OT: hard drive crash

Never shut down they GENERALLY last a bit more than TWICE as long as when shut down on a daily basis - ASSUMING you have adequate clean power. Bad power will kill the drive regardless, but apparently more quickly when shut offand restarted often (power supply related more than power line quality)

In my experience (17th year as a computer tech) hard drive failures are CURRENTLY anything but rare. The only computer part that possibly fails with more regularity is ATX style power supplies. I'd say the hardware failures I get involved with are split pretty evenly between the two, with the odd RAM failure thrown in for good measure. On AMD machines I see some CPU and motherboard failures - both of which are exceptionally rare on intel based systems.

All failures are significantly less common on systems connected to a dual conversion or REAL GOOD line interactive UPS.A "standby" or consumer grade cheapy UPS may make you feel better but does very little to protect the computer or your data.

Packet writing is the only way to script DVD backup with Nero (AFAIK) but IS less reliable than ISO9660.

I just put in an Ultrium 200/400 gb tape unit at the office.Unit with

10 tapes "tips the scales" retail at just about $2000 Canadian. Tapes wholesale for about $36 each. 400/800 units are also available.

Haven't found one of them in the last 5 years - they all want about a hundred up front, which is non refundable and is applied to the total if and when they get your data.

The WD drive in Lazarus is one of the very first 7200 rpm drives on the market.

Gotta be at least 8 years old now.

Still spinnin....

Even after a catastrophic lightning hit that blew the tops off all the capacitors on the mother board.

With some you pay nothing unless they get the data for you. I'd call that a sort of guarantee.

As Michael T. suggests.. .........

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Thanks for the suggestions. My friend is looking at the thread right now and deciding what to do next. Thanks Karl

On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 20:55:25 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, Ignoramus20900 quickly quoth:

Hell no! WAGs, SWAGs, guestimates, and stoned/drunken boasts are far more scientific and accurate in their basic nature than is "Sears horsepower."

The general half-life of an IDE drive is maybe 3 years. A thief is more moral than a congressman; when a thief steals your money, he doesn't demand you thank him. --Walter Williams, interviewed by John Stossel for "Greed"

You mean I don't have a 6 HP shop vac? I feel so cheated.

Wes

Like I said - CURRENT. WD made some good drives. Not convinced they currently do.

If you only had one unit in your sample, perhaps.

And then there's engineering and sound mathematical principles for this sort of thing.

Then there is marketing and hopeful statistics.

Wes

True, but...we've got over a petabyte of data spinning where I work, and we don't lose more than a drive or two a week. I suppose I could do the math, and would think that companies with good reputations have put due diligence into developing those numbers. That said, if you're not mirroring critical data, you'll have outages. If you're not backing it up, you get what you deserve. So really, does the MTBF being 2 years instead of 10 matter at all?

See if this helps:

jsw

I would suggest restoring your data from one of your backups.

i

The funky HD may have a jumper pin on the back that prevents it running in slave mode. You may need to pull this jumper pin and reposition it. Look on the web for more info on IDE drive jumper position settings. Dave