Thats my intention, a powered Sata & IDE Dock, (thought the one I originally linked to had that spec), the old machine is actually my test machine and currently runs Win8, and has a 3 1/2" floppy drive in the case, I think of it more of an old friend than an obsolete machine :)
and as for the euro, I doubt we'll see it here, we can mess up our own banking system without any help
Hi there
My experience is that however much disk space you have it's NEVER enough. These days 1 TB drives are nothing special - but I'll bet 10 years ago even the thought of a 250GB drive would have been considered as "Never fillable".
HDD's are pretty reliable -- but if you don't take good backups then it's your own fault -- do you really want to re-rip 3,000 CD's again or try and re-download all the music / videos you got from ITunes - or even torrent sites - again.
Cheers
jimbo
Hi Jimbo,
I accept that there are bound to be those who do need, and use, huge storage capacity, but most do not.
"Pretty reliable" HDD's is not good enough. By now they should be absolutly reliable with a backup simply for peace of mind and not as a matter of neccesity because of the inevitable failures which we have all come expect and have been conditioned to accept.
We should never accept being fobbed off with second best.
Rgds
Hi Roders,
I have to agree with Jimbo, in that, the responsibility for backup must lie with the user, no hardware can ever be totally reliable, or totally safe from theft or physical damage, Fire Etc.). The MTBF figures for current conventional, and SSD, drives are far superior to those we used to see, but are not, and never will be infinite :)
(MBTF = Mean time between failures)
Hi B,
I do not think anyone would expect them to be perfect and have an infinate life but I for one
think they should be much better than they are and that we should not allow ourselves to be condtioned
into accepting otherwise.
Being the most critical component in a computer what do you think that the guaranteed life of a HDD,, should be?
The present figure quoted by one manufacturer is absolutly pathetic and they should be ashamed of themselves for producing such products. It makes one wonder if the products should be considered as fit for purpose at all.
Rgds
A difficult question to answer, as the cost factor will make a contribution, In most devices or manufactured goods it's normally possible to produce extremely reliable devices, but the more reliable the more the cost.
Drives should last for at least the projected life of the system they're in, plus a 50% margin, just my opinion, of course.
The projected life of a system is of course contentious to say the least, in business there is, or should be, planned obsolescence, with any system, in the home market. who knows? some users change their system often, some retain them for a very long time, and of course actual usage will vary.
In thirty plus years in the ICT business I cannot remember many "Critical" failures in industry, as most are covered by in place backup or RAID schemes. I have seen some very upset home users who have lost all their family memories, due to a failure, and they often admit that they know they should have backed up.
I can remember a sign affixed to restroom mirrors on industrial sites in the UK "on reflection, THIS person is responsible for YOUR safety" a variation fitted to all PC's sold would save a lot of heartache :)
If I was to look at this time for one single that would hold everything here including system images for more then one machine(on two separate drives no less one external), two storage drives, plus what other files are on the main OS drive I would be looking for a 5tb model!
While there is still left over on each drive I never fill one up over 70% for any storage/backup drive and over 60% for the OS even when working with video captures for the obvious reasons like paging file etc. to prevent OS stalls despite running the 64bit OS. The build here was initially planned out to have multiple internal drives always available for one to be the backup of another.
Keeping in mind the possibility of any drive failing one backup drive will be the backup for the first backup drive. If the host drive fails the second drive used for testing takes over as the host where the latest image is restored if not seeing a fresh install once again. When you backup the backup of the backup that will tend to use up some drive space and call for the need to have one item namely "capacity".
And what about non desktop but home server application? capacity as well as several drives may be called for! When you have multiple desktops tied into one network home or business server capacity comes to mind right away. Backing up a server takes up more drive space on more drives!
Now those of you who own laptops having that "big" external drive to back things up on can save the day if something lets go on the portable! So is it worth having a large capacity drive or two? Gee with all those new cell phones with cameras having a usb plugin option to upload personal moments onto your pc and then something bad happens to the one drive system wouldn't you wish you had backed up all those personal things?
I know only too well where Barman58 is coming from having watched others NOT make the right choices of making backups of family photos only to be lost when the drive on a laptop goes belly up! They didn't use that usb enclosure they had laying around when replacing an original 120gb drive for the larger faster 500gb model and UT OOOoooo....
Getting back to the subject of innovation declining I doubt WD thinks that way. WD releases its first 12Gbps SAS SSDs Drive capacities will range from 200gb to 1.6tb not gb as someone made a typo over at Computerworld it seems!
Last edited by Night Hawk; 09 Apr 2013 at 20:17. Reason: Additional information
Hi there
You can't really expect ANY mechanical device to have 100% lifetime guarantee -- ever watch things like Aircrash Confidential / Investigation on Nat. Geographic Channel --Modern aircraft are probably the most controlled and reliable pieces of kit ever invented yet parts still sometimes go wrong.
I would suspect though that 95% of people on these forums provided they treat their equipment with a "normal" amount of respect probably in their entire "Computing Lives" will never experience a HDD failure --- it's a lot rarer than you think.
In any case even if the equipment does fail you can (within the warranty period) get a replacement -- but that still shouldn't mean that you don't have to take backups.
If you don't take backups then again I re-iterate it's YOUR OWN FAULT.
What about cases where it's not actually an HDD failure -- but say Nature -- Floods / Earthquakes / Volcanoes / Tsunamis / even simple traffic accidents where a truck crashes through your front wall and destroys your computer -- to say nothing of Burglars or even accidental data erasure.
Cheers
jimbo
Hard drive fails rare? Not lately it seems! On just one laptop alone two successive drives went belly up in a relatively short amount of time since it was being handled by multiple users no less. Once the owner wanted the original 120gb replaced with a larger faster drive things didn't go well and after two failed the 120gb was just put back in.
On the old desktop built for Vista mainly while still seeing a dual boot until testing lead to the 7 RC the main drive faltered... finally after 6 1/2-7yrs. of use! That was one of two bought back in late 2005 for an older XP Pro case which moved along in just over a year's time while keeping the drives. But that was a 3 1/2" not 2 1/2" drive that lasted through quite a bit while it's new replacement drive(WD Caviar SE replaced by Caviar Blue) failed in just over a month's time! or looks that way.
The first copy of Windows Vista was actually the system image backup of the first drive which restored and ran well until suddenly one day nothing would boot! It just goes to show you can never simply fully assume anything will last indefinitely Bad caps(capacitors) plagued pc main boards for a period of time. Bad batches got out from the one or two cap manufacturers that were used for several brands causing countless headaches back a decade or so.
If it safe to assume just any one particular drive or other hardware is invulnerable? Often the more complex something is like a household appliance using buttons on a control panel over knobs on the more basic version of same leads to the "it could be anything" dilemna when something goes oops! and you have to call in the "name brand" repairman!
Yet no one hardly ever listens to the golden rule of back me up the backup of the backups of the latest backup of the backups for the backups of the backup of this or that!
IT make most drive makers' claims of a Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF) of a million hours seem stupid. That's 114 years.
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