Hard Drives Suck

BzsBimmer · 08-20-2007, 11:31 PM

So here's my off topic rant...
HARD DRIVES SUCK
Yes, there, I've said what a lot of people won't...

Since the advent of gazillion RPM drives, manufacturers have made cheaper HD's for the masses and the masses are going to pay dearly eventually....

I've had a total of 10 drives go bad in the past few years... a 90% increase of failed drives since I've owned computers back when DOS was the shiznit and Windows 95 blew on to the computer scene...

As more and more people put pictures, movies, etc. on their hard drives and don't back up... let's just say... YOU'RE F'd!

HD warranties suck too... because they won't warranty their replacement drives.
I have over 2TB of hard drive space.... 1TB for computing and 1TB for backups... now THAT's a chunk of change

/END RANT
(Let me guess you say... your hard drive just failed....)

Gearcraft · 08-21-2007, 12:49 AM

learned this the hard way. thats why im getting a smaller capacity HD for my laptop and use my old HD to store music and some pictures and DVD for the important files that cant be reload into the computer (like music from CDs).

i wouldnt want to carry around too many files on a big capacity HD and loose all of them at the same time.

BMXtreme · 08-21-2007, 12:55 AM

Hmm...I got 2 seagates replaced without question...i just shipped them the fail ones and the ship both back...what did you get? I only settle for Seagate/Maxtor now....

Also..what kinda failure you are facing? I have managed to recover 100% from my blown PCB on the HD...by replacing the PCB w/ the exact one frm another drive. Most bad sector failure can be recover...pretty easily...unless your motor died.

NaTuReB0Y · 08-21-2007, 01:00 AM

i stored everything on my external hard drive.........

BeeEmDubU · 08-21-2007, 01:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BzsBimmer

So here's my off topic rant...
HARD DRIVES SUCK
Yes, there, I've said what a lot of people won't...

Since the advent of gazillion RPM drives, manufacturers have made cheaper HD's for the masses and the masses are going to pay dearly eventually....

I've had a total of 10 drives go bad in the past few years... a 90% increase of failed drives since I've owned computers back when DOS was the shiznit and Windows 95 blew on to the computer scene...

As more and more people put pictures, movies, etc. on their hard drives and don't back up... let's just say... YOU'RE F'd!

HD warranties suck too... because they won't warranty their replacement drives.
I have over 2TB of hard drive space.... 1TB for computing and 1TB for backups... now THAT's a chunk of change

/END RANT
(Let me guess you say... your hard drive just failed....)

What brand were the hard drives that failed on you?

ik999 · 08-21-2007, 04:55 AM

I'm always having problems with storing things. I usually can't download anything until I finish with the stuff I have stored.

I can't wait until bluray becomes mainstream.

koreez88 · 08-21-2007, 05:55 AM

Back up the most important data on dvd

txusa03 · 08-21-2007, 10:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BMXtreme

Hmm...I got 2 seagates replaced without question...i just shipped them the fail ones and the ship both back...what did you get? I only settle for Seagate/Maxtor now....

Also..what kinda failure you are facing? I have managed to recover 100% from my blown PCB on the HD...by replacing the PCB w/ the exact one frm another drive. Most bad sector failure can be recover...pretty easily...unless your motor died.

I agreed, if it is a bad sector, then you can basically recover all your data except for the data that is in the bad sector. You can do the recovery yourself and send the bad drive back to the vendor for a replacement. The old school way of doing this is use the bad drive and set it to slave and make it a second drive on another computer. I hope that help. Soon, you will be able to do raid on desktop.

Josh49 · 08-21-2007, 10:26 AM

External hard drives these days are extremely cheap. I picked up 320 gb western digital the other day for 80 bucks at staples for this exact purpose of backing up my files in case anything ever failed... I'll try to hook it up every month or so and synchronize it. I'm most worried about the pictures, its hard to go on vacations or special occasions again to get the pictures.. (vacation time and money, not that I don't want to

)

tlester · 08-21-2007, 11:01 AM

Here's my advice...

