Hard Drive question

[googlemad]

We have a couple of old SANs with Seagate ST31000340NS drives in, a couple have failed now and they're discontinued - Some places have them in stock but it seems to be a gamble as to what you get! (These had a firmware issue a while back).

 

Anyway, my main question is can I just buy a few of the below and stick them in the SAN? I can't see much difference between the 'enterprise class' model (They certainly aren't any more reliable!) above and the one below!

 

Seagate 1TB Barracuda 3.5" SATA-III Hard Drive.. | Ebuyer.com

[synaesthesia]

Lesser warranty and lower MTBF usually - the enterprise class drives are typically the "cream of the crop" although may otherwise be from the same batch as the above drives. Try sourcing something else like the Western Digital RE drives instead.

[Marches]

out of curiosity how old are these SANs ? and what manufacturer?

[googlemad]

They're about 5-6 years old now, made by Westek. To be honest they were a bit of a nightmare on our Live network (at the time we were unaware of the firmware issue which caused quite a large issue as it affected almost every drive in the units!) so they've basically been used as backup repositories for the past 3 years.

 

If the only difference is the lower warranty period and MTBF we'll just stick a couple of the consumer drives in as they're probably getting replaced next year anyway.

[Marches]

Thanks for the reply.

[GeekyPete]

There's nothing to stop you. I wouldn't normally expect to see 7200rpm drives in a SAN. But the originals seagate ones were. I'd change all the drives so they were the same and also a few spares.