SR (SATA+RAID) Appliance Disk Compatibility Guidelines
Although CORAID strives to produce storage products that will operate
with any standards-conforming disk drive, not all
drives are readily compatible with our products. Disk compatibility for
CORAID storage products means the following:
- The disk must correctly implement the SATA standard.
- The disk must be designed and built to handle the physical
rigors of operating in close proximity to other disks inside the shelf
chassis.
- The disk must be built to withstand the rigors of 24x7 operation.
- The disk must provide a high degree of data integrity in order to support error free RAID recovery.
CORAID strongly recommends customers select drives marketed as "Enterprise" or "RAID Class". Drives marketed under these terms are generally engineered to perform well in RAID server enclosures. The following items in a drive's data sheet dictate the quality of an "Enterprise" drive.
- Data Integrity
A drive model's data sheet should list a specification for "Non-recoverable Read Error" of at most 1 sector in 1015 bits. Read error rates of 1 sector in 1014
bits or lower are not recommended. While the
specified error rates seem very low, large drive capacities make the error rate increasingly relevant.
Customers using the largest capacity drives should choose low error rates (a larger coefficient)..
- Rotational Vibration
Vendors vary in
how they report this feature. The data sheet should either advertise a
"Rotational Vibration Sensor" or list a tolerance for rotational
vibration. The primary purpose of this feature is to have drives
react well when put into raid enclosures where fan and adjacent
disk vibration can cause seek errors. At this time we don't have a good handle on the
minimum amount of rotational vibration a disk should tolerate
for use in our appliances. It has been proven to help, though, so
look for this feature when selecting a disk.
- 24x7 Operation
Originally SATA drives
were designed with desktop use in mind and assumed that they would only
be actively used 20% of the time. While your application may also only
exercise the disk 20% of the time which may make a desktop drive seem
suitable, please remember that during a RAID recovery the disk will be
busy 100% of the time for an extended period of time. Make sure the
drive data sheet mentions 24x7 operation and that failure rates
specified assume 24x7 operation.
Note: Some hard drive vendors are unwilling to support "desktop" hard
drives used in enterprise environments. While we've not yet seen a
manufacturer refuse to honor a warranty based on this, we have seen
situations where manufacturers were unwilling to debug problems and
provide firmware updates to "desktop" hard drive models. Please take
this into consideration when purchasing hard drives for the SR
appliance.
1.5TB and 2TB Enterprise hard drives are just becoming available. CORAID has not had an opportunity to test these drives and cannot yet comment on their compatibility with SR appliances. CORAID does not recommend using desktop class drives in the SR appliance.
| NO REPORTED PROBLEMS |
| Vendor |
Brand |
Size |
Model(s) |
Firmware Version(s) |
| Hitachi |
Ultrastar |
1 TB |
HUA721010KLA330 |
|
| Hitachi |
Ultrastar |
750 GB |
HUA721075KLA330 |
GK8OA70M |
| Hitachi |
Ultrastar |
500 GB |
HUA721050KLA330 |
|
| Intel |
Extreme SATA SSD |
64 GB |
X25-E4 |
|
| Intel |
Extreme SATA SSD |
32 GB |
X25-E4 |
|
| Samsung |
Spinpoint F RAID |
1 TB |
HE103UJ |
|
