[GRLUG] At long last...

[Ben DeMott]

Are non fsynced writes hard on drives?
The reason I ask is I killed at least 3 drives Torrenting back in the day...
At the time the program didn't cache or perform synchronous writes.
1 block download = 1 block written... you could literally watch each
progression and  hear another 'click' of writing...
When I stopped torrenting my drive failures stopped...
I think it must be hard on the head.. moving back and forth.

Also as a side note, when a drive was nearing the end of its operating
lifetime or we could hear bearing or excessive head sound... we would load
up Eurosoft - it has a great test for head speed... it simply causes the HDD
head to move back and forthe... and tells you the average time taken per
head sweep... Running this for an hour or two on an already failing drive
and absolute failure is just about guaranteed...

Just for fun I have an 8gb Western Digital still in a 400mhz PII running in
the corner... I don't really do anything with it, other than test old opengl
code on the box occasionally.
Its  loud, and slow - but still going strong! (12 years old) ... yeah I was
13 when I got the drive... it was hot stuff.

On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 5:24 PM, Bob Kline <bob.kline at gmail.com> wrote:

> One problem is that as an individual
> it's hard to get a sense of the quality
> of a drive unless you read about it.
> For one single drive, if it fails you just
> conclude you were unlucky.
>
> But I remember years ago getting in
> a box of drives at work.  Maybe 20.
> And was astounded at how fast they
> died.  Maybe half after one year.
>
> In general, it's hard to get a look at
> the bigger picture.  Of 10,000 drives,
> what fraction dies after the first year?
> The place selling them probably has
> a good idea, but I suspect that data
> is held close to the vest.  No reason
> to give the consumer a tip off that the
> particular model of drive is junk - they'll
> want their money back.  On a one-by-one
> basis you can play games.
>
> Fortunately, drives are cheap today,
> and the quality does seem to be
> increasing on the whole.
>
>    -- Bob
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 4:27 PM, Ben DeMott <ben.demott at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> When I worked in the bowels of a corporate office and did IT work...
>> It was just about guaranteed that the hard drives in the Dell Mini-Towers
>> would fail every 1.5 - 2 years consistently.
>> I would say about 50% of them did.
>>
>> Not one replaced drive - (retail purchased) off the shelf ever failed in
>> my time...(except for server 15k rpm drives) -> they failed fairly
>> regularly.
>>
>> When I was a young lad, I worked for Geek Squad for awhile... and I
>> noticed that If you inspect OEM drives vs Retail drives you will find that
>> they actually have different Manufacturer origins for most of the HDD
>> Suppliers.
>> We had to dispose of bad customer drives or give them back... so I've
>> physically taken apart probably 200 drives...  The size or fitness of the
>> parts doesn't appear to be different on similar models of similar sizes but
>> they were usually manufactured in a different plant... In fact with Western
>> Digital this is how you determine warranty fitness.  The serial number (used
>> to) inform you of the Plant the drive was manufactured in. If the serial
>> number had an 03, 04, 05 in it.. it meant it was OEM -> In the key to the
>> serial number these same digits referenced "MFG Origin"
>> I'm convinced the drives made for OEM Computer manufacturers are somehow
>> more cheaply built as a whole than drives that come off the retail shelf for
>> consumers.
>>
>> Just my conspiratorial thoughts on the topic...
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 4:03 PM, John J. Foerch <jjfoerch at earthlink.net>wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, Mar 02, 2010 at 03:43:52PM -0500, Bob Kline wrote:
>>> > What's your favorite drive manufacturer?
>>> >
>>> > These things float around.  Right now I
>>> > prefer WD.
>>> >
>>> >     -- Bob
>>>
>>>
>>> WD all the way.
>>>
>>> --
>>> John Foerch
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> grlug at grlug.org
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>>>
>>
>>
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>
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