Tech: Ever Lost a Hard Drive?

Subject: Tech: Ever Lost a Hard Drive?
From: robomatic
Date: 11 Nov 04 - 04:08 PM

I found the experience quite emotional. And it's happened more than once. For one thing, I DO make copies of things I care about, but then I work on the material I've got on the drive, like parsing a large wave file into tracks, and sometimes I have no idea of what I've lost.

Sometimes I haven't lost it, I just can't get at it.

Most recent example, a 250 GB drive loaded with text, photos, and music. It was all a compendium of other materials, but I was taking the info on an airplane trip and going to use it at my brother's place. The day before leaving I loaned it to a friend who was a techie himself. He tried to mount it on his system, and his system wouldn't recognize it. So he brought it back, and now MY system wouldn't recognize it! I didn't do anything else to it but tried to consult with folks who knew more than me about computers, and no one seemed to know what to do.

So last week I discovered techguy forums, and one guy there knew enough to direct me to a linux start up CD and eventually, after finagling, I got my disk working again, not a byte missing, although maybe a few nibbles.

I think there must be more stories out there of people who have lost info. It is easy to do.

So far, my problems have included:
Poorly formatted drive appears to have information but it's scrambled
Broken cable
Hard drive malfunction
System overwrites hard drive formatting info for no apparent reason
Hard drive factory lube turns to gum.

Subject: RE: Tech: Ever Lost a Hard Drive?
From:
Date: 11 Nov 04 - 06:28 PM

My stock answer to this is to say

TWO DRIVES

I routinely use TWO drives or more.

First drive, for C drive will hold ONLY software such as Word, Windows, or Linux and OpenOffice. The Second or other drive is used to hold ANY and ALL data created. This limits much of the problems with messed up drives. The second or higher drives (except for ones holding Audio/Video data) would probably want to be partitioned for specific types of files.

My feeling on this is that the C drive gets worked to death. IF a problem develops, it will hit the drive with the operating system and application software.

The data drives will have less of a problem as it doesn't get written to as often as the operating system one. Drives are relatively inexpensive, so this sort of thing is easy to do, and not as much of a hardship as losing the data.

Another suggestion, get started with using Solid State Memory cards and multi-interfaced card readers. As a method of supplying information to others, this is an excellent method. Memory cards are getting up to 1G size, and 256 Meg cards are pretty popular in various formats. This allows transferring even audio files to be easily handled, and with the 1G cards, you could alao do Video! Think about them.

Subject: RE: Tech: Ever Lost a Hard Drive?
From:
Date: 11 Nov 04 - 06:29 PM

BTW, since I started using this policy, I have rarely lost a drive to anything other than my OWN stupidity!

Subject: RE: Tech: Ever Lost a Hard Drive?
From: Padre
Date: 11 Nov 04 - 08:06 PM

No, but like Daniel Boone, I once had one that was 'confused for three days'

Subject: RE: Tech: Ever Lost a Hard Drive?
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 11 Nov 04 - 08:32 PM

George is right!!!! Two drives. (OR MORE)

(Then again, you must already have two or more drives, to be able to slip it out and loan it to a friend)

Personally, for optimal performance use one drive for programs, use one for files. For speed, do not allow any drive to get over 50% full.

Memory is now so cheap and memories are priceless.

250-gigs? Ooohhhh, the happy, simple b,y-gone days of SingleSidedFloppyDrives with 160K that far surpassed the wonders of a RS-Trash80.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Now moving back towards fully printed, multiple copies, different locations, of hard text PRINTED material bound into volumes. How long will a USB memory stick hold data?

Subject: RE: Tech: Ever Lost a Hard Drive?
From: Blissfully Ignorant
Date: 11 Nov 04 - 10:00 PM

No, but the ball fell out of my mouse. I spent ages crawling around on the floor looking for it. Finally gave up and found another one.

Subject: RE: Tech: Ever Lost a Hard Drive?
From: mack/misophist
Date: 11 Nov 04 - 10:56 PM

Mr Seto is certainly correct but I'd like to add a little. 99% of the time it's not the drive but the OS that's gone wonkey. All data, as opposed to the operating system and associated programs needs to be on a separate partition. XP mavens say it's no longer necessary. As you discovered, they're full of it. I keep duplicate image and sound files on two different drives and back up my home folder to the larger. The machine would have to explode before I lost everything.

