is it the reading that kills a hard drive or the writing? I'm wondering because I'm trying to decide if I should allow heavy uploading from my drive. I do a lot of recording which I've heard is hard on hard drives, I've killed two in four years (a decent bit of downloading as well). is RAID a solution to this? (one dies, one survives...replace the dead one and then copy the whole contents to the new one?) or separate drives for audio/system?
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what kills a hard drive?
- Thread starter monkeyxx
- Start date
bob4432
Lifer
heat is a factor, quality of power going to them is a factor, but how much reading writing do you do? are we talking reading or writing 24/7?
what brand hdds died on you? mirroring raid is the simplest solution, but you shouldn't be killing hdds, it could just be bad luck.
in the last 10yrs i have seen numerous hdds dies, all different brands for all types of uses, they are a mechanical device with extremely tight tolerances, i guess it is just the nature of the beast that they die.
welcome to the forums.
let's see.... the first one that died was a was an IBM, the second was a western digital caviar special edition with three year warranty, which I used.
I record a new song just about every day... download/upload maybe 5 hours a week
i've heard from people who know audio that hard disk recording is very hard on drives
I record a new song just about every day... download/upload maybe 5 hours a week
i've heard from people who know audio that hard disk recording is very hard on drives
DaveSimmons
Elite Member
It's storing all that pr0n that wears them out faster
RAID1 is a good idea, since when a drive fails you'll have time to back up files.
2 drives in 4 years is a reasonable failure rate for heavy use.
RAID1 is a good idea, since when a drive fails you'll have time to back up files.
2 drives in 4 years is a reasonable failure rate for heavy use.
bob4432
Lifer
was the ibm one of the deskstar series? probably 1/2 the people on this board had issues with those ibms, i did and it was replace with a hitachi(when hitachi bought the hdd section of ibm) and has been in my rig for a couple of years 24/7 no probs. they had a bad run a couple of years ago.
the wd, maybe just bad luck.
as far as your recording, you are not doing anything crazy, and the hdd doesn't care what it is writing/reading, it is just data to the hdd.
i would say to take the ibm out of the equation and i would throw bad luck to the wd. if it continues to happen, then i would look at power and heat. other than that, get a decent backup plan going. and possibly do the mirrored raid if you have a builtin raid controller just in case.
JimPhelpsMI
Golden Member
Hi, Running them 24/7 probably kills most HDs. Other problems can usually be fixed by a correct Reformat.
wow, thanks everybody. the second big crash I had, we took the PC in to a computer tech, and he replaced some RAM, the power supply, and of course the hard drive. so maybe bad power was at work here? I think heat may be an issue with my old athlon 1.4 chip too. now if I could only afford to upgrade... I'm working on it
frankgomez75
Platinum Member
ha... I've built lots of PC's and modded well over 200 xbox's and I have had quite a few Samsungs fail on me.
That being said... the worst drives for me have been Maxtors.. I seem to always have bad luck with Maxtors messing up and needing RMA. WD has been good to me and so have the Sammy's. Though the Sammys do have the better warranty, it doesn't mean they are not prone to failure though.
LMAO that was good.
(www.chucknorrisfacts.com)
oh and if you have them die a lot.. get a 5yr warranty on them 🙂 i have had a couple die... one was ~10yrs old, one died under warranty, and one was DOA.
Heat and power are the primary causes of hdd failures. You can get a hdd cooler, even a simple one is better than nothing. As for the power, you might want to invest in a quality power filter or surge unit. As for tuning them on and off or running 24/7, it's very subjective and varies according to designs. Fluid bearing hdd are more resilient to turning on and off since the bearing doesn't wear out as fast as regular sleeve bearings. On the otherhand, sleeve bearings will last longer when kept on 24/7. Most hdd dies prematurely due to worn out bearings although by the time it's discovered the mechanical arm has already rode the platter and probably caused other mechanical problem with the head and arm assembly.
zephyrprime
Diamond Member
Everyone says that heat is the number one cause of hard drive failure but I disagree. Where is the evidence for this idea? Heat would most likely cause the motor to fail since motors die sooner if running hot. But how would heat affect anything else on the drive? Heat can cause electronics to fail but the electronics on a drive other than the motor are very modest with power consumption (we're not talking about the prescott here)
I have seen quite a few hard drive failures before and from my own experience, the number one type of disk failure is the click of death. What causes the click of death? Sometimes it is head crashing, sometimes it is inexplicable. I've seen a drive that had one of its heads become completely detached from it armature probably due to poor manufacturing. I've also seen quite a few drives die from bad power supplies. In fact, I dealt with 2 such drives just this week at work. I've also seen a lot of messed up filesystems but wether that was caused by hardware problems or software problems is hard to determine. I've seen one drive that failed to spin up and perhaps that was a heat related problem.
I have seen quite a few hard drive failures before and from my own experience, the number one type of disk failure is the click of death. What causes the click of death? Sometimes it is head crashing, sometimes it is inexplicable. I've seen a drive that had one of its heads become completely detached from it armature probably due to poor manufacturing. I've also seen quite a few drives die from bad power supplies. In fact, I dealt with 2 such drives just this week at work. I've also seen a lot of messed up filesystems but wether that was caused by hardware problems or software problems is hard to determine. I've seen one drive that failed to spin up and perhaps that was a heat related problem.
I'm not sure how accurate that statement is. Even though the data density has gone up, the platters are physically the same size. A new 7200 RPM 250GB hard drive with two 125GB platters is actually less complex mechanically than a four-platter 7200 RPM 20GB hard drive from five or six years ago, and likely produces less than the older model heat due to better bearing and motor technology. Heat really shouldn't be an issue if you have room in your case to mount fans in front of the drive cage.
I think the main reason for hard drive failures is that some manufacturers cut corners in an effort to reduce costs and increase margins on their mass-market drives (I'm looking at you Maxtor). If you need high reliability, then it is time to start looking at the enterprise versions of the drives. I've heard that the WD Caviar RE models are pretty good in that respect.
homercles337
Diamond Member
Buwhahaha! Yup, exactly what i was thinking. 😉
Most of my non Maxtor failures were due to power surges/drops before I bought a UPS. Why the Maxtor's died?
Why does the sun come up in the morning...
Because it always does, and always will.
I have a 100% Maxtor failure rate. Now that Seagate owns them, I hope they can make them worth having someday.
Why does the sun come up in the morning...
Because it always does, and always will.
I have a 100% Maxtor failure rate. Now that Seagate owns them, I hope they can make them worth having someday.
I know, but it's the only brand I've really had trouble with, and the only brand where drives are dead right out of the box,and more than one of them died in less than a week.
I would only take one if it was free, and I would put nothing on it that I didn't care about losing.
I would only take one if it was free, and I would put nothing on it that I didn't care about losing.
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