1. Backup daily. I.e. get good backup software. Do a full backup once a week and an incremental once a day. Whatever you use for backup, don't keep it attached to your computer. I recommend tape, but a quality removable hard drive system works well, too. CD-R's and DVD-R's are crap. Don't trust them.

2. Don't buy cheap hard drives.

tlester · 08-21-2007, 11:02 AM

Also... a peer of mine once said... "If you don't have it in at least three places... you don't have it!" Good advice.

BzsBimmer · 08-22-2007, 01:17 AM

So here's the thing.. I'm not a dummy when it comes to PC's...
I've had WD's, Deskstar, Maxtor, and Seagate drives fail on me and that's not including my clients.

I do make backups but here's the thing that gets me
If you talk to a lot of IT pro's they'll tell you the same thing. Hard drives just do not last like they used to.

Sure you can make a backup on DVD but did you know that most DVD's although they say archive able, depending on the brand, flatness, dye lot, etc. can make your backup DVD's unreadable after just a year or less.

Most drives are unreadable if the read head has crashed in to the platter by simply doing what a lot of you stated and the professional services can run upwards of $1000.00

What's more irritating is the hassle of going through all of this BS in the first place. What ever happened to Solid State HD's!

toofasttooslow · 08-22-2007, 01:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BzsBimmer

So here's my off topic rant...
HARD DRIVES SUCK
Yes, there, I've said what a lot of people won't...

Since the advent of gazillion RPM drives, manufacturers have made cheaper HD's for the masses and the masses are going to pay dearly eventually....

I've had a total of 10 drives go bad in the past few years... a 90% increase of failed drives since I've owned computers back when DOS was the shiznit and Windows 95 blew on to the computer scene...

As more and more people put pictures, movies, etc. on their hard drives and don't back up... let's just say... YOU'RE F'd!

HD warranties suck too... because they won't warranty their replacement drives.
I have over 2TB of hard drive space.... 1TB for computing and 1TB for backups... now THAT's a chunk of change

/END RANT
(Let me guess you say... your hard drive just failed....)

Sounds like you have a cooling issue causing your drives to fail. That failure rate is definitely not the norm in any use case. Could also be your SATA/ PATA card (on-board also)is fubar'ing them as well. I've seen some cards that have caused big issues with drives - no matter what brand you put in.

Here's an interesting study that Google did on HD failure rates. They took failure numbers from their own huge storage array and tried to correlate it to real world numbers.

http://209.85.163.132/papers/disk_failures.pdf

533ogetnom · 08-22-2007, 02:05 AM

unless you had hundreds of drives or are a statistical miracle

even if you have been keeping your drives for WAY to long, theres still no way you have seen 10 HDD failures

hard drives dont have a failure rate anywhere near that high, YOU have been doing something wrong, either not cooling them properly, maybe you though RAID was a good idea, maybe you dropped them IDK

your the sky is falling crap is kind of dumb, and as for 2 TB being a "chunk of change" i dont know what hard drives your buying, but they better be diamond encrusted for only 2 TB to be a "chunk of change" otherwise your not actually in the enthusiast market which makes me even more skeptical of your failures

oh and as for "hard drives not lasting as long as they used to"

k you go buy 150 old 5gb HDDs, and ill go buy 1 new age 750gb hdd, lets see who loses data first

new hdds are much more reliable then the old when you think about it from the proper perspective

toofasttooslow · 08-22-2007, 02:27 AM

Your sig trips me out. I thought my eyes were wigging out but then realized the picture goes from black and white to color.

tek818 · 08-22-2007, 02:30 AM

1 word for u bro... "RAID5"

533ogetnom · 08-22-2007, 03:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gum5h03

Your sig trips me out. I thought my eyes were wigging out but then realized the picture goes from black and white to color.

haha yea, its only a few days old and ive gotten that a lot, supposed to be in thr rythem of a heartbeat

Quote:

Originally Posted by AB Tek 818

1 word for u bro... "RAID5"

back OT
screw raid setups, especially for an end user that doesnt know what hes doing, just result in a higher failure rate, even for a redundant one like raid 5

Kiemyster · 08-22-2007, 01:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ik999

I'm always having problems with storing things. I usually can't download anything until I finish with the stuff I have stored.

