Western Digital SAS drive

Umm, what's the point in that?

Since SATA has nearly all the same features that SAS has these days?

Then couple SSDs making slow headway into the enterprise market, it seems like a last ditch effect to keep market share...

Anyway, don't VR's have a higher than average failure rate? (Or that seems to the be impression I get when talking to suppliers/distributors about the drives).
 
ddrueding said:
A high failure rate was my experience with the original raptors, but the VRs seem to be OK.
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1. This is Western Digital we're talking about. Your VR drives are just saving their failure for later.

2. Why are they bothering? WD just bought some company or other that makes SSDs. Given the already low capacity of Raptor drives and the lack of name recognition among enterprise vendors, why are they crapping these out at all? Doesn't it make more sense to get a decent SLC SSD and put some kind of "enterprise" labeling on it?
 
Think they are just trying to get a foot in another door, likely they are going to be worse performers for desktop and tuned for server use right?
 
WD did make SCSI drives. As I recall they gave it up in 1998 or so.

Why go inflict their shit on another market when the only place they enjoy any positive reputation is with home users who don't know any better?
 
Chewy509 said:
Umm, what's the point in that?

Since SATA has nearly all the same features that SAS has these days?
Click to expand...

SATA reminds me a lot of USB... A device can be USB 2.0 compliant and only support 1Mbit/sec transfer rate... Similarly, you can call something SATA II, but it may not support any of the optional features of SATA - NCQ, Port Multiplier, Staggered Spin Up, Port Selector, External SATA, Hot Plug...


As far as I know you'll never see a SAS drive/controller that doesn't support these features. Of course, as you already realize, you can simply ensure that your SATA controller and drives support the features you need, but this may limit you to only a few options that have been qualified to work together.

The other advantage, that is not available in SATA, is the physical connector. SAS drives have 2 data channels on the connector, SATA drives only have one. This second channel can provide redundancy in case of drive/controller/cable failure or load balancing between controllers.
 
I've not seen any implementation using the second port on SAS drives except for a second host bus adapter. There are ways to meet similar ends without the second port.
 
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