Hitachi Deskstar hard drive

RAID is _not_ a backup. It doesn't protect against software & operator error, for example.

Jerry

All of the programs and data are on the backup, that's why it's called a backup. Yes. What's the "My Data" directory and why would I only backup 1 directory?

Depends, what you're using. I do a full backup every few months, then a weekly differential. Current work in progress gets copied to a USB memory stick as appropriate. And, yes, I periodically test my backups by doing restores.

Jerry

back

safe.)

I read this recently elsewhere, and find it very hard to believe that two drives -- even identical ones purchased at the same time -- would fail essentially simultaneously.

I was looking at an Adaptec card the other, and was appalled at the $350 price tag.

"William Sommerwerck" wrote in message news:gfg716$k75$ snipped-for-privacy@news.eternal-september.org...

I had a situation with Seagate drives where the scenario above happened. There were two identical drives in a computer purchased at the same time. After about 3 years one failed due to increasing bad sectors being found.and was replaced. One week later, the identical failure occurred in the second drive. I doubt power supply problems or any other common cause due the computer was involved.

David

"David" wrote in news:AeXSk.10427$ snipped-for-privacy@nlpi064.nbdc.sbc.com:

any speculation on what was "causing" the "bad sectors"?

I wonder if it's an electrolytic cap problem?(on the drives) ;-}

Head clog. It's a direct function of the runtime of the drive (and the number of starts and stops). Also, various chemical outgassing and corrosion issues inside the HDA.

I've seen exactly the same thing in various RAID arrays. Near simultaneous failures of the drives. Years ago, I had one RAID 5 array that killed 4 drives in about a week. It was pure luck that I was able to keep the beast up while re-mirroring a drive, only to have the next drive subsequenty fail.

However, things got worse after that. I decided to give up on RAID and went to independent drives, with some of the drives acting as an image backup of the main drives. They would get backed up at night. In theory, all I had to do was remove the main drive, shove in the image backup, and putter along merrily. I never had to do that. Instead, both sets of drives again failed nearly simultaneously about

So, I thought I was safe by removing the backup drives. Different customer, same problem. I had box of brand new drives sitting on the shelf. One drive in a RAID 5 array was acting funny (according to the Mylex controller), so I replaced it with a new drive, which failed in about a week. So, I crammed in another new drive, which also lasted about a week. Then the drives in the active RAID 5 array started to fail. I bought some new drives from a different vendor, and rebuilt the array, thus saving the day. With these dogs, it didn't matter if the drives were running or just sitting in the box. Both ways, they failed nearly simultaneously. (Maybe there's a failure timer inside the drive).

Moral: You can't win.

Lately, I've been doing much better on the drive lifetime and RAID. I still have some striped arrays (for speed) running. I'm using various Seagate drives and have had no failures for about 3 years. With my luck, they'll probably all die at once, but so far, the stats show that they're doing fine.

Note that this is all hardware RAID. I won't use software RAID due to some bad experiences trying to recover.

Incidentally, my office SCO Unix box has been continuously running a Conner 1060s SCSI drive since about 1993. I keep waiting for it to fail, so I have an excuse to build up something better. The 486DX2/66 mother board has died twice. One power supply died. Some RAM went bad. But, the hard disk and Ineptec 1542 controller keeps plunking along for 15 years. Hint: It's always on.

As part of power consumption mitigation this summer, I finally swapped out my two HP C3010 2GB 5400 RPM 5 1/4 inch SCSI drives that had been running here continuously since 1998, and many years (perhaps nearly as long) prior to that on someone else's Sun box; they made a _lot_ of heat, but the driver (on AT&T SVR4) never reported an error the entire time I ran them. I did cool them well however.

There is/was an electric lamp (bulb - carbon filament I believe) that is/has been running continuously more than 100 years in a fire station in the SF area; there ought to be a survey of rotating mass storage installations to find the longest running examples out there.

Michael

Heres the address if you want to see in person

Hmmm... I'm backing up to a drive that runs only when it's being backed up to. So that, in theory, would pretty much eliminate the possibility of simultaneous failure.

Only if it's a different maker, model, or lot number drive. Read my rant again. One issue that I listed was having two identical drives, one spinning, the other just sitting on the shelf, fail roughly simultaneously. That can happen if the failure is caused by IC package leakage, board contamination, tin whiskers, or divine irritation. I only saw this problem once, so I suspect it's rather unusual. Still, it's something to worry about. These daze, I avoid running backups to identical drives out of paranoia.

