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#357490 - 08/02/2013 15:48 Re: SSDs [Re: mlord]
gbeer
carpal tunnel

Registered: 17/12/2000
Posts: 2665
Loc: Manteca, California
11/29/10 is the invoice date on the Agility 2. So it lasted about 24 mos.
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Glenn

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#357504 - 08/02/2013 17:32 Re: SSDs [Re: gbeer]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
Mmm.. Agility-2 has the first-gen Sandforce controller chip in it. Unfortunately, that chip/firmware has a bug which results in sudden-death syndrome from time to time. I have two (identical) beta drives here with that chip which have suffered from that problem.

All SSD makers who used that chip have had the same issue. OCZ takes the rap for it because they're the largest of the vendors.

I don't know if a later firmware update finally cured it or not, but I do have the low-level tools/knowledge to revive the bricked OCZ variants.

The -3 drives used a later, better Sandforce chip, and earlier models (no hyphen-value) used Indilinx controllers. The -4 series have gone back to Indilinx, which is now owned by OCZ.

Cheers

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#357505 - 08/02/2013 17:35 Re: SSDs [Re: mlord]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
On an unrelated note, a buddy of mine saw his video collection vanish this morning when his 2yr old mechanical 1.5TB drive went bonkers. Two weeks after the warranty expired.

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#357509 - 08/02/2013 23:42 Re: SSDs [Re: mlord]
Ross Wellington
enthusiast

Registered: 21/02/2006
Posts: 325
Hi,

I had my first WD 2TB drive fail recently. It was a system backup drive. It had failed one day after the warranty period had expired (by date of manufacture). The store and WD warranted the drive from the date of sale (6 months later).

The store returned it to WD for a $10.00 handling fee. WD replaced it for free within 2 weeks.

The failure mode was that it was not visible by the OS and also hung the system on boot most of the time. I tried it in 3 computers Windows XP - the system that it failed in, Windows 7 Professional, and Windows 7 Ultimate), and it looked dead. It would spin up and just hang the boot process most of the time. During a Windows 7 format, it would format up to 12%, then hang. Same thing in a Windows XP. Norton wasn't any help.

I have a lot of the 2TB drives. One guy that I bought two from second hand (he uses his for RAID back-up drives too), says he has had about 40 drives with one failure that WD replaced as well.

It could be that long periods of read/write operations during back-ups could be the problem, or long motor run times. I have the power-down stuff minimized. The drive is placed in a drive shuttle, good cooling, cool room temperature. Don't know why it failed. Good thing it was just a fully loaded (about 1.72TB), back-up drive.

Was your drive failure any similar?

On the positive side, WD and the store (Software & More) treated me very well.

Ross
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#357510 - 09/02/2013 02:24 Re: SSDs [Re: Ross Wellington]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
I'm not sure what my buddy's drive was doing at the time. It's in his NAS box, which does suspend (sleep) most of the time.

Cheers

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#357511 - 09/02/2013 02:30 Re: SSDs [Re: mlord]
Ross Wellington
enthusiast

Registered: 21/02/2006
Posts: 325
Well that throws out the long spin-time theory...

Ross
_________________________
In SI, a little termination and attention to layout goes a long way. In EMC, without SI, you'll spend 80% of the effort on the last 3dB.

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#357512 - 09/02/2013 02:39 Re: SSDs [Re: Ross Wellington]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
5512 powered-on hours.

Code:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   192   183   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       5391
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       1475
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x002e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   093   093   000    Old_age   Always       -       5512
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       1472
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       332
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   195   195   000    Old_age   Always       -       17801
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   120   102   000    Old_age   Always       -       30
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   195   195   000    Old_age   Always       -       1465
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   195   195   000    Old_age   Offline      -       1460
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   182   182   000    Old_age   Offline      -       3601


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#357518 - 09/02/2013 12:40 Re: SSDs [Re: mlord]
Tim
veteran

Registered: 25/04/2000
Posts: 1522
Loc: Arizona
All those Old_age faults reminds me of me.

