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Do I need raid-enabled drives for software/firmware RAID?

A

antecuser

n00b
Joined
Jun 2, 2008
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34
First off, I am completely aware of the fact that you need a RE drive with TLER enabled for correct hardware RAID.

My question though is TLER needed for software (Windows and Linux) or firmware (onboard or fakeRAID) RAID setups? Will these implementations drop a HDD if it spends too much time correcting a read/write error?

In a single drive scenario, the drive will attempt to read/write the same sector for up to 60 seconds and then remap it if possible. In a hardware RAID scenario, the controller will tell the failed drive to remap to a new sector with data from a good redundant drive (RAID 0 not apply here). My second question is if indeed you do need a TLER enabled drive because the controller will drop the HDD, then what will handle read/write errors? Will these software/firmware RAID controllers do the same error recovery?

If there is no error recovery, it would seem that software/firmware RAID are just bad news. This is esp true for firmware RAID which would seem to have all the downsides of the other controller types and none of the benefits.

Third question deals with SSDs. Are there only certain ones qualified for RAID and 24x7 usage? I have not seen a distinction like I have with HDDs. Also, are these going to work properly in a RAID 5, as the controller will want to try and fix any errors like they are HDDs, yet the SSDs have very good internal error correction.
 
TLER is only a term used by Western Digital, but all modern HDs have something similar. "Raid" edition drives usually have a fancier/better version.

I can speak for Linux software raid, it will work with any HD you stuff in it.
 
Anybody have any ideas? I just cannot find this data anywhere short of asking a hard drive manufacturer themselves. I might think about posting at WD.
 
You would need to go to the specs for the particular controller and find out what the response time is required from a drive before it is considered defective and defective and dropped from an array. Anything less than a minute, and you would want a TLER or equivalent drive for the array.

Don
 
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