[selowitch]

True or false?

1. Hard drives have dozens of vendors (Maxtor, Seagate, Hitachi, Western Digital, et al.) but are actually manufactured by a much smaller group of companies (say, three).
2. You are almost always better off buying an "internal" drive and putting it in an inexpensive enclosure than buying a plug-and-play integrated unit, assuming the total price is lower.
3. Typical laptop- and desktop-grade hard drives are not very reliable, frequently fail, and therefore should not be your sole form of backup.
4. Most manufacturers have limited warranties that do not guarantee that they won't gain access to your data and sell it off to spammers and other unscrupulous folks in the event that you return your drive.

Please add to and comment on this list.

[cdetdi]

1) false...the only reason I say that I because I've had various experiences with certain vendors working with some hardware and others not...

2) maybe...needs better clarification, I'd say its better to do your own, that way you can also upgrade to a larger drive.

3) they have movable parts, and therefore can fail at different intervals. Overall, true...

4) manufacturers as in what? distributors or the actual manufacturers, Seagate, WD etc. If the latter, then false.

[selowitch]

Originally Posted by cdetdi

4) manufacturers as in what? distributors or the actual manufacturers, Seagate, WD etc. If the latter, then false.

Well, Maxtor explicitly states in its warranties that it makes no guarantee on the security of your data. So, if I ship a defective drive back to them, it's open season on whatever data may remain on the drive.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by selowitch

True or false?[*]You are almost always better off buying an "internal" drive and putting it in an inexpensive enclosure than buying a plug-and-play integrated unit, assuming the total price is lower.

TRUE.

The selection of int. HD is much better if you DIY. I specifically wanted a Seagate drive because of the 5 yr. warranty. Plus, you have much better control over the specs. With the plug-and-play integrated unit, you often have to compromise over one or the other spec or feature.

I just ordered a 200 GB Seagate HD and a separate ext. FW enclosure. Came to $ 110 after rebate. Beat that.

-t

[turtle777]

BTW, the real MYTH or not questions is:

5. SCSI HD are in general more reliable than IDE / ATA.

I'm sure it's been discussed a gazillion times before.

-t

[selowitch]

Originally Posted by turtle777

SCSI HD are in general more reliable than IDE / ATA

I'm sure that's true. Is it possible to get an external FW enclosure that can accept SCSI drives? All the ones I've seen are IDE/ATA.

Originally Posted by turtle777

I just ordered a 200 GB Seagate HD and a separate ext. FW enclosure. Came to $ 110 after rebate. Beat that.

Very nice. Do you mind divulging where you got that deal?

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by selowitch

I'm sure that's true. Is it possible to get an external FW enclosure that can accept SCSI drives? All the ones I've seen are IDE/ATA.Very nice. Do you mind divulging where you got that deal?

Outpost.com. Unfortunately, that Segate deal is gone.

If you don't care for Segate and the 5 yr warranty, here is another got deal:

Western Digital 120GB 7200RPM 8MB Cache Hard Drive $29.99
http://www.passwird.com/

Another good source is newegg.com.

-t

[selowitch]

Does it really matter if you get an UltraATA 100 drive versus, say, a 133 drive? I realize the 133 is supposed to be faster, but I wonder. Also, should one really be looking for 7200rpm or is 5400 enough?

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by selowitch

Does it really matter if you get an UltraATA 100 drive versus, say, a 133 drive? I realize the 133 is supposed to be faster, but I wonder.

From what I researched, for most people, it doesn't matter in real life applications.

Originally Posted by selowitch

Also, should one really be looking for 7200rpm or is 5400 enough?

7200 will be noticable faster. You should go for 7200 if speed is a concern.
If you need it just for backup, 5400 should be fine.

I bought that drive to actually use it as my main HD for my Mac mini.
Since the mini has a weak internal 4200 HD, this will bost performance a lot.

-t

[analogika]

Originally Posted by turtle777

If you don't care for Segate and the 5 yr warranty, here is another got deal:

Western Digital 120GB 7200RPM 8MB Cache Hard Drive $29.99
http://www.passwird.com/

Another good source is newegg.com.

-t

thirty dollars, and people wonder why modern consumer hard drives are unreliable pieces of ****.


Everything you can get on the consumer market is "B"-stock. You can get A-grade hard drives, but hardly anyone is prepared to pay the price any longer, so they're almost only used for server applications.