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#357521 - 09/02/2013 18:14 Re: SSDs [Re: Tim]
gbeer
carpal tunnel

Registered: 17/12/2000
Posts: 2665
Loc: Manteca, California
Any one know if the optic bay mounts can cause problems?

To recount. My macbookpro 13 had 2 OCZ agility 2 128GB drives in it.
I'd had problems lately, each time needing to rebuild the boot disk from time capsule backups. So I sourced a vertex 3 128GB, to replace the boot drive which I can now confirm is toes up. (Edit: the vertex is toes up) Then purchased a crucial m4 256GB. Which worked fine. But I found the machine subject to periodic freeze ups. This was happening when the optic bay drive threw an error. Pulling it and returning the SuperDrive to its place has stabilized the machine.

I could not pull the data off the files drive while it was in the optic bay, but now with it hanging on the USB dongle, I'm having no problems reading it, or the boot drive.

The vertex is going back to OCZ. I don't know I can file a claim on the agility drives with them seeming to work outside the Mac.


Edited by gbeer (09/02/2013 18:16)
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#357522 - 09/02/2013 18:19 Re: SSDs [Re: gbeer]
robricc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/10/2000
Posts: 4931
Loc: New Jersey, USA
I'm typing this from memory, but in some 13" MBPs, although the controller for the optical bay is capable of SATA 6Gb/s speeds, the cable is only designed for 3Gb/s. Possibly because the optical drive supplied with the machine is only rated for that speed.

Is there a way for you to force the SSD to the lower speed?
_________________________
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80GB 16MB MK2 090000736

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#357549 - 12/02/2013 06:49 Re: SSDs [Re: robricc]
gbeer
carpal tunnel

Registered: 17/12/2000
Posts: 2665
Loc: Manteca, California
Don't know. Moot point now, the cd is back for good.

Btw: the MCE optical bay is a POS. The drive is fitted to the side facing the kbd, and you have to remove the drive bay to change the drive.
_________________________
Glenn

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#362307 - 02/08/2014 21:53 Re: SSDs [Re: mlord]
LittleBlueThing
addict

Registered: 11/01/2002
Posts: 612
Loc: Reading, UK
Originally Posted By: mlord
Mmm.. Agility-2 has the first-gen Sandforce controller chip in it. Unfortunately, that chip/firmware has a bug which results in sudden-death syndrome from time to time. I have two (identical) beta drives here with that chip which have suffered from that problem.

I don't know if a later firmware update finally cured it or not, but I do have the low-level tools/knowledge to revive the bricked OCZ variants.


so ... my just-out-of-warranty vertex-2 just stopped working and it'd be nice to get the data back. Any suggestions? Not sure if the tools of which you speak are general linux ones or proprietary.

Currently the BIOS doesn't see it smirk
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LittleBlueThing Running twin 30's

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#362308 - 03/08/2014 00:43 Re: SSDs [Re: tman]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
The tools I have can only revive the drive with a fresh low-level format, erasing everything. They cannot make existing data accessible again.

I don't have any OCZ -2 series drives here now, but somewhere on them, either external or internal, is a two-pin header. When jumpered, this enables the failsafe bootblock, causing the drive to become visible again to the host system. Usually as a "32GB SSD" or something. The factory tools can then reflash correct firmware and do the low-level reformat of the flash sectors.

Cheers

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#362311 - 03/08/2014 18:52 Re: SSDs [Re: tman]
LittleBlueThing
addict

Registered: 11/01/2002
Posts: 612
Loc: Reading, UK
OK - thanks for that I'll have a play later.
Now bcache is in mainline I think I'll try using that if it comes back.
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LittleBlueThing Running twin 30's

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#362313 - 04/08/2014 09:49 Re: SSDs [Re: tman]
LittleBlueThing
addict

Registered: 11/01/2002
Posts: 612
Loc: Reading, UK
I guess it's worth asking what the current thoughts are on SSD makes/models/chipsets etc ?
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#362314 - 04/08/2014 10:30 Re: SSDs [Re: tman]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
I have been super-keen on Marvell controller based SSDs, in particular the larger sizes from the Crucial M500/M550 lineups. The larger sizes are quite quick, low power (esp. the M550 series), and have largish onboard capacitors to aid in safe handling of power fail (aka "power off") situations.