| Samsung |
Spinpoint F RAID |
500 GB |
HE502IJ |
|
| Seagate |
Barracuda ES |
750 GB |
ST3750640NS |
multiple |
| Seagate |
Barracuda ES |
500 GB |
ST3500630NS |
multiple |
| Seagate |
Barracuda ES |
250 GB |
ST3250620NS |
multiple |
| Seagate |
Barracuda ES.2 |
1 TB |
ST31000340NS |
AN05, or later |
| Seagate |
Barracuda ES.2 |
750 GB |
ST3750330NS |
AN05, or later |
| Seagate |
Barracuda ES.2 |
500 GB |
ST3500320NS |
AN05, or later |
| Seagate |
Barracuda ES.2 |
250 GB |
ST3250310NS |
AN05, or later |
| Western Digital |
WD RE2 |
750 GB |
WD7500AYYS |
30.04G30 |
| Western Digital |
WD RE2 |
500 GB |
WD5001ABYS |
multiple |
| Western Digital |
WD RE2 |
320 GB |
WD3201ABYS |
multiple |
| Western Digital |
WD RE3 |
1 TB |
WD1002FBYS |
|
| ENTERPRISE CLASS DISKS THAT SHOULD WORK |
| Vendor |
Brand |
Size |
Model(s) |
Firmware Version(s) |
| Samsung |
Spinpoint F RAID |
750 GB |
HE753LJ |
|
| Samsung |
Spinpoint F RAID |
320 GB |
HE322HJ |
|
| Samsung |
Spinpoint F RAID |
250 GB |
HE242HJ |
|
| Seagate |
Barracuda ES |
400 GB |
ST3400620NS |
|
| Seagate |
Barracuda ES |
320 GB |
ST3320620NS |
|
| Seagate |
Barracuda ES |
250 GB |
ST3250820NS |
|
| Western Digital |
WD RE2 |
400 GB |
WD4001ABYS |
|
| Western Digital |
WD RE2 |
160 GB |
WD1601ABYS |
|
| Western Digital |
WD RE2-GP |
1 TB |
WD1000FYPS |
|
| Western Digital |
WD RE2-GP |
750 GB |
WD7500AYPS |
|
| Western Digital |
WD RE2-GP |
500 GB |
WD5000ABPS |
|
| Western Digital |
WD RE3 |
750 GB |
WD7502ABYS |
|
| Western Digital |
WD RE3 |
500 GB |
WD5002ABYS |
|
| Western Digital |
WD RE3 |
320 GB |
WD3202ABYS |
|
| Western Digital |
WD RE3 |
250 GB |
WD2502ABYS |
|
| PROBLEMS REPORTED, UNRESOLVED |
| Vendor |
Brand |
Size |
Model(s) |
Firmware Version(s) |
| Seagate |
|
multiple |
ST3_INVALID_PFM 1 |
SD04 |
| Western Digital |
WD VelociRaptor 5 |
300 GB |
WD3000BLFS |
|
| Western Digital |
WD VelociRaptor 5 |
300 GB |
WD3000HLFS |
|
| Western Digital |
WD VelociRaptor 5 |
150 GB |
WD1500BLFS |
|
| Western Digital |
WD VeliciRaptor 5 |
150 GB |
WD1500HLFS |
|
KNOWN PROBLEMS
USERS SHOULD AVOID THESE DISKS |
| Vendor |
Brand |
Size |
Model(s) |
Firmware Version(s) |
| Maxtor |
DiamondMax 11 |
500 GB |
6H500F0 |
|
| Maxtor |
MaXLine Pro |
500 GB |
7H500F0 |
HA431C00 |
| Seagate |
Barracuda 7200.11 |
500 GB |
ST3500320AS 3 |
|
| Western Digital |
Caviar SE |
250 GB |
WD2500JS 2 |
10.02E04 |
If you are a CORAID customer and would like to report about a drive you use, please send email to support@coraid.com including the output of the sos command.
1Seagate disks with this reported model have exhibited strange problems. Please see the following Seagate download page for details on updating the drive firmware: http://snurl.com/2tgdj
2The compatibility problem with this disk is only applicable for users of the SR420. This model is not recommended but may work fine with other SR models.
3Customers have reported many problems with drives from this product family. Seagate documentation confirms that all drives with model numbers ending in AS are unsuitable for use in RAID applications such as CORAID products.
4Requires the 20090120 SR firmware release or later for optimal performance.
5We have had reports of the 300GB WD3000HLFS potentially causing multiple disks failures when used in any RAID configuration, including non-CORAID equipment. This issue appears to be the result of a firmware bug in the VelociRaptor series of drives.
For questions/comments, please contact support@coraid.com. |