[ale] [semi OT] encouraging and discouraging HDD and SSD observations

[Ron Frazier (ALE)]

Brian,

You make some very good points as to the tradeoffs of time and money of 
various methods, including mine, of handling hard drive purchasing and 
maintenance, and replacement.  Everyone will weigh those elements 
differently for their own situation

See below.  Some parts snipped.

Sincerely,

Ron


On 11/5/2013 1:49 PM, Brian MacLeod wrote:

-snip-

>> Spinrite does ...
>>      
> ...blah blah blah.  Every time there's a hard drive thread, you begin
> the bloody advertisement for Spinrite.  We don't need to hear it every
> time.  It's in the archives, we can read it, stop posting this noise.
>
>    

The only reason I ever mention any of this is to help readers improve 
the longevity of their hard drives.  That is a subject I have a passion 
about.  I didn't mention SpinRite in this thread until you said you 
thought that using it was killing my hard drives.  I don't think this is 
the case, and I went on to explain why.

There may be 200X the people that read this list versus the few that 
post.  Not all have heard everything.  They come and go.  And, they may 
find search results in google which hit on the topic we're discussing.  
They are more likely to find newer threads rather than old ones.  
They're more likely to find this one by searching on hdd topics than the 
old ones on those topics.  Also, it's much easier for me to restate my 
reasons for feeling the way I do, if they're short, than it is to go 
searching through 3 years of archives.

It continues to amaze me that people here are so hostile toward 
SpinRite, which is proven and known to be useful for hdd data recovery 
and maintenance.

How do I know it's proven and known to be useful?  I've seen it with my 
own eyes in my own experience, in terms of data recovery.

In terms of hdd maintenance, I believe it to be useful based on years of 
intermittent research and based on a knowledge of the processes that 
it's doing.

Let's get this out of the way.  Yes, I've been having a run of bad luck 
with the Seagate 1 TB Barracuda drives.  I replaced a couple about a 
year ago at the same time.  They were about 2-3 years into their life at 
the time.  Now, I'm replacing one of the replacements, and hoping the 
other doesn't soon go South.  In doing research, it looks like these 
drives have a pretty poor reputation for reliability, and I've seen 
reported failure rates as high as 30%.  Many of those were firmware, and 
mine is mechanical, so I don't know what to think.  When I bought these 
originally in 2009, my prior experience with Seagate had been stellar, 
and I had no big reason at the time to research before buying.

As it is, now, I will not be buying any more of that product family.  
I'm moving the remaining Seagate that's in the PC to alternate duty as a 
storage drive in my DVR.  I'm putting a WD Black 2 TB in its place.  
That's my primary backup drive.  And, I'm turning the Seagate that is 
coming in the mail as a warranty replacement into a secondary backup drive.

I don't think my maintenance procedures helped kill the drives.  I think 
there are factors at play otherwise and I don't know what they are.

I should mention that SpinRite works on Windows drives, Linux drives, 
Mac drives, even TIVO drives, if they're attached to a PC.  Having said 
that, I don't give a rat's tail if anyone here uses SpinRite.  I've 
found it useful and I share that.  I do care if my (sometimes painful) 
experiences and my research can help others make their HDD's last longer.

For the remainder of the thread, let's forget SpinRite.  Note that I did 
previously mention the Linux badblocks utility as an alternative to use.

The underlying issue that I'm passionate about is, essentially, disk 
surface analysis and data scrubbing.

I've spent dozens, if not hundreds, of cumulative hours over the last 
decade reading blog posts, white papers, websites, and manufacturer 
faq's.  I've done tons of google searches on things like bit rot, data 
fading, coating failure, magnetic failure, grown defects, etc.  I don't 
claim to be an expert.  I just try to share things that I think are 
useful.  And, I have NEVER said my way is the only way to do things.  
It's the way I do things.  And, I think others could potentially benefit 
from doing some of these things.

So, to summarize, it is my strong belief that routine disk surface 
analysis and data scrubbing can make a material improvement in the 
usability of the magnetic part of a HDD, at the cost of a minimal 
decrease in mechanical life.  This process, I believe, will actually 
prevent read and write errors and boot and operational failures over 
time by periodically reverifying the drives ability to store and recall 
data in every sector.  I cannot prove it, but that's what I believe.

> I've used Spinrite in the past.  When 20Mb of storage cost $200-300 and
> I had computers that needed to last several years, it made perfect sense
> to spend the time using it.
>
> Nowadays, I consider it a complete waste of time because drives are
> cheap, and I can plan to have replacements around, and I expect to
> replace my computers in three years.
>
>    

It's perfectly valid to consider time usage to money spent and saved.  
I'll have another comment about that below.

But, I routinely run computers and hdd's longer than 5 years, if I can.  
Unless I have a compelling reason not to.  I built this computer I'm 
typing this on in 2009, although I have upgraded the primary HDD and the 
CPU.

> Drive starts throwing ANY error, I begin the process of replacing it.
> Extra rounds of backups, cables on hand to begin cloning to a new drive.
>
>
>    

I agree with that.

>> Are yo saying you expect refurbs to be inferior to new just
>> because they frequently are?  Or are you saying they should be that
>> way? If I were going to refurb my product and resell it and put a
>> warranty on it just like it was new, I'd prefer that it was as
>> good as new when it left the refurb shop.
>>      
>
> But you missed a very important point: they aren't selling refurbs as
> new with the same warranty, they are replacing failed units with refurbs
> to complete the CURRENT warranty.  That means THEY believe that the
> drive is less reliable.  If they believe that, I had better believe it
> too.
>
>    

OK.  I see your point.

-snip-

> If you spend less than 2 hours a year using Spinrite on your drives,
> then you're coming out ahead.  If not, well, like I said, this is the
> worst case scenario for the Greens, anything else means warranty
> coverage at a lower cost.  Oh, and let's not forget that the
> likelihood of those drives costing me the same in 2, and later, 4
> years from this start point is unlikely; they will cost less.
>
> And, most important of all: I control my fate, not the hard drive
> company, not UPS/Fedex, because I always have a spare on hand.  If I
> were to do that in the equivalent Black scenario, the costs go up.
>
> But the reality is: I wouldn't do this because I'd at least buy Red
> (the powering on/off for power savings is wear and tear on the Green
> drives), and I'd be buying more than 1 drive for use anyway.  I
> centralize my storage (NAS, and they don't like Green drives), and use
> Linux so that I don't need a drive in any single machine anyway
> (netbooting is a wonderful thing).
>
> And with NAS, I don't need 1 for 1 in stock replacements; I can have 4
> in use with a single spare in queue.  That actually sees more benefits
> for buying Black than Green, but I wanted to bring this home to you,
> with the way you purchase drives, and your current burn rate, that you
> leave yourself up to a lot of external forces dictating how your
> experience goes.  I've been trying to tell you you're going through a
> lot of headaches and time doing things this way, and your adherence to
> your method MAYBE saves money, but for a lot more work, and with
> windows where you have no spare to fall back on.
>
> If you're fine with that, okay.
>
>    

So what you're saying is that, assuming my method increases the 
longevity of the drive, that it maybe saves me some money at the cost of 
a potentially large amount of my time.  I'd say that's a valid point.  
And, I may have to reevaluate the amount of time it consumes.  Part of 
that depends on whether I lose the use of the PC while the diagnostic runs.

I cannot justify nas or raid equipment for me or my family members that 
I deal with.  I understand the advantages you've mentioned.  But, for 
personal machines, we're usually dealing with individual machines with 
individual hard drives.  The additional cost of more advanced equipment 
is too high for us to pursue.

