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DEL.ICIO.USI’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.
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Comments
By Morris
April 26, 2007 8:42 AM | Link to this
So, what is your recommnedation for a backup device?
By Bill
April 26, 2007 9:00 AM | Link to this
Hi Morris, I’d use an external hard disk as my primary backup device - or use one of the online backup services.
I know, I know, hard disks are gonna die - and that’s true. But they are still more dependable than DVDs or CDs … especially the kind you burn at home. When you create a CD or DVD at home it isn’t as dependable as a commercially created DVD or CD.
So, in my house, I keep important data on the main hard disk, then backup to my external hard disk and - in rare cases where I just don’t want to take a chance at all - also create copies on a DVD.
One thing that I should do - but don’t - is use an online backup service. Not only would that keep my backup copy safe if there was a fire at my house, or other big disaster like a tornado … but these services also make backup copies of what is stored there. So that seems the safest method (but even if I used a commercial online service, I’d still backup to my external hard disk).
By Bob
April 26, 2007 9:06 AM | Link to this
You are absolutely correct! My current machine has a 2 year old 250GB hard drive as the primary and a pair of 300GB drives in a Raid 1 array. I recently had to do a windows xp reinstall/repair because my registry was partially in bad sectors. All my data and email files are backed up to the raid. My financial data is backed up weekly to earthlink’s network encrypted (a freebie from earthlink). After the bad sector problem I bought a new drive for $60 from MicroCenter and plan on cloning my existing C: drive to this. That way,when the old drive finally goes I can swap out without too much pain.
By Dave
April 26, 2007 10:53 AM | Link to this
There’s a saying, “There are two types of computer users; those that have lost data and those that will.” I too use a second HDD, but it’s internal. External is a little more expensive; but either way, with prices for HDD’s being fairly cheap nowadays it’s nearly a no-brainer. I use Carbon Copy Cloner (on my Mac) and it works really well in making a bootable backup HDD.
By Dave
April 26, 2007 10:54 AM | Link to this
There’s a saying, “There are two types of computer users; those that have lost data and those that will.” I too use a second HDD, but it’s internal. External is a little more expensive; but either way, with prices for HDD’s being fairly cheap nowadays it’s nearly a no-brainer. I use Carbon Copy Cloner (on my Mac) and it works really well in making a bootable backup HDD.
By Bill
April 26, 2007 11:09 AM | Link to this
Hi Dave, when I flew airplanes we used a similar saying: There are two types of pilots who fly taildraggers - those who have ground looped and those who will.
It held true for airplanes and, you’re right, it’s true for hard disks too.
By crash_weary
April 29, 2007 4:11 PM | Link to this
Recent Western Digital Experience
I have experienced several terrifying crashes over the past few years. So I decided to purchase a Western Digital 120GB portable hard drive. I travel extensively, so this small sized drive was the perfect size to go with me. I bought it, and took it home and actually read the instructions (I thought)
I plugged in the USB and my laptop went down (crashed) I unplugged it and my laptop came back up. I took it back to the store and the Geek Guys tried it on their laptop and it did the exact same thing. We all thought it was a faulty drive. So they let me open up another new one and we tried it on my laptop and on theirs and it crashed both systems again.
I was not going to try it again on my system, so I had them try a third identical drive on THEIR laptop and it crashed again.
We then took a competing brand from the shelf and tried it on theirs and it worked like a charm. I tried it on mine and it worked like a charm on mine also.
I decided to re-read the directions and this is what I noticed. “Use the enclosed 22” USB cable to connect this drive to your pc” What a joke, I DID use the “enclosed” cable, but the cable length was only 12” long. All these portable drives have been incorrectly packaged with short USB cables and apparently it DOES make a difference as to the length. We tried using a longer generic cable with the drives we thought were “bad” and they suddenly worked for us.
I tried to let Western Digital know about this problem, but you know they know EVERYTHING and don’t want to hear about problems.
Long story short, I went with the competing brand and have been very pleased. There were dozens of this same drive on the shelves and who knows how many in the back room. Look how many people will buy this and have the same problem.
PS It also crashed the Geek desktop computers when using the short USB cable.