Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Good fast IDE hard drive but cheap and BIG.

[Dale]

Paul Hartman wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 7:59 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@×××××.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> One thing I have noticed about hard drives in my experience.  When you
>> plug that puppy in and power it up, let it run for a good long while.
>> Overnight is good, a few days is even better, a week or more is even
>> better still from the mechanical point of view.  I remember this from
>> when I rebuilt my Moms old motor in her car years ago.  It said in the
>> book and from several mechanics, once you crank it, run it for at least
>> 30 minutes and at different rpms.  The longer the better.  It should get
>> to its normal temperature before even thinking about cutting it off.  Do
>> NOT cut the engine off unless it is really serious.  The first few
>> minutes that a motor runs is crucial.  If you start it and just run it a
>> couple minutes, it won't ever be the same.  I was also told that driving
>> it is really good.
>>
>> I also remember this from way back when I was working on puters.  I got
>> a new job when winder 3.1 came out.  Anyway.  If a electronic device can
>> survive the first couple to six months of usage, they usually last a
>> while from the electronic point of view.  That is short of spilling your
>> beer in it or it getting hit by lightening or something like that.  I
>> have two 80Gb drives right now.  One is a Maxtor and the other is a
>> Western Digital.  I bet there is a few people on this list that hate
>> each one because they had one that failed.  I haven't had any trouble
>> with mine at all.  They all fail eventually tho.  I just hope one of
>> mine fails when there is nothing important on it is all.  ;-)
>>
>> Still comparing all the options.  I got to start looking for a good SATA
>> drive now.  Just when I had a decent IDE drive all picked out too.  LOL
>>
>
> When you look at hard drive reviews, they tend to be either 5 stars
> ("Perfect! Never a problem after 10 years!") or 0 stars ("Horrible,
> died after 2 minutes! I got 2 more and they did the same thing!" etc).
> I don't think there are a lot of ways for a hard drive to go bad
> without it being catastrophic. Maybe bad sectors... but I consider
> that catastrophic because they always seem to spread like cancer. If
> there is one bad sector on a drive, I simply can't trust it.
>
> That being said, I've had lots of hard drives from many brands and the
> best combinations of price/speed/reliability I've had is Samsung. I'm
> using 6 of them right now and after 2+ years of 24/7 usage none has
> died yet.  I'm sure someone here will have a horror story about a
> Samsung drive to add to this thread. :)
>
>
>

I saw where the drive hours was displayed a long time ago.  I thought it
was hdparm that displayed that but I can't find it in the man page and
-I doesn't seem to show that.  Can someone tell me if there is a way to
get how many hours a drive has been running?  I know I saw this before
but no clue where it was.

Dale

:-)  :-)