[ale] SATA Hard Drive Issues?

[Jim Popovitch]

Aren't identical drives subject to similar failures?

-Jim P.

On 2010-01-27, Michael B. Trausch <mike at trausch.us> wrote:
> On 01/27/2010 09:29 AM, gene.poole at macys.com wrote:
>> Is it me or has anyone else experienced the lack of longevity of SATA
>> drives? Over the past 6-months I've lost a Western Digital 320 GB Caviar,
>> Seagate 500 GB Barracuda, and 2 Seagate 1 TB Barracuda (a 7200.11 and
>> 7200.12) drives.
>>
>> I'm now running my main machine on a Hitachi 1 TB SATA II drive with my
>> fingers crossed.
>
> I've found hard disks generally to be hit or miss.  On systems where I
> cannot tolerate a total failure, I use a RAID array of two identical
> drives, though if the data is really important I've been known to put
> three identical drives in the system.
>
> Of course, I have *one* server that, at the moment, does not have any
> redundant storage.  That is something I need to fix.  And the price of
> blu-ray media needs to come down so that I can use it for backups
> without breaking the bank...
>
> I am reminded of a story someone told me once, where they got a new job
> in a position where the programs were done with punch cards, filing
> cabinets full of them, because the person that had the position before
> simply did not trust magnetic disks.  I couldn't advocate filling up
> stacks of paper with programs for that reason, but I certainly know
> better than to ever run with a single copy of anything around that's
> important... because *I* don't trust magnetic disks.  :-)
>
> 	--- Mike
>
> --
> Michael B. Trausch                    Blog: http://mike.trausch.us/blog/
> Tel: (404) 592-5746 x1                            Email: mike at trausch.us
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