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> 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?
Just depends on how it's been designed really, both electrical and
mechanical systems can be rubbish or really reliable. I suspect as a very
rough rule-of-thumb, the mechanical parts are more vulnerable to extreme
shocks and vibrations, whilst electrical systems would be more vulnerable to
static and extreme temperature/humidity.
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Invisible wrote:
> 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
>
> ...so that's 64GB for about £100. It wasn't so long ago that you had to
> pay £400 for 4GB (which is almost useless).
Hey, that's not TOO bad. Still a hell of a lot more expensive
than "spinning" drives though, at least when converted to local currency in
the PC wholesalers here.
--
Stefan Viljoen
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scott wrote:
> Just depends on how it's been designed really, both electrical and
> mechanical systems can be rubbish or really reliable. I suspect as a very
> rough rule-of-thumb, the mechanical parts are more vulnerable to extreme
> shocks and vibrations, whilst electrical systems would be more vulnerable
> to static and extreme temperature/humidity.
That's what I was thinking of.
Read a while ago that the RAF had to pay compensation to almost a hundred
car owners - one of their air-defense "steerable-array" radars went haywire
and scanned over a road - they burned out almost every vehicle's ignition
and fuel injection microprocessors with the radar beam!
The point being an old, mechanical vehicle ignition system (carburettors, a
rotor and points) would have just driven on with no problems.
Viz a viz mechanical against electrical failures...
--
Stefan Viljoen
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>>> Ooo can't wait for solid-state drives to become common... and less
>>> expensive...!
>> ...so that's 64GB for about £100. It wasn't so long ago that you had to
>> pay £400 for 4GB (which is almost useless).
>
> Hey, that's not TOO bad. Still a hell of a lot more expensive
> than "spinning" drives though, at least when converted to local currency in
> the PC wholesalers here.
It *is* still far more expensive, but SSD drives are now appearing in
sizes that might actually be useful for something, and prices that
normal human beings can actually afford. I'm sure it'll take time, but
hardware prices only ever seem to go down.
I haven't seen any data about the reliability of SSD vs HD. Bare in mind
that flash RAM has a theoretically limited number of write cycles.
Personally, I'd probably use SSD for my system partition (for the faster
booting) and use cheap spinning disk for my POV-Ray renders. ;-)
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On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:02:15 +0100, scott <sco### [at] scott com> wrote:
>
> Just depends on how it's been designed really, both electrical and
> mechanical systems can be rubbish or really reliable. I suspect as a
> very rough rule-of-thumb, the mechanical parts are more vulnerable to
> extreme shocks and vibrations, whilst electrical systems would be more
> vulnerable to static and extreme temperature/humidity.
In my experience, failure causes of cheap USB hard drives are almost
evenly split between the drive itself having mechanical damage and the USB
interface circuitry dying. Some enclosures are also vulnerable to
mechanical failure in the external connectors, typically the power
connector.
--
FE
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Jim Henderson schrieb:
> Mirroring (or duplexing) provides a pretty good degree of data protection
> because the odds of both drives dying at the same time are pretty small.
Yes. About the odds of your computer dying from a nearby lightning
strike, drowning in water, or being consumed in a fire.
Which /may/ be exactly one of the types of incidents one may want to
protect against...
> But I also back up directories from several systems to other systems
> using rsync.
Sounds more like it.
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Stefan Viljoen schrieb:
> I've seen this phenomenon on older drives. Had a HDD in a system here that
> was left on for years, probably been turned off 20 or 30 times in its
> useful life. The fortieth or forty-fifth time the server was turned off,
> the HDD died - after running reliably (while not being turned off, ever)
> for 5 or 6 years. Ok, old hardware and an old drive, but just goes to show.
> Keep 'em spinning is better than spin-up / spin-down on a daily basis.
To me that rather makes a case that running a HDD 24-7 nonstop (probably
at high workload) may instead just increase the risk of
death-by-power-cycle.
Otherwise you'd wonder how office computers, being powered on and off 5
or 6 days per week, could possibly last even two months. Yet they're
usually good for about 5 to 10 years (though they'll be long outdated by
then).
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Stefan Viljoen schrieb:
> *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?
Sure, a server rack in a proper server room is probably the safest place
for a HDD to live in.
But I don't think a good external case is any more dangerous to HDD
health than your average office ATX tower, that gets its thermal shocks
day by day when switched on, and some accidental (or sometimes
deliberate) kicks by its user now and then.
Yes, backing up to a server farm is probably the safest way to go
(especially since server farms usually have their own backup schemes
:-P), but it is not always an option.
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> Read a while ago that the RAF had to pay compensation to almost a hundred
> car owners - one of their air-defense "steerable-array" radars went
> haywire
> and scanned over a road - they burned out almost every vehicle's ignition
> and fuel injection microprocessors with the radar beam!
Haha LOL, although not so LOL if it was your car.
> The point being an old, mechanical vehicle ignition system (carburettors,
> a
> rotor and points) would have just driven on with no problems.
I think that's quite a specialised failure mechanism :-) I suspect the
point with the ignition system is that for the same amount of money you can
make a much more reliable electrical one than purely mechanical, given how a
car will typically be used (ie not driving in front of an uber powerful
radar).
BTW, I wonder if the police could have a portable version of such a radar,
which they could use to stop cars...
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Jim Henderson schrieb:
> 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.
I wouldn't be too much surprised if HDD manufacturers would know ways
how to optimize drives for one usage pattern or the other, so that maybe
indeed powering up and down might kill a server HDD quickly, while 24x7
usage might shorten the life of an office computer / consumer HDD.
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