Actually, what I'm currently doing for desktops is probably equally dangerous. After about 4 years running, I buy a bigger|better|faster drive, mirror the contents of the old drive to the new drive, and then use the old drive for backups. In other words, pre-emptive replacement. Using various mirroring software, it's quite quick and easy. Convincing the customers to replace a working drive is not so easy. The theory is that the new drive will be more reliable and last longer than the older backup drive. So far, it's been working well. However, I now have a growing pile of very used "backup" drives that are unsuitable for new systems or replacements.

For the servers, I like to use an active backup server. Only the data gets synchronized with rsync, rdist, rcp and similar software. If the main server is having a bad day, users simply point to the backup server and blunder onward. The backup server is usually in a different part of the building or off-site (in case of fire). Some of these also have a tape drive, which I use sparingly.

Ouch.

When I bought my current computer in 2001, I bought two identical drives, and periodically backed up to the second. As I could not, at that time, make a bootable backup, there was no problem with it running all the time, and I even added a swap file to the second drive.

Several years ago, when W2K "collapsed" (for unknown reasons), I found that the backup drive would no longer format. (I don't know why.) The main drive was put aside, and I suspect it would work if I installed it. (Other than the time lost reinstalling W2K and the applications, I lost nothing.)

It's frightening when you hear stories of hard drives failing nearly simultaneously. I've been buying Seagates simply because they have a 5-year warranty, and I'm not likely to change.

If one of my bootable drives failed, I would immediately (same day) purchase a replacement and copy the backup drive to it, making the new drive the primary drive.

What's dangerous about that? Considering how cheap hard drives are, it makes perfect sense. If you buy two $60 drives every four years, that's $30 a year -- 60 cents a week. That is cheap protection, and even cheaper peace-of-mind.

Or view it remotely from a web cam

This could start a religion.

"May the Blessings of the Centennial light bulb Almighty, and the Fellowship of the Holy Illumination, descend upon us all. This day and forever more."

Use RAID 6. You have TWO redundancies. And you can add some hotswaps too.

I'm buying an Areca controller (PCI express 8x, takes 4 SATA drives, 256MB cache/buffer). It's $500. But its performace (on graphs at Tom's Hardware) is astronomical.

Or fire. Or theft.

I'm lazy, I get another computer to backup the main one every night.

--

You know you're a redneck when......

1. You take your dog for a walk and you both use the same tree.
2. You can entertain yourself for more than 15 minutes with a fly swatter.
3. Your boat has not left the driveway in 15 years.
4. You burn your yard rather than mow it.
5. You think "The Nutcracker" is something you do off the high dive.
6. The Salvation Army declines your furniture.

1. You have the local taxidermist on speed dial.
2. You come back from the dump with more than you took.
3. You keep a can of Raid on the kitchen table.
4. Your wife can climb a tree faster than your cat.
5. Your grandmother has "ammo" on her Christmas list.
6. You keep flea and tick soap in the shower.
7. You've been involved in a custody fight over a hunting dog.
8. You go to the stock car races and don't need a program.
9. You know how many bales of hay your car will hold.
10. You have a rag for a gas cap.
11. Your house doesn't have curtains, but your truck does.
12. You wonder how service stations keep their rest-room's so clean.
13. You can spit without opening your mouth.
14. You consider your license plate personalized because your father made it.
15. Your lifetime goal is to own a fireworks stand.
16. You have a complete set of salad bowls and they all say "Cool Whip" on the side.
17. The biggest city you've ever been to is Wal-Mart.
18. Your working TV sits on top of your non-working TV.
19. You've used your ironing board as a buffet table.
20. A tornado hits your neighborhood and does 0,000 worth of improvements.
21. You've used a toilet brush to scratch your back.
22. You missed your 5th grade graduation because you were on jury duty.
23. You think fast food is hitting a deer at 65.

In article , snipped-for-privacy@spam.com says...>

Still doesn't protect you from the loose nut behind the keyboard.

That's essentially a backup scheme, not significantly different than cloning drives.

Never used a hotswap, but I'm assuming that they are idle empty drives which will automatically take over any other which fails.