The vast majority of hard drives today, aimed for consumer market, are
very low in quality assurance. I make servers, (Some of them in a low
cost basis, IDE obligated). In not so ancient times, the good manufacture
and extended warranty of HD's were a normal offering to the IDE customer.
But now and the past year I saw a lot of inconsistence in HD matters, one
80 GB Western digital Failed at 1 month, many others slowly but
completely vanished of any other use.
I believe that the HD industry as a whole are moving to SATA, and IDE are
seeing just like "very low end market" diminishing warranties at 1 year
in almost all the models, (And Many with 8 mb cache also). And sub
arranges plants to china and other manufacturers to comply with their
lines of market.
This is not a problem of which or what brand. In a consequence I think
now the HD's as a disposable "Temporal" storage of information.
If you want to save better your info, (And money), Purchase an Optorite
or Sanyo DVD+/- burner and use it to squeeze 1.4 gb on normal 700 mb
cd's. (HD-burn).
With that amount of Backup potential, you can add dynamism to the backups
and stop keeping valuable information on the now crappy drives.
But today there are a few to confident at. Western Digital DD120x. And
Maxtor 6Y120x Are still good for 2 year al least 7*24 service.
But now, in my service warranties, after a year on any brand, I change
the HD's if the server task is critical at 1.5 years period.
Raid also does not offer a better offering because it multiplies the
probability of failure 2 times.
RAID, I believe it works best on their native "Quality" server design and
manufacture: SCSI.
Putting for example 4 IDE HD's In 2 RAID channels stressed the Power
supply (Chinese and consumer conceived also), and this probably lead to
disaster on the long run.
So, One SCSI, without RAID, is better (Thinking on probabilities), Due to
the manufacture Quality assurance differences.
It is the same reason because the airplanes are safer with less motors,
(Contrary of the public opinion and feeling). Or in a car, Purchase two
"Unbranded" tires instead of a new Michelin.
Best Regards.
Julio.
On Mon, 5 Apr 2004 17:32:55 -0400, "Venkat Manakkal"
<venkat@...> said:
> > harddrives die, that's what they do. the only question is when, and
> > that's pretty much a lottery. this is why you have backups and RAID
> > for important data.
>
> And don't forget cooling. Any modern server must be in a temp controlled
> environment otherwise you are just fooling yourselves.
>
> At home, hard drive coolers are a must and don't forget to clean those
> dust filters. My machine recently relocated to the basement at home to
> keep from the home heating system cooking it.
>
> ---Venkat.
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Venkat Manakkal Secure Athlon 64 laptops,
> President, rayServers.com workstations and servers...
> venkat AT rayservers.com
> PGP: 0x12430522 OR Installed Secure
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> +1-607-546-7300 of fixing insecure systems.
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>
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> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
--
Julio Cazares
cazares@...
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