Enterprise Storage — 40 Frequently Asked Questions
Real questions enterprise IT engineers ask about Enterprise Storage, with practical answers from Pro Disk Engineering. Questions sourced from Server Fault and Network Engineering Stack Exchange under CC BY-SA — see source links per question. Answers are original Pro Disk Network content with links to our buying guides and product catalog.
How can I monitor hard disk load on Linux?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
The answer depends on your specific platform, workload, and operational requirements. For environment-specific guidance, email sales@prodisknetwork.com with your server model and target configuration.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (137 votes · 242,916 views) ›
How to check disk I/O utilization per process?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
Disk I/O observability: iostat -xz 5 for per-device throughput, iotop for per-process I/O attribution, dstat for combined dashboards. For long-term capture, push node_exporter output to Prometheus.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (79 votes · 298,892 views) ›
What are the different widely used RAID levels and when should I consider them?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
RAID level guidance: for HDD arrays of drives 4 TB or larger, use RAID 6 (dual parity). RAID 5 is no longer responsible at large drive sizes — the rebuild window exceeds typical MTBF. RAID 10 (stripe of mirrors) wins for OLTP databases and VDI write caches.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (194 votes · 50,324 views) ›
Are SSD drives as reliable as mechanical drives (2013)?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
Interface selection: NVMe (PCIe Gen4/5) for random workloads above 500 IOPS. SAS SSDs for mid-tier. SATA HDDs for capacity / backup tiers. Match drive interface to RAID controller; mismatches force fallback to lowest common denominator.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (162 votes · 33,543 views) ›
dd on entire disk, but do not want empty portion
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
Drive cloning: prefer partclone or clonezilla over raw dd when the drive is mostly empty — they only copy used blocks. Append conv=sparse to dd to skip zero-filled regions at the destination.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (66 votes · 218,947 views) ›
Why is RAID not a backup?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
The answer depends on your specific platform, workload, and operational requirements. For environment-specific guidance, email sales@prodisknetwork.com with your server model and target configuration.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (131 votes · 68,853 views) ›
What is the difference between SAN, NAS and DAS?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
The answer depends on your specific platform, workload, and operational requirements. For environment-specific guidance, email sales@prodisknetwork.com with your server model and target configuration.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (79 votes · 159,159 views) ›
Software vs hardware RAID performance and cache usage
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
The answer depends on your specific platform, workload, and operational requirements. For environment-specific guidance, email sales@prodisknetwork.com with your server model and target configuration.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (88 votes · 123,027 views) ›
Does drilling a hole into a hard drive suffice to make its data unrecoverable?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
Interface selection: NVMe (PCIe Gen4/5) for random workloads above 500 IOPS. SAS SSDs for mid-tier. SATA HDDs for capacity / backup tiers. Match drive interface to RAID controller; mismatches force fallback to lowest common denominator.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (98 votes · 99,772 views) ›
How to interrupt software raid resync?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
Array rebuild planning: RAID 6 rebuild on 12-drive 4TB array typically takes 24-48 hours. Schedule monthly consistency checks (mdadm --action=check on Linux) to catch latent errors before they trigger a rebuild.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (60 votes · 160,919 views) ›
Why is Enterprise Storage so expensive?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
The answer depends on your specific platform, workload, and operational requirements. For environment-specific guidance, email sales@prodisknetwork.com with your server model and target configuration.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (114 votes · 37,367 views) ›
All servers flooded by salt water, is it possible to recover data from multi-platter drives?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
The answer depends on your specific platform, workload, and operational requirements. For environment-specific guidance, email sales@prodisknetwork.com with your server model and target configuration.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (128 votes · 8,310 views) ›
Is it possible to on-line shrink a EXT4 volume with LVM?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
The answer depends on your specific platform, workload, and operational requirements. For environment-specific guidance, email sales@prodisknetwork.com with your server model and target configuration.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (66 votes · 116,724 views) ›
How can a single disk in a hardware SATA RAID-10 array bring the entire array to a screeching halt?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
RAID level guidance: for HDD arrays of drives 4 TB or larger, use RAID 6 (dual parity). RAID 5 is no longer responsible at large drive sizes — the rebuild window exceeds typical MTBF. RAID 10 (stripe of mirrors) wins for OLTP databases and VDI write caches.