Subject: RE: Tech: Ever Lost a Hard Drive?
From: mack/misophist
Date: 11 Nov 04 - 10:58 PM

To answer the original question, Yes, 3 times. Now all I buy is Western Digital and Maxtor. Don't trust Seagate or Hitachi any more.

Subject: RE: Tech: Ever Lost a Hard Drive?
From: robomatic
Date: 11 Nov 04 - 11:57 PM

mack:

I've lost one IBM(Hitachi) and TWO Maxtors. Never had trouble with Western Digital nor Seagate. I suspect everyone has one or another permutation that doesn't jive with others.

Subject: RE: Tech: Ever Lost a Hard Drive?
From: Bernard
Date: 12 Nov 04 - 10:37 AM

These days I use external data drives - preferably Firewire, because USB tend to have caching problems. The Gericom 150Gb drives I have are both USB 2.0 and Firewire, with Samsung HDDs fitted.

There are many advantages to external drives... but the main advantage is the ease of connection and disconnection. They are better for archiving photographs than CDs, though it's wise not to put all your eggs in one basket...!

It's important to either disable caching, or to always use the 'safely remove hardware' procedure, though, or you can easily lose files!

Subject: RE: Tech: Ever Lost a Hard Drive?
From: Partridge
Date: 12 Nov 04 - 11:32 AM

Yes, I lost one about 6 years ago when I was at college doing a day release course. It turned out to have been nicked by a work colleague formatted and sold to a customer. I was not pleased as it had all my college work on it

Pat

Subject: RE: Tech: Ever Lost a Hard Drive?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 12 Nov 04 - 03:25 PM

Many years ago, in the "good old days," one could get real tech specs on hard drives. Now, if you ask for "the specs" all the ad-wonks (marketing) will permit them to tell you is:

"This * is VERY GOOD! IT WILL IMPROVE YOUR SEX LIFE. YOU NEED TO BUY IT NOW! CLICK HERE TO ORDER SEVERAL!"

It appears that the "standard" now, for the most popular desktop drives, is either 20,000 or 30,000 hours MTBF. MTBF = Mean Time Between Failures, and is a "statistical" indication of how reliable a drive is. A standard "Man Year" (probably should say "Person Year" I suppose, but nobody would recognize the acronym) for 8 hours per day, 5 days per week, for a year is 2088 hours, so the "average" time a drive is expected to last is about 10 years in "office use." Of course, if you use your machine 24-7, as many of us do, that drops to a little over 3 years.

Because of peculiarities in the way the MTBF is calculated, for well controlled manufacturing processes, it's not unusual for 80% of devices to exceed the MTBF figure. The number gets knocked down because a few "early failures" are usually "very early." Often, about half the devices may last 2X the MTBF, but this depends on what kinds of failures occur. Note that the "average time a drive will run" is subtly, but significantly, different than the "time the average drive will run."

Nearly all drive makers have a variety of lines, and a typical MTBF for an "economy" line may be only 10,000 hours, or less. Some makers produce "High Reliablity" lines for which (if you can get past Marketing) you may get quoted MTBF numers as high as 100,000 hours. Somewhat paradoxically, the higher the reliability, the more likely that nearly all the devices will fail at exactly the rated MTBF life, of very near it. The "Deacon's Buggy" phenomenon.

In the "good old days" the largest HD one could get was somewhere around 30 or 40 MB. Most people replaced machines about every 5 years to keep up with the evolution in OS and application software, so only a few "lucky ones" managed to "wear out" a drive before they replaced a machine and got new ones.

Even then, most HD failures had "causes." The old drives were very susceptible to "head crashes" where the read/write head plowed into the disk surface if you moved the machine with the drive running. Those almost never happen in modern drives due to changes in head design. Failures due to congealed grease, then as now, are ALWAYS due to overheating of the drive. Better cooling in cases has generally taken care of this, but you still have to keep the fans running and keep the case clean with unobstructed air flow. (And if you've failed a drive for this reason, there's probably a bunch of other "cooked" components in the machine.) Rude things that people do to their machines can break the hermetic seal on the drive, which causes almost guarantees failure.

Probably the most common cause of "drive failure" is a failure in the electronics that are part of the drive. While there are probably some random component failures, just based on the number of components, most "electronic" failures also have causes. The accumulated effects of running at too high temperatures comes high on the list. Line surges, lightning strikes, and other "external" insults can do it, although modems and video drivers now seem to be the most commonly affected "surge kill" components.

