Prolong the life of HDD’s

Thanks for the link Markymoo, but I'm not sure what your point is (I guess I'm not that sharp today -). Care to elaborate?

 

It is a big deal around here when an HDD goes south. You see we can’t send it back to the manufacture for guaranteed replacement. We actually take them apart and remove the disk platters and incinerate them.

How do you boys feel about sending a drive for repair or replacement with your personal and secret information on it?

 

@Stijnson

Its all there in the link and FAQ. Software runs on pc simulate protein folding which is what proteins do. If proteins don't fold right, disease, cancers happen. You helping scientists, doctors and the world fight disease by solving how proteins fold and why. The results get uploaded. Millions do it. Folding is very cpu intensive.

 

Agreed.
My old 98 box runs 24/7, has for several years with very few shut downs. The original 5.1GB hard drive still serves as my C drive. In that time, I've used up 2 monitors, 6 keyboards, a floppy drive, a CD drive, and several mice, but the internal drive just keeps going. The same applies to my external drive. It's on its 3rd year of nearly non-stop running.

The only hard drives I've had fail were used ones obtained from old PCs that have sat idle.
Rick

 

I wipe the disk contents and I'm fine.

 

What if the drive cannot be accessed to wipe it clean? Did you ever have that sisuation?

 

After the initial boot up in the morning, I put it on standby when I leave the box for a half an hour or more. I always shut it down if I leave the house, and when I hit the hay.

 

Assumptions:
365 days in a year
You leave the house 3 times a week
You put your computer on standby 2 times a day

That would be 365 + 365*3 + 365*2 = 2190

How long do expect your HDD to last powering it up and down 2190 times a year on average?

 

I don't. I have 3 WD MyBook drives; they power up when I start my computers and power down when I shut down the computers. I can't recall the last time I touched the power button on the MyBook drives.

 

What? You mean to tell us that, with all their advanced technology, the aliens can't fix a lousy HDD?

 

Never happened to me. DBAN would be a second option.

 

I weigh that against the remote possibility that while I'm out we might get a thunder and lightning storm, or the electricity might go out and come back on with a spike. I have an APC surge protector, but that won't protect you against lightning. Actually I probably leave the house 10 times a week, and put it on standby 4 or 5 times a day. My old Compaq is 7 years old and my Dell is 4 years old. No failures yet. My stuff is imaged on an external drive.

 

Not applicable so for desktops, but in case of laptops Power Options are frequently used to conserve battery. HD is turned off after a certain period of inactivity.

If I understood it correctly, I read somewhere that for a HD there is a life time limit of turning off and on cycles. System info software even tell about the no. of these cycles.

Recently there were reports about ubuntu causing damage to HDs due to this.

 

Prius, I believe mine did the same in the beginning. But I cannot remember what I did to stop that from happening. Whatever I did I did it by accident, but since I dont use it that often I am happy the way it work now. So I dont want to change back.

 

Re: Prolong the life of HDD’s

Interesting question about which parts are failing most often : a) is it in general mechanical failures [hardware,platters,heads] b) internal software failures[controllers etc.]or simply disconnected wires inside ?

Are there somewhere statistics about ?

 

Re: Prolong the life of HDD’s

The HDs I've owned failed because of of the controler board, which raises the question why they aren't available from the HD website. I heard that they can be replaced by another one from the same class, I don't know if it is true. Going back to something that was said before innerpeace said he just got a set of round IDE cables excuse my ignorants just what is special about round cables aside from offering lower air restance. Does the round cable offer lower restance or increased data flow and better insolation?

 

Gives better airflow and less cable clutter,otherwise exactly the same

 

Re: Prolong the life of HDD’s

Thank you

 

Carver,

re replacing the controller board,it seems a few have succeeded,but it would be tricky and to be tried only as a last resort,like the danger of complete loss of data.

 

Re: Prolong the life of HDD’s

Since its always painfull to recover a failed disk if at all possible,for safety i guess better way is at least is to use RAID solutions,starting from Raid 1 and up.In server environments its common practice to hot swap dying disks,without losing data.And with ever lowering prices of ext. disk its for us as desktop users very interesting to safeguard at hardware level.

A good UPS system[spikes,brownburn,powerloss,lightning!?!?]wil get you some more peace of mind i guess.

 

yea, i read something like this...i think if you access the S.M.A.R.T. data in
a program like HD Tune, there's one data value that needs to be watched if you want to estimate how much longer your hdd will last, i dont remember
which one it was though..

 

Re: Prolong the life of HDD’s

I have a diagnostic tool by Western digital (I have 2 Western Digital 120 gig in a Raid 0) that uses S.M.A.R.T. data, I just looked at the data just a minute ago and I still wonder when my drives will quit.

 

If a drive is turned on and off excessively on a daily basis, this could affect the longevity of the hard drive’s components. I recommend new drives every three years.