I can't wait until bluray becomes mainstream.

LOLOL!!! wait!!! WHAT!!! ahahahahahaha yeah ok. keep waiting ahahahaha

in the meantime, invest in an external HDD with autosync. it backs up everything according to how u want, ie, upon shutdown, when you press a hotkey, or on a time basis.

(shit, still cant stop laughing ahaha)

BzsBimmer · 08-22-2007, 02:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 533ogetnom

unless you had hundreds of drives or are a statistical miracle

even if you have been keeping your drives for WAY to long, theres still no way you have seen 10 HDD failures

hard drives dont have a failure rate anywhere near that high, YOU have been doing something wrong, either not cooling them properly, maybe you though RAID was a good idea, maybe you dropped them IDK

your the sky is falling crap is kind of dumb, and as for 2 TB being a "chunk of change" i dont know what hard drives your buying, but they better be diamond encrusted for only 2 TB to be a "chunk of change" otherwise your not actually in the enthusiast market which makes me even more skeptical of your failures

oh and as for "hard drives not lasting as long as they used to"

k you go buy 150 old 5gb HDDs, and ill go buy 1 new age 750gb hdd, lets see who loses data first

new hdds are much more reliable then the old when you think about it from the proper perspective

Well seeing how you're in FL, I don't know how you can call BS? It's not like you KNOW me.
I myself have had 10 drives die. Why would I RANT about it? I don't work for a HD conspiracy group.

My drives are cooled down properly as a "normal" home user would. Do I have a dedicated refrigerated room for my server? No. But this was MY rant and maybe had NO merit to what everyone else in the world is seeing, just my observations.

Look at the class action suit against IBM and their Deskstar drives. I had 4 of those bad boys die on me.

For the typical home user, 2TB's for just storage is quite a bit. I run RAID to mirror my data from my backups. Yes my drives are always spinning and I do a lot of large data transfers between drives. Maybe that's my problem... I haven't bought any diamond encrusted drives and I should but then again, I have no need for $300 HD's when the $100.00 work just as well.

I may not be an enthusiast as you are but then again, maybe you've just had better luck with your drives.

OC Guy · 08-22-2007, 02:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BzsBimmer

So here's the thing.. I'm not a dummy when it comes to PC's...
I've had WD's, Deskstar, Maxtor, and Seagate drives fail on me and that's not including my clients.

I do make backups but here's the thing that gets me
If you talk to a lot of IT pro's they'll tell you the same thing. Hard drives just do not last like they used to.

Sure you can make a backup on DVD but did you know that most DVD's although they say archive able, depending on the brand, flatness, dye lot, etc. can make your backup DVD's unreadable after just a year or less.

Most drives are unreadable if the read head has crashed in to the platter by simply doing what a lot of you stated and the professional services can run upwards of $1000.00

What's more irritating is the hassle of going through all of this BS in the first place. What ever happened to Solid State HD's!

I agree. I've had to replace way too many HDs at work. My friend was a SAN admin and used to tell me stories all the time.

Signed,

IT Pro

BzsBimmer · 08-22-2007, 02:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gum5h03

Sounds like you have a cooling issue causing your drives to fail. That failure rate is definitely not the norm in any use case. Could also be your SATA/ PATA card (on-board also)is fubar'ing them as well. I've seen some cards that have caused big issues with drives - no matter what brand you put in.