[Ruahrc]

Originally Posted by turtle777

BTW, the real MYTH or not questions is:

5. SCSI HD are in general more reliable than IDE / ATA.

I'm sure it's been discussed a gazillion times before.

-t

I don't necessarily agree with this. Often times with SCSI drives the drive itself is the exact same it's just the interface hardware they put on that's different. And most server-class hard drives are actually LESS reliable than consumer parts because they are optimized for high performance (i.e. look at the 10,000/15,000rpm server-class drives. They don't last nearly as long as a 5400rpm drive). Technologies such as RAID were made so that a server could use a high-performance, low-lifetime drive and not suffer from data loss when the drives went bad.

So long as you keep around a hard drive exclusively for backup purposes, it's probably the most reliable method that is practical to the everyday user. Optical media (DVD-R, CDRW, etc) is way too unreliable and small for large backups... what else is there? Magnetic tape drives? Floptical?

Our family has kept backups of data on hard disk for years with no problem. Backups on modern, 10+GB hard disks, backups on old, old 200MB clunkers... never had a drive go bad. The secret is using a drive ONLY for backups. My backup drive only gets plugged in when I was updating its contents. Otherwise it was disconnected and unpowered in a good location. If you are going to use an external HD for daily use as well as backup, naturally it will not last as long because it's running continuously. That said, however, I think HD technology has advanced to the point where even that is of little concern. MTBF ratings are well in the 100,000's of hours nowadays. Just buy a quality hard drive with a good warranty (I think Seagate offers a 5-year warranty) and you should be fine.

Ruahrc

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by analogika

thirty dollars, and people wonder why modern consumer hard drives are unreliable pieces of ****.

Everything you can get on the consumer market is "B"-stock. You can get A-grade hard drives, but hardly anyone is prepared to pay the price any longer, so they're almost only used for server applications.

Thta's why I said in my post above that I bought a Seagate. 5 years warranty is enough to make me feel good about it, despite a low price tag.

Btw, whoever is in the market for a Seagate, Outpost has a good deal again:
Seagate 300GB ST3300831A-RK UATA100 8MB Buffer - Retail Hard Drive Kit.
$ 119 after rebate.

http://shop3.outpost.com/product/4280824

-t

[analogika]

point about the warranty.

However, a warranty won't cover your data.

[itguy05]

Originally Posted by selowitch

True or false?[list=1][*]Hard drives have dozens of vendors (Maxtor, Seagate, Hitachi, Western Digital, et al.) but are actually manufactured by a much smaller group of companies (say, three).

False. There are the big 4: Seagate, WD, Maxtor, and Hitachi. Samsung also makes good hard drives as do a few other smaller companies.

[*]You are almost always better off buying an "internal" drive and putting it in an inexpensive enclosure than buying a plug-and-play integrated unit, assuming the total price is lower.

Depends. Some of the external units have a longer warranty. In the quest for ever cheaper prices, the once standard 3 year warranty is now 90 days-1 year. You do gain a greater control over what drive you put in it. But, even with FW800, the link between drive and computer is the limiting factor, not the drive speed.

[*]Typical laptop- and desktop-grade hard drives are not very reliable, frequently fail, and therefore should not be your sole form of backup.

Both. Drives have gotten more reliable, but you should always have a backup. The best use of a drive is to turn it on and never shut it off or spin it down. Most failures happen during the spin up or shut down phase. I work with servers (24/7 operation) and many times if you shut a server off that's been running for, say 2 years, the drives won't spin back up.

That being said, I typically run my desktop drives 24/7 and have had few (1) failures.

[*]Most manufacturers have limited warranties that do not guarantee that they won't gain access to your data and sell it off to spammers and other unscrupulous folks in the event that you return your drive.

Not sure about that one. But data recovery is a pricey operation (even for them), so the chances are small.

[tooki]

Originally Posted by selowitch

Does it really matter if you get an UltraATA 100 drive versus, say, a 133 drive? I realize the 133 is supposed to be faster, but I wonder. Also, should one really be looking for 7200rpm or is 5400 enough?

ATA/133 isn't an official standard. Maxtor invented it for marketing purposes, and the others adopted it since it was trivial to do. But the last actual offical ATA standard was ATA/100, and then ATA/150 (SATA).

Neither ATA/100 nor ATA/133 will get saturated by any single drive on the market, they're just not that fast yet. The interface is not the bottleneck.

tooki

[tooki]

Originally Posted by itguy05

But data recovery is a pricey operation (even for them), so the chances are small.

