On Thu, 2006-05-11 at 13:47 -0600, Gregory Hill wrote: > I'm going to have to assume you work in an IT department or something. > I haven't RMA'd a hard drive since the big IBM fiasco about 5 years ago > where they released a ton of faulty drives. I've had dual WD 74GB > Raptors in RAID0 for about 2 years with no problems (using an onboard > promise sata raid controller, then the nvidia sata raid controller after > that). I've probably only RMA'd 3 or 4 hard drives in my life. Come to > think of it, I haven't had to RMA a hard drive since I started buying > good power supplies. Do you use the cheapo ones? If it came with the > case, then the answer is almost always yes (though there are a very few > rare occurrences of cases coming stock with quality power supplies). > Would be interesting if there's a correlation there.
Well just don't count a drive not failing. It's always a matter of when, not if. And yes, as we increase the number of drives, the chances of a single failure go up. I typically lose a disk in my home machine every 3 years or so. This is regardless of brand, size, and model. Probably my work in an IT department colors me, but I would never trust a RAID-0 setup. The odds of losing your data entirely are increased (are they not increased by a factor of the number of disks?) over just keeping a single disk. So for now I have just one disk that I periodically back up to two external disks. I also sync data to two different geographical locations (sure that's probably overkill :). Other important data goes on optical media. Each of these "backups" will fail sooner or later. But it's about managing my statistics in some fashion. Certainly factors like power supplies has a tremendous influence on the statistics. In fact I think they'd play a large role in disk failures. Clean power will make your disks run longer. No doubt about it. This is often something overlooked by folks. Michael > > Greg > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf > Of > > Corey Edwards > > Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2006 1:30 PM > > To: [email protected] > > Subject: Re: Home RAID question > > > > On Thu, 2006-05-11 at 13:22 -0600, Andrew McNabb wrote: > > > RAID 5 makes it so that a single disk can die without having to > restore > > > from backups. However, it's always possible that two will die at > about > > > the same time. This is especially true if your disks are from the > same > > > lot, or if it takes several weeks to replace a disk. > > > > Or if the disks are in the same computer and you get a power spike. I > > just want to emphasize how common it actually is to lose 2 disks at > the > > same time. Not every day, certainly, but it's happened to me > personally > > twice in the last two years. In that same period of time I've RMAd > > probably 10 other drives for single failures. > > > > Backups, backups, backups! > > > > Corey > > > /* > PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net > Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug > Don't fear the penguin. > */ > /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