Here's an interesting study that Google did on HD failure rates. They took failure numbers from their own huge storage array and tried to correlate it to real world numbers.

http://209.85.163.132/papers/disk_failures.pdf

So far this is an interesting read.

eleven11 · 08-22-2007, 03:36 PM

From my experience, don't buy Maxtor. They are shit.

08-20-2007, 11:31 PM	#1
BzsBimmer Major General 3461 Rep 6,826 Posts Drives: '23 G80 FO M3 & '23 G05 X5 M50 Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Nor. Cal iTrader: (32)	Hard Drives Suck So here's my off topic rant... HARD DRIVES SUCK Yes, there, I've said what a lot of people won't... Since the advent of gazillion RPM drives, manufacturers have made cheaper HD's for the masses and the masses are going to pay dearly eventually.... I've had a total of 10 drives go bad in the past few years... a 90% increase of failed drives since I've owned computers back when DOS was the shiznit and Windows 95 blew on to the computer scene... As more and more people put pictures, movies, etc. on their hard drives and don't back up... let's just say... YOU'RE F'd! HD warranties suck too... because they won't warranty their replacement drives. I have over 2TB of hard drive space.... 1TB for computing and 1TB for backups... now THAT's a chunk of change /END RANT (Let me guess you say... your hard drive just failed....)
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08-21-2007, 12:49 AM	#2
Gearcraft misadventurer 64 Rep 708 Posts Drives: bubbie mystic blue whale Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: candied island iTrader: (0)	learned this the hard way. thats why im getting a smaller capacity HD for my laptop and use my old HD to store music and some pictures and DVD for the important files that cant be reload into the computer (like music from CDs). i wouldnt want to carry around too many files on a big capacity HD and loose all of them at the same time. __________________ 325i I SP
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08-21-2007, 12:55 AM	#3
BMXtreme Lieutenant Colonel 63 Rep 1,657 Posts Drives: E60 535i Join Date: May 2007 Location: Redmond, WA iTrader: (3) Garage List 2006 330i [0.00]	Hmm...I got 2 seagates replaced without question...i just shipped them the fail ones and the ship both back...what did you get? I only settle for Seagate/Maxtor now.... Also..what kinda failure you are facing? I have managed to recover 100% from my blown PCB on the HD...by replacing the PCB w/ the exact one frm another drive. Most bad sector failure can be recover...pretty easily...unless your motor died.
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08-21-2007, 01:00 AM	#4
NaTuReB0Y Powered By 36DD 374 Rep 7,369 Posts Drives: 2006 E90 Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: Inland Empire iTrader: (12)	i stored everything on my external hard drive......... __________________ 2006 E90 330i Jet Black \| 20" WORK VS-XX \| FK452 \| H&R Sport on Koni Yellow \| REMUS QUAD
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08-21-2007, 04:55 AM	#6
ik999 Lieutenant 25 Rep 497 Posts Drives: e90 335i f32 435xi Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: gta iTrader: (0)	I'm always having problems with storing things. I usually can't download anything until I finish with the stuff I have stored. I can't wait until bluray becomes mainstream.
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08-21-2007, 05:55 AM	#7
koreez88 Всем привет ;) 152 Rep 3,358 Posts Drives: Tesla Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: USA iTrader: (12)	Back up the most important data on dvd
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08-21-2007, 10:26 AM	#9
Josh49 Major General 262 Rep 6,664 Posts Drives: E90 325xi Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Boston, MA iTrader: (33)	External hard drives these days are extremely cheap. I picked up 320 gb western digital the other day for 80 bucks at staples for this exact purpose of backing up my files in case anything ever failed... I'll try to hook it up every month or so and synchronize it. I'm most worried about the pictures, its hard to go on vacations or special occasions again to get the pictures.. (vacation time and money, not that I don't want to ) __________________ E90 325XI, MYSTIC BLUE ON BLACK/ALUM, STEP, NAV, PDC, CWP, XENON, SIRIUS, ALARM, MUD GUARDS, CLEARBRA, CHROME GRILLS AND TIPS, VALENTINE 1 (HARDWIRED), HO CERAMIC 40%, 161'S, REAR FOG MOD, LUX 4.0, BLACKLINES, OEM PEDALS, MTEC FOGS, GRUPPE-M REP INTAKE. 156'S AND RUBBER MATS FOR THE WINTER.