Especially pricey for them, since the drive makers send out their own failed drives to DriveSavers for recovery because they don't know how to do it themselves (see 4th ¶ from the bottom).

tooki

[selowitch]

Originally Posted by tooki

Neither ATA/100 nor ATA/133 will get saturated by any single drive on the market, they're just not that fast yet. The interface is not the bottleneck.

Still, you'd probably want to stay away from an ATA/66 drive, wouldn't you?

[tooki]

Well, yes and no. No drive with an ATA/66 interface is anywhere near fast enough to saturate its ATA bus, so the bus wouldn't be a bottleneck. But since few ATA/66 drives were even made in this millennium, if you actually found an ATA/66 drive, it would be old stock of drives that are by today's standards slow (but because the drive mechanism is slow, not the bus).

tooki

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by analogika

point about the warranty.

However, a warranty won't cover your data.

Ick bin doch nich' bloed, wa ? Tuest du Backup machen... !

-t

[CatOne]

Originally Posted by turtle777

BTW, the real MYTH or not questions is:

5. SCSI HD are in general more reliable than IDE / ATA.

I'm sure it's been discussed a gazillion times before.

-t

They are more reliable. SCSI drives undergo significantly more testing at the factory than do IDE drives... Manufacturers test every single SCSI drive they ship... while with IDE drives they test "representative samples" from each lot. Thus the odds of you getting a DOA SCSI drives are much much less than a DOA IDE drive. That said, Apple tests their drives before they ship them, so they're doing some QA that the drive vendors are not.

SCSI drives are also rated for continuous operation (24x7x365) while IDE drives often aren't (especially laptop drives). Note though, that these days, the MTBF (mean time between failure) for SCSI and IDE drives is pretty similar. And also note that you should have backups of all your data... regardless of whether it's on a SCSI or IDE drive. They both CAN (and eventually WILL) fail... whether it takes 3, 5, or 15 years.

[CatOne]

Originally Posted by turtle777

Thta's why I said in my post above that I bought a Seagate. 5 years warranty is enough to make me feel good about it, despite a low price tag.

Btw, whoever is in the market for a Seagate, Outpost has a good deal again:
Seagate 300GB ST3300831A-RK UATA100 8MB Buffer - Retail Hard Drive Kit.
$ 119 after rebate.

http://shop3.outpost.com/product/4280824

-t

Thinking that a drive with a 5 year warranty is ANY more reliable than one with a 1 year warranty is folly. Manufacturers do some number crunching and set the warranty where they feel like. If you "feel good" because of a 5 year warranty, you've bought into their marketing.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by CatOne

Thinking that a drive with a 5 year warranty is ANY more reliable than one with a 1 year warranty is folly. Manufacturers do some number crunching and set the warranty where they feel like. If you "feel good" because of a 5 year warranty, you've bought into their marketing.

I know, hence my post above to analogika's comment:

Originally Posted by turtle777

Ick bin doch nich' bloed, wa ? Tuest du Backup machen... !

This means something like "I'm not stupid. That's what backups are for."


-t

[Zubir]

Originally Posted by turtle777

Ick bin doch nich' bloed, wa ? Tuest du Backup machen... !

-t

Wir bein nicht Deutsch, ja? Scheissekopf.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Zubir

Wir bein nicht Deutsch, ja? Scheissekopf.

Sollte das jetzt lustig sein ?

-t

[tooki]

Originally Posted by CatOne

They are more reliable. SCSI drives undergo significantly more testing at the factory than do IDE drives... Manufacturers test every single SCSI drive they ship... while with IDE drives they test "representative samples" from each lot. Thus the odds of you getting a DOA SCSI drives are much much less than a DOA IDE drive.

What's your source of data on this? Considering that ever single platter must be first carefully tested and endowed with servo data, and that every drive, IDE or not, comes with its defective blocks written right on the label, I think it's unlikely that they do only sample tests.

Sample tests make sense when testing the product ruins it (for example, fuses). But with complex devices, it makes sense to test each part individually and to test the finished unit.

tooki

[analogika]

Originally Posted by Zubir

Wir bein nicht Deutsch, ja? Scheissekopf.

Wilkommen im Internet.

Your therapist or local college will help you overcome your language envy.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by analogika

Your therapist or local college will help you overcome your language envy.

Hehe

-t