[SATLUG] OT - 2.5" hard drive recommendations

[Daniel J. Givens]

Sean I wrote:
> I have been searching online for a decent 2.5" hard drive for my
> file/music server, however the consensus is they do not last.  I have
> been researching this and the best I found is the seagate momentus
> drive.  I need the drive to be at least 120GB's, speed is not a big
> factor and it has to be IDE and i would prefer low power consumption.
> Does anyone have any recommendations?  It will be on 24/7 but not
> always in use and the OS will not reside on the disk.  The disk will
> have pretty much just the files on it.  Also do you all think I would
> get better life out of the drive with a non journaled file system?
> Any recommendations are appreciated, personal experiences with
> hardware is the best.

I've had the same Hitachi Travelstar 7200rpm in my old laptop since 
roughly 2004 and it was used regularly up until late last year. 
Recently, I've heard good things about the Seagates as well.

Keep in mind that most of the negative reviews you've seen are likely 
biased because they've had drive failures. You aren't going to see 
people going out of their way to sing the praises of the drives that 
work day in and day out. It's like a good sys admin -- the staff doesn't 
sing their praises when things are going well, but they'll call the 
admin useless when their email doesn't work.

The only problem with the 2.5" drives is that you aren't going to get 
nearly the same capacity for the price. You say you need at least 
120GB's now, but before long, you'll be wanting more. I wouldn't settle 
for a drive less than 320GB and you can find a 3.5" IDE for about 1/3rd 
less than a 2.5" of comparable size.

I don't think journaling would reduce the lifespan on a drive unless you 
were doing lots and lots of writes constantly. On my file server, I 
write rarely and read often. Your usage may be different, but I doubt 
journaling would be a major contributor to a drive failure.

Daniel