Interface selection: NVMe (PCIe Gen4/5) for random workloads above 500 IOPS. SAS SSDs for mid-tier. SATA HDDs for capacity / backup tiers. Match drive interface to RAID controller; mismatches force fallback to lowest common denominator.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (111 votes · 24,356 views) ›
Windows 2008: WinSXS directory growing uncontrollably, blocking server
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
The answer depends on your specific platform, workload, and operational requirements. For environment-specific guidance, email sales@prodisknetwork.com with your server model and target configuration.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (62 votes · 118,496 views) ›
Is it possible to reboot a Linux OS without rebooting the hardware?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
The answer depends on your specific platform, workload, and operational requirements. For environment-specific guidance, email sales@prodisknetwork.com with your server model and target configuration.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (97 votes · 47,040 views) ›
ZFS vs XFS
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
The answer depends on your specific platform, workload, and operational requirements. For environment-specific guidance, email sales@prodisknetwork.com with your server model and target configuration.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (78 votes · 78,301 views) ›
Storing a million images in the filesystem
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
The answer depends on your specific platform, workload, and operational requirements. For environment-specific guidance, email sales@prodisknetwork.com with your server model and target configuration.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (81 votes · 71,769 views) ›
Is there any way to shrink qcow2 image without converting it raw?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
The answer depends on your specific platform, workload, and operational requirements. For environment-specific guidance, email sales@prodisknetwork.com with your server model and target configuration.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (50 votes · 126,910 views) ›
Is it better practice to buy RAID disks individually vs. in bulk?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
The answer depends on your specific platform, workload, and operational requirements. For environment-specific guidance, email sales@prodisknetwork.com with your server model and target configuration.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (99 votes · 13,532 views) ›
What is better LVM on RAID or RAID on LVM?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
The answer depends on your specific platform, workload, and operational requirements. For environment-specific guidance, email sales@prodisknetwork.com with your server model and target configuration.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (61 votes · 89,279 views) ›
SSD or HDD for server
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
The answer depends on your specific platform, workload, and operational requirements. For environment-specific guidance, email sales@prodisknetwork.com with your server model and target configuration.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (75 votes · 60,277 views) ›
Does orientation affect hard drive lifespan?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
Interface selection: NVMe (PCIe Gen4/5) for random workloads above 500 IOPS. SAS SSDs for mid-tier. SATA HDDs for capacity / backup tiers. Match drive interface to RAID controller; mismatches force fallback to lowest common denominator.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (71 votes · 22,557 views) ›
What is the current state (2016) of SSDs in RAID?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
Interface selection: NVMe (PCIe Gen4/5) for random workloads above 500 IOPS. SAS SSDs for mid-tier. SATA HDDs for capacity / backup tiers. Match drive interface to RAID controller; mismatches force fallback to lowest common denominator.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (54 votes · 49,652 views) ›
What are the advantages of tape drives?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
Interface selection: NVMe (PCIe Gen4/5) for random workloads above 500 IOPS. SAS SSDs for mid-tier. SATA HDDs for capacity / backup tiers. Match drive interface to RAID controller; mismatches force fallback to lowest common denominator.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (62 votes · 7,016 views) ›
Testing whether jumbo frames are actually working
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
iSCSI / FC LUN scanning: from Linux iscsiadm -m discovery + iscsiadm -m node --login; on Windows, refresh in iSCSI Initiator. Rescan SCSI bus with echo "- - -" > /sys/class/scsi_host/hostN/scan.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (33 votes · 58,894 views) ›
Best practice for assigning private IP ranges?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
The answer depends on your specific platform, workload, and operational requirements. For environment-specific guidance, email sales@prodisknetwork.com with your server model and target configuration.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (19 votes · 86,086 views) ›
RAID - software vs. hardware
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
The answer depends on your specific platform, workload, and operational requirements. For environment-specific guidance, email sales@prodisknetwork.com with your server model and target configuration.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (55 votes · 12,868 views) ›
Is bit rot on hard drives a real problem? What can be done about it?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
Interface selection: NVMe (PCIe Gen4/5) for random workloads above 500 IOPS. SAS SSDs for mid-tier. SATA HDDs for capacity / backup tiers. Match drive interface to RAID controller; mismatches force fallback to lowest common denominator.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (40 votes · 42,601 views) ›
How can I successfully mount an 8-bit SCSI drive on a modern computer?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
The answer depends on your specific platform, workload, and operational requirements. For environment-specific guidance, email sales@prodisknetwork.com with your server model and target configuration.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (50 votes · 19,203 views) ›
How do I destroy a hard disk?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
The answer depends on your specific platform, workload, and operational requirements. For environment-specific guidance, email sales@prodisknetwork.com with your server model and target configuration.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (49 votes · 15,061 views) ›
File Server - Storage configuration: RAID vs LVM vs ZFS something else...?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
RAID level guidance: for HDD arrays of drives 4 TB or larger, use RAID 6 (dual parity). RAID 5 is no longer responsible at large drive sizes — the rebuild window exceeds typical MTBF. RAID 10 (stripe of mirrors) wins for OLTP databases and VDI write caches.
