scott wrote:
> What connector does the actual drive have?  Can you plug that directly 
> into a desktop PC?

That's the first thing I checked--but it's that newfangled eSATA stuff, 
and housemate's computer is ordinary EIDE with normal power connections.

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

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Invisible wrote:
>>>> guess there isn't a convenient modality for backing up 500GB of data?
>>> There is - but not for sane prices, no.
>>
>> A 1.5 GB SATA Seagate Barracuda drive costs a mere $95 from newegg.

You mean TB, mayhaps?

>> I guess that arguably is an insane price - insanely cheap.
> 
> I don't know, man... Backing up spinning disk to... spinning disk? Is 
> that such a sensible idea?
> 
> (Then again, I don't have any hard data on the reliability of HD verses 
> tape verses CD. I've heard that spinning HD up and down wears it out 
> faster than keeping it spinning, but I don't know if that's true...)

As for myself, I've never had much luck with optical media.  Trust them 
way less than hard drives.  But I'm planning on getting a new desktop at 
the end of the month with 2x1 TB and was going to use this external 
drive as the backup for *that* (until I need a second one)...

As I said, I *hope* it's just the enclosure that croaked, and the drive 
itself is just fine.

If it's not...I dunno.  Data recovery places are expensive, and I don't 
know if I can justify $1000+ even on the ~year's worth of data I had, at 
the moment.  How time-critical are these kinds of things?  Can I just 
keep it and when I have more money in a few months send it to a data 
recovery place, if I can't get it working myself?

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

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>> I don't know, man... Backing up spinning disk to... spinning disk? Is 
>> that such a sensible idea?
>>
>> (Then again, I don't have any hard data on the reliability of HD 
>> verses tape verses CD. I've heard that spinning HD up and down wears 
>> it out faster than keeping it spinning, but I don't know if that's 
>> true...)
> 
> As for myself, I've never had much luck with optical media.  Trust them 
> way less than hard drives.

Depends. We have a batch of archive CDs which have all gone unreadable. 
We have other, much older CDs (like ten years older) which are still 
readable to this day. Seems to depend on how cheap the disks are.

> As I said, I *hope* it's just the enclosure that croaked, and the drive 
> itself is just fine.
> 
> If it's not...I dunno.  Data recovery places are expensive, and I don't 
> know if I can justify $1000+ even on the ~year's worth of data I had, at 
> the moment.  How time-critical are these kinds of things?  Can I just 
> keep it and when I have more money in a few months send it to a data 
> recovery place, if I can't get it working myself?

If it's a mechanical fault, every single time you try to turn the thing 
on, you could be doing more damange and destroying more data.

If it's just an electrical fault, it's probably not time-critical at 
all. (Although I imagine getting replacement parts gets harder - but 
then depends on how long ago the drive was manufactured, not how long 
ago it failed.)

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:42:48 +0200, Stefan Viljoen wrote:
> 

> Of course the first showed no signs of slowing down either - right up to 
> the minute that it croaked.
> 
> Jim

The way of the world*


* By William Congreve - premiered 1700
-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

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Jim Henderson wrote:

> On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:42:27 +0000, Invisible wrote:

> See my anecdotal evidence in reply to Stefan.  Two identical units, one
> powered on and off regularly, one that was left on 24x7.  Guess which one
> failed?  Not the one that has been turned on and off regularly for 5
> years now.  The one that was plugged in and running for 3 years solid.

Hmm... well, no contest there. I guess there can be other factors involved
besides on / off frequency then? My personal experience with server-grade
hardware I've worked with differs though. It does seem (at least in my
personal experience) that turning HDD's on and off less makes them last
longer. But as you say, anecdotal. :)
 
>> PS. I've yet to find a consumer RAID controller which actually works
>> properly. They all seem to be hopelessly unreliable. And most of them
>> are software RAID anyway; the controller is a normal IDE or SATA
>> controller, and the Windows driver does all the actual RAID functions in
>> software. It seems that only the £££ server-grade controllers actually
>> do the job properly.
> 
> Software raid exists for some platforms - and for mirroring for backup
> purposes, that's really all you need.  Heck, you could do it over iSCSI
> with a fast enough connection (I've seen that done as well).

I've written a simple cronjob which uses bash scripting and some
command-line PHP to automatically tar/7zip our primary server's vital sites
and databases once every 24 hours, and then FTPs that over to our over
server in a different datacenter automatically. Works fine too. The data
centers are about 10km away from each other.

