So there I am, building a moss macro whilst my snow macro scene is rendering 
a demonstration of ice coating, and all of a sudden my computer reboots. I'm 
think: "ok, that was annoying"...and then the intel storage matrix ROM comes 
up, telling me that the drive on port 1 has failed and its rebuilding the 
volume. Wonderful.

So now I have to get a new 250gb HDD.

I have another open HDD bay, can I add another SATA HDD to the RAID1 matrix, 
or do I need two more?

This crap is why my computer is RAID1, which is backed up on an external 
HDD, which itsself is backed up on yet another external HDD.
It seems HDDs like to fail after about 2yrs of 12+hr a day use. Boooo!

What happened to those cool datacrystals they invented in the late 80's? 
They were featured on a show called Beyond 2000, and shortly thereafter all 
information about them vanished. Now most references to them you find via 
google arfe other people asking this same question. Maybe the gov't snatched 
them up?

ian

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[GDS|Entropy] wrote:
> What happened to those cool datacrystals they invented in the late 80's? 

I remember those. A terabyte in a cubic cm, with 3D lasers changing the 
color of the dye.  It was a military project, so maybe it's powering skynet now.

-- 
   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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> I remember those. A terabyte in a cubic cm, with 3D lasers changing the 
> color of the dye.  It was a military project, so maybe it's powering 
> skynet now.

The brits actually have a system called skynet.

I'm not kidding. :(
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6434773.stm

Someone who developed that obviously had a sense of humor.

ian

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> 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

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?

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

[GDS|Entropy] wrote:

> It seems HDDs like to fail after about 2yrs of 12+hr a day use. Boooo!

Really? You have far worse luck than me...

I had 5 servers containing a grand total of 19 harddrives. That setup 
ran for quite a while without any failures at all. Indeed, some of the 
servers here ran for 8 years or so with 0 failures out of 4 drives.

So many server-class Ultra320 SCSI drives are made of stronger stuff 
than normal desktop drives. (Certainly they have a price tag several 
times higher...)

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.)

Post a reply to this message

Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> [GDS|Entropy] 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)

Post a reply to this message

>>> 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.

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