I don't get it either. I have hard drives up to a decade old that, on
test, show zero bit errors. Replace hard drives every three-four
years? Seems a waste of money. The only reason to replace archive
drives that frequently is to obtain more capacity, and that's
economically viable because the price of hard drive storage has
dropped so precipitously in the past two decades.
Drives that are in constant use... Those you want to keep an eye on
their hours-in-use against the MTBF numbers. And keep them backed up.
Since 1984, I've had exactly one hard drive crash out on me, and only
one other become corrupted (but I was able to retrieve 99% of the
data on it). I've had three controller failures, easily remedied with
a replacement controller. All my other drives have been aged out
simply because their performance or capacity was outstripped by more
modern drives that are cheaper. I use several of these as temporary
storage devices still.
Godfrey
On Jul 26, 2005, at 5:51 PM, Tim Øsleby wrote:
I don't get this. A normal HD does age. That I do understand. They
do spin
at 7200rpm. But does a disconnected external drive age?
The whole external drive idea is based on two "facts"
1. That they don't spin when not used.
2. And that it's rather unlikely to get viruses at a disconnected
drive.
(Perhaps Marcus can fill me in here.) Let me add that I run a
pretty tight
antivirus regime.
To me a disconnected electric "thing" is pretty safe as long as nobody
steals it, burns it or hammers at it.
What am I not getting here???
Tim
Mostly harmless (just plain Norwegian.)
Never underestimate the power of stupidity in large crowds
(Very freely after Arthur C. Clarke, or some other clever guy)
-----Original Message-----
From: Herb Chong [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: 27. juli 2005 01:15
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: RAW file processing
they most certainly age, and possibly badly. i trust them because i
have
triple backups and upgrade all my hard drives about once every 2-3
years.
Herb....
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Øsleby" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, July 26, 2005 11:46 AM
Subject: RE: RAW file processing
An extern HD sounds like a better solution than CD/DVD to me. As
far as I
know, they don't age when not connected and stored properly.