That way we can lose only one day's worth of changes, which (cause we're
small!) usually isn't much. But I can see the point of some kind of "live"
solution if you do a TB a day or whatever.

-- 
Stefan Viljoen

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Jim Henderson wrote:

> On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:42:48 +0200, Stefan Viljoen wrote:

> I don't know, I've got a drive that I take to the office with me about
> every 2 weeks.  It sits at home off usually (unless I need something off
> of it).  It's actually 2 500 GB drives in an enclosure that Maxtor sold
> about 4 years ago now.
> 
> I bought two of 'em.
> 
> One stayed plugged in 24x7 for 3 years and then it croaked - most likely
> a head crash.  The other has had periodic use for 5 years and shows no
> signs of slowing down.
> 
> Of course the first showed no signs of slowing down either - right up to
> the minute that it croaked.

See my other reply too... granted, but you refer to an "enclosure" - is that
a mobile drive? E. g. one which you pull out of its enclosure at work, then
you put it in an enclosure at home if you need something off it?

*brrr* - I shiver at the thought of a mobile HDD as a backup device...

How do you feel about the statement that the fact that if a drive is mobile,
inherently it will never last as long as a "traditional" statically mounted
drive that just sites in a cradle internally in a climate controlled server
rack / box?
-- 
Stefan Viljoen

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Tim Cook wrote:


> As for myself, I've never had much luck with optical media.  Trust them
> way less than hard drives.  But I'm planning on getting a new desktop at
> the end of the month with 2x1 TB and was going to use this external
> drive as the backup for *that* (until I need a second one)...

Same here! I've had more than one DVD-R or RW go bad. If I archive important
stuff to a R or RW disc, I usually make another archive copy 6 months or so
down the line. A year later I rotate, throwing out the "tail end" disc and
writing a new one. More than once I had to "bring forward" the
backup-backup disc, 'cause the "real" archive copy had gone south.

In the olden days on the Apple ][ with CP/M I had three - the grandfather,
father and son (and holy ghost! :) - I still remember the stomach churning
dread of those horribly loud floppy drives grinding and grinding and
then "BDOS ERROR" on the monochrome green-screen... Those were the days!
 
> As I said, I *hope* it's just the enclosure that croaked, and the drive
> itself is just fine.

Isn't that hoping against hope? I mean, the most mechanically vulnerable
components are in the -drive-, no the enclosure? The enclosure is just a
port and physical container?
 
> If it's not...I dunno.  Data recovery places are expensive, and I don't
> know if I can justify $1000+ even on the ~year's worth of data I had, at
> the moment.  How time-critical are these kinds of things?  Can I just
> keep it and when I have more money in a few months send it to a data
> recovery place, if I can't get it working myself?

Not sure, but I think the quicker you do it the better the results you might
get? 

-- 
Stefan Viljoen

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>> As I said, I *hope* it's just the enclosure that croaked, and the drive
>> itself is just fine.
> 
> Isn't that hoping against hope? I mean, the most mechanically vulnerable
> components are in the -drive-, no the enclosure? The enclosure is just a
> port and physical container?

Typically an external enclosure contains some kind of controller to 
convert from IDE/SATA/whatever to USB. This is a non-trivial piece of 
electronics, and it's not inconceivable that it could break.

Seems kinda unlikely though...

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Invisible wrote:

>>> As I said, I *hope* it's just the enclosure that croaked, and the drive
>>> itself is just fine.
>> 
>> Isn't that hoping against hope? I mean, the most mechanically vulnerable
>> components are in the -drive-, no the enclosure? The enclosure is just a
>> port and physical container?
> 
> Typically an external enclosure contains some kind of controller to
> convert from IDE/SATA/whatever to USB. This is a non-trivial piece of
> electronics, and it's not inconceivable that it could break.
> 
> Seems kinda unlikely though...

That's what I was thinking of, yes. Mechanical components tend to fail much
more easily or regularly than a few tens of millions of transistors, not
true?

Ooo can't wait for solid-state drives to become common... and less
expensive...!
-- 
Stefan Viljoen

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Stefan Viljoen wrote:

> Ooo can't wait for solid-state drives to become common... and less
> expensive...!

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173953
http://uk.insight.com/apps/productpresentation/index.php?product_id=IPE64PSSD




It's happening. Slowly.

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