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Hard Drive help....(Now with link)

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Old 22-08-2006, 12:15 PM
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Christian and Beccy
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Default Hard Drive help....(Now with link)

Following on from my HD failure thread the other day. I now want to replace the Hard-drive.

The current HD unit is a Western Digital Caviar SE 200gb SATA drive. The PC is a fairly recent Hewlett Packard 3.0Ghz job with 1gb RAM.

What should I replace it with? Do I need to get 2 HD's? Or can I be protected from this type of failure with 1 HD and a software package?
Old 22-08-2006, 12:35 PM
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Dan B
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If you're looking for reliability, and consider that more important than cost, then I'd suggest looking into some form of RAID setup (Redundant Array of Independent Disks). RAID1 would probably be a relatively reliable, and not too expensive, choice......two disks, mirrored and linked to keep data the same on both, but if one disk fails, it can rebuild the info from the 2nd disk.

Obviously with that setup, you're looking at twice the cost for the storage space of one disk (ie. you'd need to buy TWO 400Gb drives to have "reliable" storage space of 400GB with RAID1).

Have a look at the VERY extensive document on WIKI, for a description of all of the different types of RAID setup.
Old 22-08-2006, 01:26 PM
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PeterD
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RAID would be the best choice for reliability and higher grades are used in most servers.

RAID0 uses two disks dan, files are split over each and the systems reads from both disks at the same time.

RAID01 uses three disks, two used disks and one "redundant" disk which is the backup so when/if a disk fails the system rebuilds it using the redundant one.

Either that or a quality disk shouldnt really fail.
Old 22-08-2006, 01:42 PM
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Christian and Beccy
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How about this??

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=256891
Old 22-08-2006, 01:45 PM
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Dan B
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That's pretty much what I said...

RAID0 = 2 * 200GB = 400GB (using 200GB drives as an example)

RAID0 is not redundant, and a single disk-failure will cause massive corruption across the filesystem; it also doesn't have to be two disks, it can be as many as you want, but due to the lack of redundancy, there's not really much of a point in using it, to be perfectly honest.

RAID1 = 2 * 200GB = 200GB (again, using 200GB drives as an example)

The data in RAID1 is "mirrored" on both disks, so that if one disk fails, you can remove the failed disk and replace it with a brand-new disk, and it'll rebuild the mirror from the working disk. Again, as with RAID0, RAID1 isn't restricted to only 2 disks, you can use as many as you want, but if you're going to use more, you may aswell look into something like RAID5.

RAID01 (also called RAID0+1), that you mentioned, is a completely different setup again, from the above, in that you have (using six 200GB drives as an example), an RAID0 setup with three 200GB drives in both of the RAID environments, and then the two RAID0 environments are both encompassed within a RAID1 setup. This will give you 600GB of disk-space, but one disk-failure will cause an entire half of the array to need to be rebuilt (you won't lose data, because the remaining "working" RAID0 environment can rebuild the data across the RAID1 in the other RAID0 environment, once the failed disk is replaced).
Old 22-08-2006, 01:52 PM
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Dan B
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Originally Posted by Christian and Beccy
Never really been a fan of Western Digital drives, to be honest, after a lot of trouble with one a while back...

If it was me buying the replacement drive, I'd be looking at one of these...
Old 22-08-2006, 01:54 PM
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Jim Galbally
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lucid, thats not what raid1 is, youre describing a raid5 setup

imho dont bother with raid on a normal PC. the speed increases of raid0 are negligable even for hardcore gamers, and the extra redundancy of raid1 isnt worth the cost.

ive never seen a hard drive competely fail, only ones get "bad bits" on them, and a few files are lost (tiny ammount)

i'd rather save my money, and deal with a data failure later.

if youre really worried, back up and important data to an external device of some sort
Old 22-08-2006, 01:57 PM
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Dan B
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Originally Posted by Jim Galbally
lucid, thats not what raid1 is, youre describing a raid5 setup

imho dont bother with raid on a normal PC. the speed increases of raid0 are negligable even for hardcore gamers, and the extra redundancy of raid1 isnt worth the cost.

ive never seen a hard drive competely fail, only ones get "bad bits" on them, and a few files are lost (tiny ammount)

i'd rather save my money, and deal with a data failure later.

if youre really worried, back up and important data to an external device of some sort
I'd agree with that......never bothered with RAID at home, although all of our servers in work are RAID'd.
Old 22-08-2006, 02:25 PM
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Jim Galbally
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i ran a sata raid0 for a while, i noticed NO performance gain

then one of the disks failed and caused me all sorts of grief

now i just run them all as seperate disks and have the drives mounted under the C root as seperate mount points

Jim
Old 22-08-2006, 04:20 PM
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foreigneRS
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i had a hard drive fail on my home pc once. it was the one from the NEC factory, made by a company called quantum, and called a fireball - very apt, as a common failure for them was a component on the board burning out

i lost a lot of photo's when that happened, so now regularly back them up to dvd as they're so cheap these days. i also store important documents on my laptop and desktop, just in case.
Old 22-08-2006, 05:02 PM
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Dan B
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Originally Posted by foreigneRS
i had a hard drive fail on my home pc once. it was the one from the NEC factory, made by a company called quantum, and called a fireball - very apt, as a common failure for them was a component on the board burning out

i lost a lot of photo's when that happened, so now regularly back them up to dvd as they're so cheap these days. i also store important documents on my laptop and desktop, just in case.
I had a Quantum Fireball that did the same......one of the chips on the board popped with enough force to put a dent in the inside of my case!

