Jason Tower <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> Sorry, but I have to disagree on this one. Hard drives have too many >> moving parts to trust after being that old. Especially if they've >> sat around unused. Time kills things with moving parts :) Plus, old >> drives may not provide SMART data, which helps you detect errors >> sooner. > > as a mechanical engineer, i have to disagree with your disagreement :-) > > time doesn't kill things with moving parts, cycles kill things with > moving parts. movement cycles, temperature cycles, whatever. a hard > disk that's been sitting idle for a couple of years is no closer to > death now than it was two years ago, assuming it was stored reasonably.
Largely true; I didn't take your original mail to mean the old drives you were speaking of hadn't been in service, though. If the drives were bought new and shelved, then that's not too bad; if they saw three years of life before, though, then that certainly impacts their longevity in whatever future use someone intends for them. But time can kill even inactive hard drives. The lubricant used in drives can and does undergo changes over time, in some cases clumping and changing viscosity. One of the reasons the "freezer trick" to revive old, dead hard drives sometimes works is because the expansion/contraction helps break the static friction of a slightly congealed lubricant that was holding a drive's platters in place. > modern disks have -substantially- higher storage densities than their > older siblings, which require much tighter physical tolerances in order > to operate. as such, a trifling deviation that doesn't adversely > affect an older disk will render a new disk worthless. you can only > push the cost/capacity envelope so far without affecting quality and > reliability, and unfortunately people keep voting (with their wallets) > for cheap rather than reliable. While what you state is true about tolerances, densities, etc, I think drawing the conclusion that it makes newer drives less reliable (even if it fits anectdotal evidence any of us may have seen) isn't kosher. I would argue many of today's drives are -more- reliable than they once were. Technology advances improve in many ways (remember having to park hard drives? also, error correction used today is more advanced. not to mention improvements in manufacturing in general). I'd be curious to see what hard data the industry has on this kind of thing, besides volunteer surveys (like below). Personally I'd much rather have a new drive with a 3-5 year warranty than hope an older drive (esp if it has seen many active hours of service). Storage Review has a nice user survey of drive reliability with a ton of data that also offers interesting insight into the reliability of particular manufacturers, brands, and models. Just my own $0.02. There's room for disagreement among friends :) Chip -- Chip Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/ TriLUG PGP Keyring : http://trilug.org/~chrish/trilug.asc
