Saving your primary harddisk

Alinator
Alinator
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Agreed, and it's interesting

Agreed, and it's interesting that something as seemingly simple as whether to leave a drive spun up or not can get really complicated, really quick. ;-)

Alinator

Ocean Archer
Ocean Archer
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Bottom line here, ultimately,

Bottom line here, ultimately, your harddrive will fail at some future time, you just have to decide what steps you take now with respect to your system to minimize that impact -- additional drives, backups, etc...

With the recent failures here on E@H, and the similar failure on Spinhenge, it's obvious that anything mechanical will go bad, and like Murphy says, ..."with the smallest failure comes the greatest impact". I don't know that magic answer, and if someone out there does, kindly grace us all with your thoughts ....


If I've lived this long - I gotta be that old!

Alinator
Alinator
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RE: Bottom line here,

Message 59052 in response to message 59051

Quote:

Bottom line here, ultimately, your harddrive will fail at some future time, you just have to decide what steps you take now with respect to your system to minimize that impact -- additional drives, backups, etc...

With the recent failures here on E@H, and the similar failure on Spinhenge, it's obvious that anything mechanical will go bad, and like Murphy says, ..."with the smallest failure comes the greatest impact". I don't know that magic answer, and if someone out there does, kindly grace us all with your thoughts ....

LOL.... Absolutely! Every second you run your machine is ultimately one second less to when it will finally go POOF.

Stangely enough though, even if you left it shut off all the time doesn't mean it won't go POOF when you turn it on 20 years from now.

;-)

Alinator

clownius
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The hard disks i have lost

The hard disks i have lost have been well over 5 years old. If every hard disk lasts me 3-5 years i will be a very very happy man lol. from reading other posts here the reason my disks don't seem to die may just be the fact they never power down and run at the same temperature constantly.
Looks similar to the arguments for shutting down your PC when not in use vs leaving it on, or even leaving it at high load (BOINC).
Seriously who here still has a hard disk in use thats less than 1gb? and the 1.5Gb was marginal even for a Linux box so i wasn't really upset when they failed. Actually even the 3-4gb drives i have are fast approaching there used by date for the simple fact they ain't SATA and wont be compatible with new motherboards before too much longer.
Ive thrown more hardware away because i don't own a working computer that can still use it anymore than i have due to failures.

Alinator
Alinator
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Yep, I have a couple that are

Yep, I have a couple that are over 10 years old and still work fine.

Although I make sure I back them up regularly (and all my newer ones too for that matter). ;-)

Alinator

BTW, my oldest drives are a 250MB, 1GB and a 2GB, all running in my last couple of 486's.

Annika
Annika
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Interesting thread :-) didn't

Interesting thread :-) didn't know that computer parts can die of cold (heat, okay, but this was new to me) I'll take care on cold winter mornings from now on. As for losing data, well, I'm using RAID 1 anyway so that probability seems minimal to me...
Can't confirm the common idea that HDs die quickly. In my old 486 the HD controller died before the actual drive did, and the 20 GB HD in my Dad's old P3, which is about six and a half years old now, shows no signs of failure yet (though I did advise him to be extra careful with backups, just in case).

Winterknight
Winterknight
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RE: The hard disks i have

Message 59056 in response to message 59053

Quote:
The hard disks i have lost have been well over 5 years old. If every hard disk lasts me 3-5 years i will be a very very happy man lol. from reading other posts here the reason my disks don't seem to die may just be the fact they never power down and run at the same temperature constantly.
Looks similar to the arguments for shutting down your PC when not in use vs leaving it on, or even leaving it at high load (BOINC).
Seriously who here still has a hard disk in use thats less than 1gb? and the 1.5Gb was marginal even for a Linux box so i wasn't really upset when they failed. Actually even the 3-4gb drives i have are fast approaching there used by date for the simple fact they ain't SATA and wont be compatible with new motherboards before too much longer.
Ive thrown more hardware away because i don't own a working computer that can still use it anymore than i have due to failures.


You know you can get ide - sata adaptor/convertors, if you think it is worth while.

Andy

Dex
Dex
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I found curiousity in many of

I found curiousity in many of your posts. So, instead of replying to each and every one, I will give a general idea of what I am thinking, and curious about... I am unsure the model of the HDD I am currently using for Virtual Memory, Firewall, and BOINC on my desktop. But it is a older HDD. About 2GB, so that gives a rough idea on the age....

Alinator:

Am I correct in assuming, that you believe, or know, that it is more effiecient, and less damage inflicting to keep a HDD spinning at all times, in opposition to having it power down, and back up?
__________

Before setting up the secondary drive, I noticed that even with BOINC being the only user-loaded program running at night, my drive would turn off, and turn on, much more than every 3600 seconds (My current WTD interval).. I didn't do much research on it, but from what I did attempt to learn, I was unable to find what was causing my disk to be writing much of the time... I am thinking about the fact, that the WTD interval, is only MAX WTD. But, I do not believe that BOINC would write to disk and save data ever 10 minutes or so, when a short WU takes more than 4 hours on my 448MHZ desktop... So, any suggestions?

NOTE: When I use a program called Metriscope to monitor overall computer systems. It tells me that my cache is writing much. But, I assumed that was not on my actual drive, but something else. Maybe someone here has an idea about that.

d3xt3r.net

Lt. Cmdr. Daze
Lt. Cmdr. Daze
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RE: Am I correct in

Message 59058 in response to message 59057

Quote:

Am I correct in assuming, that you believe, or know, that it is more effiecient, and less damage inflicting to keep a HDD spinning at all times, in opposition to having it power down, and back up?


Dex,

If I recall well:

The harddrive is spinning (actually more flying) on a thin layer of oil. While it's warm, it gives less friction. When spinning down, the drive comes down. At that point, it will touch the casing, whereby small particles are ripped off. These particles will float in the oil scratching the drive and hence reducing lifetime of your HD.

But then again, I'm uncertain if that idea is also applicable for older/all HDs. Perhaps someone in can fill that gap...

Regards,
Bert

EDIT:
BTW: A RAMDISK could be a fine solution. I'm running diskless for quite a while now, running Boinc in RAM. But it surely has it limitations (less available space, so less cache; less available RAM for computations, but that's not that important for EAH; power outage results in loss of results, which was for me another reason for a small cache).

Somnio ergo sum

Dex
Dex
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RE: BTW: A RAMDISK could be

Message 59059 in response to message 59058

Quote:
BTW: A RAMDISK could be a fine solution. I'm running diskless for quite a while now, running Boinc in RAM. But it surely has it limitations (less available space, so less cache; less available RAM for computations, but that's not that important for EAH; power outage results in loss of results, which was for me another reason for a small cache).

What program do you use, for your RAM DISK? Are you aware of any free programs for that use? I will search, but if you know, it would be great. Thanks Lt.

d3xt3r.net

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