RAID Harddrive Test Results

Well, I have tested all six Western Digital WD800 drives using the WD DLGDiags tool and the one Samsung SP8004H drive with the Samsung HUTIL tool.

Of the six WD drives, two are dead. They don't even pass the quick test. Heck, they can't even start the quick test. When you tell the sofware to quick test them, it just hangs for about 5 minutes, then spits out a page with all kinds of parameters, showing you the errored ones. It would be cool, if it didn't mean the drives were dead.

On the other hand, the four remaining WD drives all passed the extended media test with zero errors. This is a good thing, I guess, but of course provides no indication of how long they will last before they also die.

Guess how many of the drives are still under warranty?

---> ZERO <---
That's right, none of them. Grrrr.

So now I have a quandry.

• Do I build a RAID 5 array using the four good WD drives and the one Samsung drive? Thus creating a RAID array that I'm sure I would have no possibility of fixing if it broke?
  
• Do I try and talk Liz into letting me go out and buy two 200BG drives (lots of rebates would bring it down to about $100 for the pair) and build two mirrors - one 80GB for OS and some storage, one 200GB for storage alone?
  
• Do I give up the idea of having an Openfiler box for a while and wait until I can afford to buy a fistful of larger drives?
  

What to do, what to do?

---

Okay, I have a plan.

Since I don't really have any spare cash right now, and Christmas is coming, high heating bills, etc., I'm going to do the following:

I'm going to rebuild the Openfiler box using the four WD800 drives. I'll end up with about 240GB of space in a RAID 5 configuration.

I'm only going to put my MP3s on it for now. If it goes away, well, so be it. I might take some DLT backups of it.

I also might run out and buy one of those cheap 200GB drives to put into my main server - rebuilding it into a busted mirror until I can afford to buy a second one to mirror it onto. CompUSA has one that is $29.95 after rebates, assuming they have any left. The current drive in my main server is a WD800 of unknown vintage - it would be nice to replace that before it cacks.

So that's my plan.

For now.

Update: Well, of course, by the time I got to CompUSA (admittedly, it was 7:00 PM) they were out of the 200GB drives. The clerk said they ran out about 1:00 PM.

C'est la Vie.