40GB drive, just inside warranty still, sent it back to Maxtor (who now look after warranties for Quantum drives), and they replaced it with a brand-new 60GB drive!
Old 22-08-2006, 06:01 PM
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OK, so it looks like I won't bother with the RAID thing. I will make more effort to back up my important stuff either to DVD or an external data storage device of some kind (more likely DVD).

So, one person has kindly cast an opinion on the Western Digital HD, preferring a Maxtor item over it. Any more opinions on which HD to use?
Old 22-08-2006, 06:15 PM
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Jamz
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Hard disks are cheap these days, just get yourself a couple of drives and a raid controller (assuming your motherboard doesn't have it built in) and set up a mirror (raid1).

100gb+ is difficult to backup unless you own some form of LTO tape drive.

I had one of my mirrored 120gb drives fail 7 days before the 3 year warranty ran out. I got that replaced under warranty, put it back into the mirror and carried on as normal, didn't lose any data.
Old 22-08-2006, 06:42 PM
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Go raid you stupid not to, most new mains board come with it built in.


Its the how good the firm ware on the array controlers is how good it handles a fail.

Jim, we have 18 TB San array at work we loose at leased one drive a month.

I have heard many a drive cluck its self to death. If you back up once and week mabe ok but just takes a month or so of I cannot be botherd to backup and you get a fail then you are fucked
Old 22-08-2006, 06:48 PM
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jim raid 0 is not protection it helps with speed, Raid 0+1 is mirror, raid 5 is striping it only works if you have a min 3 drives. then there is another raid be fucked if I can remmber which can loose 2 drives.


on raid 5 you loose about 1/4 of the space to the raid stripping.

eg 3 200 gb drives will give you about 475 ish gb
Old 22-08-2006, 06:52 PM
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Originally Posted by Christian and Beccy
OK, so it looks like I won't bother with the RAID thing. I will make more effort to back up my important stuff either to DVD or an external data storage device of some kind (more likely DVD).

So, one person has kindly cast an opinion on the Western Digital HD, preferring a Maxtor item over it. Any more opinions on which HD to use?
Nah dont get maxtor, ive heard loads of people saying bad things about them!

Ive got a 300gig seagate barracuder in my 1 month old pc and its silent, and seems very quick
Old 22-08-2006, 10:32 PM
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Christian and Beccy
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Sounds good. I did wonder about Seagate. So its out of the Seagate Barracuda and the Western Digital Caviar SE16 I reckon?
Old 22-08-2006, 10:48 PM
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We stopped using Maxtor a couple of years ago as we had too many failing when relatively young, ie within a year. We only use seagates now and havent had a drive fail since (in desktop PC's)

For my home PC I've got a Gigabyte Mboard with on board RAID controller. I run 2 200gig SATA drives in a mirror.
Old 22-08-2006, 10:58 PM
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Originally Posted by JohnnyB
Jim, we have 18 TB San array at work we loose at leased one drive a month.
bloody hell, you want to get a more reliable SAN, I assume there cheap SATA drives and not SCSI, we only loose a couple a year and we have well over 50TB
Old 23-08-2006, 08:43 AM
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we have 2 Sans one SCSI on Sata which is the shit one
Old 23-08-2006, 09:00 AM
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Seagate or Samsung on a Sata-2 Raid array setup and you'll be rocking

or just do what i do and have 1 main fairly small master drive with just windows and ya programs install then a second large (sata drive) with all ya data on have used this setup for nearly 3yrs now and not 1 failure and is ultra fast due to the main drive only having what it needs on it
Old 23-08-2006, 10:34 AM
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Dan B
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Originally Posted by silky16v
Seagate or Samsung on a Sata-2 Raid array setup and you'll be rocking

or just do what i do and have 1 main fairly small master drive with just windows and ya programs install then a second large (sata drive) with all ya data on have used this setup for nearly 3yrs now and not 1 failure and is ultra fast due to the main drive only having what it needs on it
Pretty much the same setup as mine...

30GB drive for Windows/System/Programs, 120GB miscellaneous drive, and a 200GB drive for Games/Demos......not had a drive fail since the Quantum Fireball mentioned earlier blew up, and that was a good few years ago.
Old 23-08-2006, 10:47 AM
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Originally Posted by Christian and Beccy
Sounds good. I did wonder about Seagate. So its out of the Seagate Barracuda and the Western Digital Caviar SE16 I reckon?
Sorry about my spelling, i should have checked how "Barracuda was spelt

But yeah, i think thats your best bet for reliable data storage
Old 23-08-2006, 12:02 PM
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Personally I just use a small (80gig!) disk for my windows installation and then put all my programs and media on another disk. That way if Windows fucks up I can fix it and lose nothing, but if the drive itself failed I'd be buggered. As said though, a good drive should never fail. And mine is a 300gb Seagate Barracuda. No doubts about that drive whatsoever for me.
Old 23-08-2006, 02:41 PM
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Jim Galbally
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johnny, i know how raid works and what the numbers mean :P

i still dont think its worth bothering on a desktop PC. i mean what data are you going to lose if it fails? a few MP3s and some pictures of your car its not like its business critical data you'd get on a company server.

if i had a disk fail i'd be a bit pissed off, but it wouldnt be a huge deal
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