Best way to label hdd/sata cables in case that does not have support for "blinking identication"

[je82]

Hi,

 

I am in the process of building a box with 20+ drives, what do you suggest i do to label each cable so i know which drive i need to pull if one fails later on?

 

Does the tags "sda,sdb,sdc,sdd,sde" etc stand for the static port numbers on the sata controller? So these never change?

 

Whats the best way to approach labeling these cables, my guess is just identify once which one is SDA, SDB etc and that should never change, am i correct?

[itimpi]

5 minutes ago, je82 said:

Hi,

 

I am in the process of building a box with 20+ drives, what do you suggest i do to label each cable so i know which drive i need to pull if one fails later on?

 

Does the tags "sda,sdb,sdc,sdd,sde" etc stand for the static port numbers on the sata controller? So these never change?

 

Whats the best way to approach labeling these cables, my guess is just identify once which one is SDA, SDB etc and that should never change, am i correct?

You can not rely on the sdX numbers as although they tend to remain constant they are actually assigned dynamically at the Linux level as devices are seen so could change if for any reason a device is slower to respond than normal.    The only numbers that seem to remain constant are the ata?? type identifiers .

 

unraid identifies disks by serial number regardless of how they are attached so it is debatable whether you should be using that  or something dependent on where they are connected?    
 

You definitely want to try and put a label on the actual drives that shows the serial number (or at least the last few digits) as this is what is shown in the Unraid gui.   Ideally that serial should be easily visible and if so it is probably more important than trying to label the cable.

[je82]

3 hours ago, itimpi said:

You can not rely on the sdX numbers as although they tend to remain constant they are actually assigned dynamically at the Linux level as devices are seen so could change if for any reason a device is slower to respond than normal.    The only numbers that seem to remain constant are the ata?? type identifiers .

 

unraid identifies disks by serial number regardless of how they are attached so it is debatable whether you should be using that  or something dependent on where they are connected?    
 

You definitely want to try and put a label on the actual drives that shows the serial number (or at least the last few digits) as this is what is shown in the Unraid gui.   Ideally that serial should be easily visible and if so it is probably more important than trying to label the cable.

Ok so serial number it is, thanks for the heads up! Will save me a ton of time in the future once a drive decides to give in.