[lug] Reliable SATA server?

[Rob Nagler]

HI Andy,

> That is most likely the issue you are seeing with your drives. Its not that
> they are dead or dying its that they are timing out and causing the
> raid controller to flip out.

This sounds quite plausible.  We are moving a lot of data (100GB+)
around a system so the likelihood that it is hitting a bad block is
high.  I have an inside contact at a disk manufacturer who confirmed
that this may be an issue.

I checked my drives with ERC enhanced smarttools, and my drives
(ST3500630AS) don't support SCT commands.  They are consumer SATA
drives.

The punchline for me is: Buy Dell with high-end drives, and you
shouldn't have a problem.  I've had very good experience with Dell,
and to be honest, I've had problems with non-Dell SCSI3 machines in
the past.

Thanks, everyone!

Rob