On Fri, 22 May 2009, Robert Schnabel wrote:
No, the original drives I have work fine. The problem, as you point out, is that Seagate changed the firmware and made it so that you cannot flash it to a different version.
The subtle point here is that whether a drive has been out long enough to have a stable firmware is very much a component of its overall quality and reliability--regardless of whether the drive works fine in any one system or not. The odds of you'll get a RAID compability breaking firmware change in the first few months a drive is on the market are painfully high.
You don't have to defend that it was the right decision for you, I was just uncomfortable with the way you were extrapolating your experience to provide a larger rule of thumb. Allocated hot spares and cold spares on the shelf are both important, but for most people those should be a safety net on top of making the safest hardware choice, rather than as a way to allow taking excessive risks in what you buy.
-- * Greg Smith gsmith@xxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD -- Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance
