Home > Technobuddy > Archives > 2007 > April > 26
Thursday, April 26, 2007
I’m dead certain - your hard disk is going to die
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If there was a tattoo parlor for hard disks, the most popular inscription would be: Born to die.
Hard disks are a holdover from the world of mechanical marvels - of intricate mechanical devices with close tolerances between parts. Within the decade they will be replaced with solid state storage devices that will be faster and more dependable. But that’s tomorrow - you need to worry about today.
The miracle is that they work so well. Spinning platters that record your data - some turning at 7,200 RPMs …a speed that would smoke most car engines - are destroyed if anything goes wrong.
That’s the miracle. But here’s the reality - hard disks, like the tattoo says, are headed toward failure from the moment you buy them. And a new study, linked here, says that hard disks are more likely to fail than the manufacturers admit (what a surprise that is, right?)
All this underlines the fact that you simply must make backup copies of your data. We’ve been living a computerized life for so long now that the data in our machines is often worth much more than the hardware and software we use.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Post your comment | Categories: General