They also happen to be priced lower, compared with all other brands in the largish capacities.

Cheers

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#362315 - 04/08/2014 10:56 Re: SSDs [Re: mlord]
BartDG
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/05/2001
Posts: 2616
Loc: Bruges, Belgium
What's your stance on the new Crucial MX100's Mark? They seem to offer a lot of 'bang for the buck'.
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#362316 - 04/08/2014 11:30 Re: SSDs [Re: mlord]
Tim
veteran

Registered: 25/04/2000
Posts: 1522
Loc: Arizona
I absolutely love the Crucial M500 960G that you recommended.

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#362317 - 04/08/2014 13:42 Re: SSDs [Re: tman]
DWallach
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
I know ZFS has some special sauce for hybrid use of SSD and spinning hard drives. Has this sort of thing made it into any other filesystems yet? Among other vendors, I'm quite surprised that Apple, who ships a ton of SSD these days, is still using their ancient HFS+.

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#362318 - 04/08/2014 14:02 Re: SSDs [Re: DWallach]
andy
carpal tunnel

Registered: 10/06/1999
Posts: 5914
Loc: Wivenhoe, Essex, UK
Apple so nearly moved to ZFS a while back, then chickened out at the last moment.

My new Linux home server is ZFS, though I'm beginning to wonder whether I should have gone for ECC RAM, after reading up some more on the dangers of ZFS, bad RAM and scrubbing. ECC RAM still restricts your choices of CPU and motherboard so much though frown
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Remind me to change my signature to something more interesting someday

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#362319 - 04/08/2014 15:31 Re: SSDs [Re: DWallach]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
Originally Posted By: DWallach
I know ZFS has some special sauce for hybrid use of SSD and spinning hard drives. Has this sort of thing made it into any other filesystems yet? Among other vendors..


I don't know about filesystems. But as was mentioned earlier in this thread, Linux does now have bcache -- a generic block layer caching system that can be used with most filesystems to cache stuff on an SSD in front of the main (eg. mechanical or network) storage media.

I think some of the add-on filesystems can do this kind of thing as well -- not mhddfs, but the similar commercial one (forgot the name..) discussed previously can use an SSD as a front end cache as well.

EDIT: unRAID is probably what I was thinking of.



Edited by mlord (05/08/2014 15:10)
Edit Reason: unRAID

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#362320 - 04/08/2014 15:32 Re: SSDs [Re: BartDG]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
Originally Posted By: Archeon
What's your stance on the new Crucial MX100's Mark? They seem to offer a lot of 'bang for the buck'.


I'm not familiar with those yet. So, dunno. If they still populate the powerfail capacitors (?), then they are likely a great bargain.

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#362323 - 04/08/2014 22:19 Re: SSDs [Re: andy]
DWallach
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
Originally Posted By: andy
Apple so nearly moved to ZFS a while back, then chickened out at the last moment.

Yeah, I bought a 2009-era MacPro on the very premise that it would make a good ZFS box (ECC memory, slots for 4 drives, etc.), based on Apple's promises (denied!) for ZFS. Every once in a while, I look over at the open-source ZFS universe, which does support the Mac, and my only conclusion is "very cool, but I wouldn't bet my data on it."

Relevant and depressing links:
http://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/1xneid/migrating_to_zfs_on_os_x/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7457917

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#362325 - 05/08/2014 06:38 Re: SSDs [Re: mlord]
BartDG
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/05/2001
Posts: 2616
Loc: Bruges, Belgium
Originally Posted By: mlord
Originally Posted By: Archeon
What's your stance on the new Crucial MX100's Mark? They seem to offer a lot of 'bang for the buck'.


I'm not familiar with those yet. So, dunno. If they still populate the powerfail capacitors (?), then they are likely a great bargain.

