[GRLUG] At long last...

[Steve Romanow]

Ben,

This sort of analysis I'm sure makes you an asset to your company.  Good tip.



On 3/2/10, Ben DeMott <ben.demott at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
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>

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