Interface selection: NVMe (PCIe Gen4/5) for random workloads above 500 IOPS. SAS SSDs for mid-tier. SATA HDDs for capacity / backup tiers. Match drive interface to RAID controller; mismatches force fallback to lowest common denominator.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (38 votes · 34,214 views) ›
What is a Storage Area Network, and which benefits does it have over different storage solutions?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
The answer depends on your specific platform, workload, and operational requirements. For environment-specific guidance, email sales@prodisknetwork.com with your server model and target configuration.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (37 votes · 8,305 views) ›
Pay no attention to that SAN behind the curtain
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
RAID level guidance: for HDD arrays of drives 4 TB or larger, use RAID 6 (dual parity). RAID 5 is no longer responsible at large drive sizes — the rebuild window exceeds typical MTBF. RAID 10 (stripe of mirrors) wins for OLTP databases and VDI write caches.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (38 votes · 1,759 views) ›
What kind of storage do people actually use for VMware ESX servers?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
The answer depends on your specific platform, workload, and operational requirements. For environment-specific guidance, email sales@prodisknetwork.com with your server model and target configuration.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (27 votes · 17,094 views) ›
How should I set up my Fibre Channel (FC) network?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
The answer depends on your specific platform, workload, and operational requirements. For environment-specific guidance, email sales@prodisknetwork.com with your server model and target configuration.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (27 votes · 16,435 views) ›
Cheapest iSCSI SAN for Windows 2008/SQL Server clustering?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
iSCSI / FC LUN scanning: from Linux iscsiadm -m discovery + iscsiadm -m node --login; on Windows, refresh in iSCSI Initiator. Rescan SCSI bus with echo "- - -" > /sys/class/scsi_host/hostN/scan.
BMC access: ipmitool -H <ip> -U admin -P <pw> chassis status for remote IPMI. For Dell iDRAC, HPE iLO, Lenovo IMM/XCC, Supermicro IPMI — all expose Redfish REST API as the modern alternative.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (25 votes · 20,064 views) ›
Tuning iSCSI storage
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
iSCSI / FC LUN scanning: from Linux iscsiadm -m discovery + iscsiadm -m node --login; on Windows, refresh in iSCSI Initiator. Rescan SCSI bus with echo "- - -" > /sys/class/scsi_host/hostN/scan.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (29 votes · 12,031 views) ›
SQL Server disk design on an ISCSI SAN
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
iSCSI / FC LUN scanning: from Linux iscsiadm -m discovery + iscsiadm -m node --login; on Windows, refresh in iSCSI Initiator. Rescan SCSI bus with echo "- - -" > /sys/class/scsi_host/hostN/scan.
Linux memory accounting: RSS = physical RAM in use, VIRT = virtual address space (includes mapped files), PSS = proportional shared pages. The "available" column in free already accounts for reclaimable cache — use that as your real free-RAM number.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (27 votes · 9,327 views) ›
Why would a heavily disk intensive application run faster on a SAN than on a Physical Disk?
This is a common operational question across enterprise IT environments.
Disk I/O observability: iostat -xz 5 for per-device throughput, iotop for per-process I/O attribution, dstat for combined dashboards. For long-term capture, push node_exporter output to Prometheus.
Pro Disk Network ships matched-lot SAS / SATA / NVMe drives with same-day US dispatch. Storage buying guide · Storage catalog
Original question on Server Fault (21 votes · 2,658 views) ›
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