>>> It seems HDDs like to fail after about 2yrs of 12+hr a day use. Boooo!
>> Amoung all the computers I've been called on to fix, I can once again
>> count the number of drive failures on one hand. (Laptops do seem to fail
>> somewhat more often.)
> 
> I'm similar; I've never had a HD fail. Run out of space, yes, even stolen, but
> no HD I've ever used has ever gone pop. I guess I'm just not a particularly
> 'high-impact' user...
> 
> I back up, of course, paranoiacally frequently. But, touch wood, I've never
> needed to restore a backup yet.
> 
> (Of course, now I've said that, every drive in my various machines will expire
> catastrophically over the next 24 hours)

Oh, I've had drives fail. Just not very often.

I would backup by data - but what exactly do you back 200GB up onto? 
Besides, most of it isn't very valuable data.

Post a reply to this message

"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:49abae48$1@news.povray.org...
>
> Really? You have far worse luck than me...
>

Yes, my luck is particularly bad. For instance: 1 month ago I hit a patch of 
black ice and had a motorcycle accident (not much damage), that same night I 
went from feeling ok to hacking up all manners of ungodly crap, which turned 
into pneumonia, which I am still recovering from. Now my HDD failed.

I had a WD Premium mybook fail before too.

I tend to hit the HDDs pretty hard, and I have more than a Tb of data 
between all of my various drives from the past 14 years I've worked with 
computers. I've managed to keep it fairly well organized, amazingly enough.

ian

Post a reply to this message

Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >>> It seems HDDs like to fail after about 2yrs of 12+hr a day use. Boooo!
> >> Amoung all the computers I've been called on to fix, I can once again
> >> count the number of drive failures on one hand. (Laptops do seem to fail
> >> somewhat more often.)
> >
> > I'm similar; I've never had a HD fail. Run out of space, yes, even stolen, but
> > no HD I've ever used has ever gone pop. I guess I'm just not a particularly
> > 'high-impact' user...
> >
> > I back up, of course, paranoiacally frequently. But, touch wood, I've never
> > needed to restore a backup yet.
> >
> > (Of course, now I've said that, every drive in my various machines will expire
> > catastrophically over the next 24 hours)
>
> Oh, I've had drives fail. Just not very often.
>
> I would backup by data - but what exactly do you back 200GB up onto?
> Besides, most of it isn't very valuable data.

Most of what I backup is photos. The rest is coding projects, lots of POV, odd
documents... As for where to - external HD, of course.

Post a reply to this message

>> I would backup by data - but what exactly do you back 200GB up onto?
>> Besides, most of it isn't very valuable data.
> 
> Most of what I backup is photos. The rest is coding projects, lots of POV, odd
> documents... As for where to - external HD, of course.

Uhuh. And this second HD is less likely to fail... why, exactly?

Post a reply to this message

>> Most of what I backup is photos. The rest is coding projects, lots of 
>> POV, odd
>> documents... As for where to - external HD, of course.
>
> Uhuh. And this second HD is less likely to fail... why, exactly?

The point is that in order to lose your data, the 2nd drive needs to fail 
after the 1st one has failed but before you have a chance to copy back the 
data to the replacement, so maybe 3 or 4 days.  The probability of that 
happening is much less than a single drive failing at some point.  If you 
are really paranoid, then just buy 2 external HDs (different brands might be 
a good idea), they are ridiculously cheap nowadays anyway.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >> I would backup by data - but what exactly do you back 200GB up onto?
> >> Besides, most of it isn't very valuable data.
> >
> > Most of what I backup is photos. The rest is coding projects, lots of POV, odd
> > documents... As for where to - external HD, of course.
>
> Uhuh. And this second HD is less likely to fail... why, exactly?

Well, I guess some drives fail arbitrarily, but I would think a drive that gets
hammered constantly is more likely to fail than one that just gets one long
write sequence every week.

And, what Scott said.