> But I really want to make sure any other beginners out there get to
> hear that this isn't the only safe way, and I would argue, it's an
> expensive way (time) to deal with something that is pretty much
> guaranteed to happen.  Hard drives can, do, and will fail eventually.
>   If you plan on the certainty of that, you're prepared.
>
> bnm
>
>
>    
I want to bring up a few more points.  First, everyone reading this and 
everyone working with the issue of drive failure and replacement will 
weigh the balance of maintenance time, money, and replacement time 
differently.  No two people will make the same choices and the same 
trade offs.

Consumers operate in a vastly different space than most of the active 
posters on this list.  Some of the people reading this are average 
consumers.  They may never post at all.  The average consumer doesn't 
have backups at all, or doesn't have good recent ones.  Those are just 
the cold hard facts.  Obviously, we would encourage them to do better.

To the average consumer, a hard drive failure is a traumatic, jarring, 
and sometimes tragic experience.  I talk mainly from the consumer point 
of view, except, I'm geekier than most, and I do have at least decent 
backups.

You've talked about the time I spend doing maintenance versus the money 
I save.  But, you haven't talked about the time I spend working through 
a drive recovery.  That can be substantial, and very painful, or at 
least very tedious.  As a result, it's in my best interest to prolong 
the time between those events as long as possible.

In all cases, when I get a new hard drive for any reason, I burn it in 
by reading and writing data to it for a few days.  If it has any infant 
mortality issues, I want them to show up quickly so I can return it to 
the vendor.  The actual face time required to do this varies and the 
loss of the pc usage varies depending on how I do this, but it does 
require some setup and babysitting time.

Example 1: My primary hard drive fails without a recent, or decent, 
backup.  Or, the entire machine is stolen, or there's a fire, etc.  So, 
I have to completely rebuild my machine from scratch, install and 
configure the os, install and configure the apps, tweak numerous things, 
and download my data from the online backup.  I'll probably lose any 
data within the last 6 hours.  I don't wish to go into all the details 
here, but I do probably 300 different things to a new pc build and it 
takes me a week.

The first scenario shouldn't happen unless my primary and backup drives 
fail at the same time.  In any case, it's preferable to keep the primary 
from failing longer.  If the latter scenarios happen, I just have to 
deal with it.

Example 2: My primary hard drive fails with a decent backup.  I would 
far and away rather detect this before it happens.  Some of my 
maintenance procedures allow me to flag things like file system issues, 
read errors, reallocated sectors, etc.  I would rather replace the main 
drive while I can still transfer it's data off than restore from a 
backup.  If I have to restore from a backup, I can do that.  That 
process usually takes about 5 hours.

I have stated that I like image backups and clones.  That opinion has 
never changed.  In my experience, this is by FAR the easiest way to 
restore a Windows only or a hybrid Windows / Linux system with all it's 
system level configuration, all apps, all data, all app configuration, 
and all user level customization as of the date of the backup.  Then, I 
reinstall anything I know I did since the backup, and recover the online 
backup data, and I'm back in business.

If my backup is a clone, versus an image file, and if that disk has the 
same interface, and the same physical size in the case of a laptop, I 
can simply put the clone disk in the pc, boot it, download online data, 
and I'm going again.  That is a very quick process.

In any of these scenarios, I would then need to get a new hard drive and 
create a new backup.

The main point is that doing any sort of drive recovery is painful in 
terms of time usage.  Counting new drive burn in, backup restoration, 
online data restoration, and backup recreation, at the minimum, I have 
to spend a number of hours of my time and even more hours of pc down time.

If a family computer is involved, I have to factor in time and fuel to 
drive there once or twice.

So, the bottom line, for me, is that hard drive recovery and replacement 
is a painful enough procedure in the best case, that I'm willing to 
spend some of my time along the way doing extra maintenance to prolong 
the intervals between those events.


-- 

(PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
call on the phone.  I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
mailing lists and such.  I don't always see new email messages very quickly.)

Ron Frazier
770-205-9422 (O)   Leave a message.
linuxdude AT techstarship.com
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