The "two drives are better than one" philosophy is common, but has to be taken with a "grain of salt." With two drives, statistically, you're TWICE AS LIKELY that one will fail. The "cost of failure" is reduced because you only lose half your stuff. You don't get to choose which half. Putting all your data on a separate drive gives no significant improvement in "data security" because the odds that that drive will fail are exactly, for comparable drives, the SAME as the odds that the other one will fail. To actually make a significant improvement this way, ALL of the "safe" stuff must be on BOTH DRIVES. That's why RAID arrays were invented.

The most practical way to assure data safety is to make frequent backups to reliable permanent media OFF THE MACHINE.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Ever Lost a Hard Drive?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 12 Nov 04 - 04:42 PM

"reliable permanent media" - oh boy, now you've opened a can of worms.... :-)

Subject: RE: Tech: Ever Lost a Hard Drive?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 12 Nov 04 - 05:02 PM

An "extra" external Hard Drive is probably about as "permanent" as anything else, if you check occasionally for signs of failure. The problem is that to benefit from it, you have to put everything that needs backup on it.

If you observe reasonably good storage practices, CDs probably are "permanent" for the time frame most would be realistically concerned with. With special care, and perhaps a little better burners than are in typical desktops, they are probably "archival." With some fairly common labelling and storage practices, they may not last too long.

I'm not (yet) impressed with the reliability of DVDs for storage, but they should improve fairly rapidly as more people use them.

If you do backup with CDs or DVDs, you should be aware that the file naming conventions there are significantly different than for Hard Drives. If the burner changes a filename it can make the file unusuable, even if it's recoverable. This happens often with "html page files" where you have a document, and a folder with the same name for all the "includes." Since the original folder name is used inside the document to "call" the inserts, changing the name(s) makes the document fail. You have to open the document in a browser, and "save as" to a CD/DVD compliant name before you start the burn setup.

Agreed: a can of wigglys.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Ever Lost a Hard Drive?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Nov 04 - 07:03 PM

"Lost a hard drive" - well that was what PV World literally did for me a few months back.

I've got two drives, as George Seto advises, and for the same reason. One has Windows, and the working side of my PC, and the other has the data - well it's supposed to be like that, and it is mostly.

Anyway the disc with the working stuff started to act funny, and the only thing to do was replace it, so I take it in. When I pick it up it all seems to be acting very strange, so I take it back in - and I find they've only taken out the disc with all the data, and sent it off to be recycled. All kinds of work, pictures, songs, the lot. And hardly any of it backed up, because of course they weren't supposed to do anything to that disc.

It did have a happy ending - they frantically got onto the people with the stuff for recycling, and were able to get it back un-recycled, and reinstall it.

The moral is, back up the backup of anything you really don't want to lose. Even if you have two discs.

Subject: RE: Tech: Ever Lost a Hard Drive?
From: Peace
Date: 12 Nov 04 - 09:19 PM

Lost a whole darn computer once. Mouse an all.

Subject: RE: Tech: Ever Lost a Hard Drive?
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 12 Nov 04 - 09:22 PM

They told you "recyled"...in reality, it is in a pile of HDs at Scotland Yard....whether your disk gets scanned for illegal film clips, MP3's, WAV files, or peculiar photos....it is all a matter of chance and timing, and holidays and days off.

Given the nature of your most recent MC postings....my guess is....a knock at the door and "Pleased to meet you Mr....." sort of a.... we are from the govt. and we are here to help.....

Have a grand weekend - and sleep well on Saturday. Don't forget, to shred files, empty the recyle bin, switch disks and defrag and then defrag again after switching back.

Whooopppssss......you let the disk go... into outside hands, that can peer and rip, and trash and thrash, until a 50 bonus will pop-up into the techy's hands....like a porno-ad in a baby-diaper-page.

Given the nature of the current world-atmosphere, I would be afraid, very afraid....(everyone wants their quid - and who knows what the local kid did?

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Subject: RE: Tech: Ever Lost a Hard Drive?
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 12 Nov 04 - 09:26 PM

McG and brucie - recently - you appear - repeatedly as a duo, a pair, a cloned set, two-of-kind.

Whatever McH recieves.....may soon make brucie believe.

Sincerely,

Gargoyle

Subject: RE: Tech: Ever Lost a Hard Drive?
From: Bert
Date: 12 Nov 04 - 10:05 PM

Way to go Garg. I can remember backing up a 5 meg. hard drive on 5 8-inch floppies. Those were the days.

But as McGrath says if you want to keep the data - BACK IT UP.