[plug] handling failed non-redundant storage in a server

[Brad Campbell]

Craig Ringer wrote:

> Oh yeah - MAKE SURE YOUR DISKS ARE WELL COOLED. I thought this one was
> fine, but the continuous high load on a fast 3 platter disk was
> apparently too much for it. I think our snapshot target disks will have
> to live in drive cages for extra cooling, as the current airflow is
> clearly just not good enough. *sigh* - it's loud enough already.

I found for a quick and dodgy solution while having temporarily connected high speed drives.
I prop the drive up with a matchbox at each end (electrical insulation while providing a void under 
the drive) and sit an 80mm low speed fan pointing at it. This keeps the disk shell to within about 
10 degrees of ambient under a full sustained load.

On another tack while I'm here.
These new Maxtor Maxline-II SATA drives are only detected as UDMA-33 under the stock kernel HPT366 
driver (HPT374 card) and I can get at most about 15Mb/s to and from them.
Using the Highpoint driver module compiled from source without the binary only raid module I can get 
full speed to and from the drive. (About 20Mb/s sustained write and 50Mb/s read)

The drives are not listed in the hpt366 blacklist files and WD2000JB drives with ATA->SATA 
convertors on the same controller run at full speed.
Does anyone have any experience with the highpoint SATA controllers?

Regards,
Brad