They do. smile
To me, they seem like THE SSD's to buy right now. I can get a 512 MB model for about 175 euro. 256 MB for less than 100. I've never seen prices like that with regards to SSD's.
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#362326 - 05/08/2014 06:46 Re: SSDs [Re: andy]
BartDG
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/05/2001
Posts: 2616
Loc: Bruges, Belgium
Originally Posted By: DWallach
I know ZFS has some special sauce for hybrid use of SSD and spinning hard drives. Has this sort of thing made it into any other filesystems yet? Among other vendors, I'm quite surprised that Apple, who ships a ton of SSD these days, is still using their ancient HFS+.

Correct. With ZFS, you can use an SSD for a ZIL (ZFS Intent Log) and SLOG.. AFAIK no other filesystem does this in the same manner. Maybe BTRFS? (which is about the only real competing filesystem, but not yet on the level of ZFS) I dunno. Sometimes there are proprietary methods like the cache drive in an UNRAID setup, but that has little to do with the filesystem (which in that case is just ReiserFS I believe)

Originally Posted By: andy
Apple so nearly moved to ZFS a while back, then chickened out at the last moment.

It's a real shame they did that. ZFS is about the most advanced file system currently out there. It cannot be used with most platforms because of licence issues, but Apple was in luck and would have had no problems (since OSX is also based on BSD). I can't understand why they didn't went through with this, because that would have given them a real edge. I'm guessing because Apple moved away from the server business mostly, but there's no way to know for sure.
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#362327 - 05/08/2014 11:00 Re: SSDs [Re: BartDG]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
Originally Posted By: Archeon
With ZFS, you can use an SSD for a ZIL (ZFS Intent Log) and SLOG.. AFAIK no other filesystem does this in the same manner.


Dunno about the "in the same manner" part, but most (all?) Linux journalling file systems allow the journal to be on a separate device (eg, a/different SSD), and can also be configured for various levels of journalling (eg. what exactly gets sent to the journal before the main media). And this is very old news.

Undoubtedly ZFS adds its own twists there, but.. smile

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#362688 - 09/10/2014 22:04 Re: SSDs [Re: mlord]
LittleBlueThing
addict

Registered: 11/01/2002
Posts: 612
Loc: Reading, UK
Originally Posted By: mlord
The tools I have can only revive the drive with a fresh low-level format, erasing everything. They cannot make existing data accessible again.

I don't have any OCZ -2 series drives here now, but somewhere on them, either external or internal, is a two-pin header. When jumpered, this enables the failsafe bootblock, causing the drive to become visible again to the host system. Usually as a "32GB SSD" or something. The factory tools can then reflash correct firmware and do the low-level reformat of the flash sectors.

Cheers


so 'later' stretched out a bit... any idea where this jumper may be Mark?

Vertex2 board
Vertex2 board - other side
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#362692 - 10/10/2014 18:10 Re: SSDs [Re: tman]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
I don't have any of them around any more to check against. but it is either a 2-pin header next to the SATA signal connector, externally accessible(!), ..

.. or an unpopulated internal header on the opposite end of the circuit board. I suppose you could open one up and see if there are a pair of 0.10" spaced through-hole pads at the end opposite the SATA connectors. If so, then that's the "jumper" block. Otherwise it must be the one that is externally accessible.

EDIT: duh.. I see you've opened one up already. smile

Okay, so nothing at the far end. If that drive is of the generation that has the magic jumper, then it would be across the tx/rx pads at the connector end. Try jumpering those prior to power on and see if it comes up.


Edited by mlord (10/10/2014 18:13)

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#362697 - 10/10/2014 21:40 Re: SSDs [Re: tman]
LittleBlueThing
addict

Registered: 11/01/2002
Posts: 612
Loc: Reading, UK
hmm - that would be the pair with "J1" screenprinted by them ... oh yes.

but ... nada frown

Same as w/o the jumper. Green and blue lights come on; red light flashes on/off for a moment and then green/blue stay on. All via a USB/Sata connector. I'll try a real sata port over the weekend.
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