October 19, 201015 yr @Microcenter First "cheap" 3TB I've seen ... won't see all 3TBs with unRAID's file system, but just sharing for those that like to see or have the latest and greatest
October 19, 201015 yr You pay at least a $140 premium for that extra 1 gb With sales these days I could buy 2 1/2 2tb drives for that price. Still, I suppose it can only go down.
October 19, 201015 yr I assume when they reach the $120-$150 price point that will be the sweet spot - but by then the WD20EARS (2T) will be around $70-$80 I guess.
October 19, 201015 yr You're also paying a premium because WD has to bundle an add-in card with the drive since many drive controllers / BIOS don't recognize drives over ~2.2tb. Last time I had that issue was when I bought a 60gb UDMA133 drive way back in '98.
October 20, 201015 yr So what will it take to support this with unRAID? Will ReiserFS have to be upgraded? Switch to another F/S? How much of our hardware is going to be FUBAR? :-(
October 20, 201015 yr Will ReiserFS have to be upgraded? Switch to another F/S? No and no; from this thread -- http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5704.0 the Reiser Filesystem has a max file size of 8 TiB, a max number of files of 2^32 (~4 billion), a max filename length of 4032 bytes, limited to 255 by Linux VFS, and a max volume size of 16 TiB How much of our hardware is going to be FUBAR? :-( Unless you have one of the 5 or so existing motherboards which support UEFI, odds are your motherboard will need to be replaced or you will need to use tested and unRAID supported SATA add-on cards to make use of the > 2.2TB drives.
October 20, 201015 yr WD identified problems in some SATA chipsets and drivers... some are not safe for drives breaking the 2.2TB barrier. This is why they are bundling a controller. Every chipset and controller and driver will have to be tested, and double-tested, and certified to not corrupt data with these >2.2TB drives. I can't be the only one here who remembers the wrapping problem with drives >128GB where whole hard drives wee being lost every day by that fiasco. Even WD says this is a temporary situation.... waiting for mobo and chipset manufacturers to catch up. So wait for the dust to settle.
October 20, 201015 yr I never encountered the 128gb problem. However, I agree that in WD's case the easiest validation test is to just ship an add in card instead of trying to validate the multitude of SATA/SAS controllers that are in use. By going this route, any manufacturers who are interested in ensuring compatibility with drives larger than 2.2TB now have a product on the market to use in validation and driver updates. I'm also waiting for the dust to settle because look at how the 2TB drives were priced... they stayed in the $180-200 range until around Thanksgiving of '09 when they had sale prices of $140. By Spring of 2010 $140 became the normal price. Now you can pick up 2TB drives for $85-100 easily.
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