(okay, so maybe 'paranoiacally frequently' was innaccurate, especially compared
with RAID...:)!)

Post a reply to this message

>>>> I would backup by data - but what exactly do you back 200GB up onto?
>>>> Besides, most of it isn't very valuable data.
>>> Most of what I backup is photos. The rest is coding projects, lots of POV, odd
>>> documents... As for where to - external HD, of course.
>> Uhuh. And this second HD is less likely to fail... why, exactly?
> 
> Well, I guess some drives fail arbitrarily, but I would think a drive that gets
> hammered constantly is more likely to fail than one that just gets one long
> write sequence every week.
> 
> And, what Scott said.
> 
> (okay, so maybe 'paranoiacally frequently' was innaccurate, especially compared
> with RAID...:)!)

I was under the impression that power cycles stress a HD more than 
regular use... But hey, having duplicate copies has gotta be better than 
not having them I guess.

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
> of that happening is much less than a single drive failing at some 
> point. 

Especially if the second drive is only turned on for backups (like a USB 
drive, for example).

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   My fortune cookie said, "You will soon be
   unable to read this, even at arm's length."

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"[GDS|Entropy]" <gds### [at] hotmailcom> wrote in message 
news:49ab6fcb@news.povray.org...
> Sweet!
> Thanks for the info.
> I have to work on this machine in its current state until I can get a 
> drive tomorrow, but its creeping slow...will I mess anything up by 
> continuing to use it in this state, or installing stuff?

Should not matter. When you mirror you are just creating a copy of the 
current drive state.

However, keep in mind that the chance of total failure was much lower with 
two drives than you have now with one.

Mike


> ian
>
> "Mike Hough" <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote in message 
> news:49ab6a09$1@news.povray.org...
>>> I have another open HDD bay, can I add another SATA HDD to the RAID1 
>>> matrix, or do I need two more?
>>
>> You should be able to plug in a new drive and mirror the one that still 
>> works to rebuild the array. Just make sure you select the right one to 
>> mirror :)
>>
>> I have gone through about 3 drives in the last 4 years and just mirror 
>> the data each time, along with occasional backups of important files onto 
>> DVD.
>>
>
>

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Its cool now, I've replaced my dead(?) drive.
When my system recovered from a critical error, which is when this happened, 
microsoft said it was caused by my AV. Is it possible that my HDD isn't 
really dead?

If it is still chill, I'm going to throw it back in the matrix with my new 
one, so I'll have 3.
Anyone know anything about that? MSs' description was kinda dubiously 
ambiguous.

I think I'm going to get two of those nice WD 1Tb RAID 1 mirrored external 
USB units, crap, they are only $199 at tiger direct now, they would be 
perfect.

ian

"Mike Hough" <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote in message 
news:49ac44a2@news.povray.org...
> "[GDS|Entropy]" <gds### [at] hotmailcom> wrote in message 
> news:49ab6fcb@news.povray.org...
>> Sweet!
>> Thanks for the info.
>> I have to work on this machine in its current state until I can get a 
>> drive tomorrow, but its creeping slow...will I mess anything up by 
>> continuing to use it in this state, or installing stuff?
>
> Should not matter. When you mirror you are just creating a copy of the 
> current drive state.
>
> However, keep in mind that the chance of total failure was much lower with 
> two drives than you have now with one.
>
> Mike
>
>
>> ian
>>
>> "Mike Hough" <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote in message 
>> news:49ab6a09$1@news.povray.org...
>>>> I have another open HDD bay, can I add another SATA HDD to the RAID1 
>>>> matrix, or do I need two more?
>>>
>>> You should be able to plug in a new drive and mirror the one that still 
>>> works to rebuild the array. Just make sure you select the right one to 
>>> mirror :)
>>>
>>> I have gone through about 3 drives in the last 4 years and just mirror 
>>> the data each time, along with occasional backups of important files 
>>> onto DVD.
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
>

Post a reply to this message