 > it may be that, for other vendors, "enterprise" only means more
 > expensive.

No arguments here. Not like we've never seen a marketing department
stretch the boundaries of definitions before!

But the original poster wanted to know if there were higher quality ATA
drives for "enterprise" use. Some of the responses were "there are no such
thing". In fact there are. These drives have higher reliability ratings
than the desktop ATA drive specs, as well as different warranties which
come into effect when the drive fails.

But everyone's idea of "enterprise" is different. Who knows what the
original poster wants. He could just want a more reliable ATA drive in his
PC. Or he might want a near-line storage unit that seens 7x24 production
usage in a corporate environment. In that case, building the array
properly for cooling, redundancy, and keeping spares handy, is more
important than all the marketing flak and figures posted.

But still, ATA drives are being used in the enterprise, they have higher
ratings, and it's up to the buyer to decide if they can meet his/her
definition of "enterprise" or not. Saying ATA enterprise drives don't
exist just because they don't meet some one else's idea of what a SCSI MTBF
number should be on a given date doesn't make any sense to me.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Enterprise Drives 

"Ron Reaugh" <ron-reaugh DeleteThis @worldnet.att.net> wrote in message news:FC4ec.12148$i74.238104@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
 >
 > "Eric Gisin" <ericgisin DeleteThis @graffiti.net> wrote in message news:c594sb12li4@enews3.newsguy.com...
  > > There are no enterprise ATA drives. The Raptor is, but is sATA.
  > >
  > > Enterprise drives are built operate 7*24 for years with constant activity,
 > IDE
  > > is not.
 >
 > No, the SATA Raptor is 5 years warranty and is for 24*7.

So that is a YES then.

Oh well, what else can you expect from someone who can't even setup his
newsclient properly.

 > The length of the warranty is based on the target market and price
 > point and nothing about drive reliability may be inferred from it.
 >
 >
 ><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Enterprise Drives