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08-21-2007, 11:01 AM	#10
tlester Enlisted Member 3 Rep 40 Posts Drives: 2007 328i Sport, Crimson Red Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Jacksonville, FL iTrader: (0) Garage List 2007 328i Sport [0.00]	Here's my advice... 1. Backup daily. I.e. get good backup software. Do a full backup once a week and an incremental once a day. Whatever you use for backup, don't keep it attached to your computer. I recommend tape, but a quality removable hard drive system works well, too. CD-R's and DVD-R's are crap. Don't trust them. 2. Don't buy cheap hard drives.
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08-21-2007, 11:02 AM	#11
tlester Enlisted Member 3 Rep 40 Posts Drives: 2007 328i Sport, Crimson Red Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Jacksonville, FL iTrader: (0) Garage List 2007 328i Sport [0.00]	Also... a peer of mine once said... "If you don't have it in at least three places... you don't have it!" Good advice.
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08-22-2007, 01:17 AM	#12
BzsBimmer Major General 3461 Rep 6,826 Posts Drives: '23 G80 FO M3 & '23 G05 X5 M50 Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Nor. Cal iTrader: (32)	So here's the thing.. I'm not a dummy when it comes to PC's... I've had WD's, Deskstar, Maxtor, and Seagate drives fail on me and that's not including my clients. I do make backups but here's the thing that gets me If you talk to a lot of IT pro's they'll tell you the same thing. Hard drives just do not last like they used to. Sure you can make a backup on DVD but did you know that most DVD's although they say archive able, depending on the brand, flatness, dye lot, etc. can make your backup DVD's unreadable after just a year or less. Most drives are unreadable if the read head has crashed in to the platter by simply doing what a lot of you stated and the professional services can run upwards of $1000.00 What's more irritating is the hassle of going through all of this BS in the first place. What ever happened to Solid State HD's!
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08-22-2007, 02:05 AM	#14
533ogetnom Banned 103 Rep 1,760 Posts Drives: 335coupe Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Florida iTrader: (1)	unless you had hundreds of drives or are a statistical miracle even if you have been keeping your drives for WAY to long, theres still no way you have seen 10 HDD failures hard drives dont have a failure rate anywhere near that high, YOU have been doing something wrong, either not cooling them properly, maybe you though RAID was a good idea, maybe you dropped them IDK your the sky is falling crap is kind of dumb, and as for 2 TB being a "chunk of change" i dont know what hard drives your buying, but they better be diamond encrusted for only 2 TB to be a "chunk of change" otherwise your not actually in the enthusiast market which makes me even more skeptical of your failures oh and as for "hard drives not lasting as long as they used to" k you go buy 150 old 5gb HDDs, and ill go buy 1 new age 750gb hdd, lets see who loses data first new hdds are much more reliable then the old when you think about it from the proper perspective
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08-22-2007, 02:27 AM	#15
toofasttooslow Galactic Emperor 79 Rep 801 Posts Drives: Fast Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: WA iTrader: (3)	Your sig trips me out. I thought my eyes were wigging out but then realized the picture goes from black and white to color.
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08-22-2007, 02:30 AM	#16
tek818 Lieutenant Colonel 140 Rep 1,953 Posts Drives: 2020 X3M Competition Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Los Angeles, CA iTrader: (2) Garage List 2018 M3 ZCP [9.50]	1 word for u bro... "RAID5"
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08-22-2007, 03:36 PM	#22
eleven11 Major 422 Rep 1,468 Posts Drives: -F31- Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Derby City iTrader: (0)	From my experience, don't buy Maxtor. They are shit.
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