failing hard drives after sitting for years...

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: failing hard drives after sitting for years...

I'm still not convinced enterprise grade drives are really more reliable than any other.

yea and to add on to that. backblaze also did some tests and they also found that ssds werent any reliable than hdds either. so that sure debunked the long-ongoing myth that ssds are more reliable than their spinning rust counterparts. then to add on the fact that when ssds fail, all the data becomes garbled making data recovery near impossible. but then when hdds fail, they can also not spin up or the low-level disk data on the platters or the firmware chip becomes focked. this also makes data recovery very difficult.

so in short, always backup your data indeed! as the advice around here goes. no method of data storage is ever bulletproof! never has been!

[dmill89]

Re: failing hard drives after sitting for years...

yea and to add on to that. backblaze also did some tests and they also found that ssds werent any reliable than hdds either. so that sure debunked the long-ongoing myth that ssds are more reliable than their spinning rust counterparts.

Yes and no. I don't dispute their findings, however it is important to consider the context of this testing, with the drives in a controlled data center environment and not regularly subject to shock/etc.

While not exactly scientific my personal experience has been that when it comes to desktop drives it largely matches up with their data with little difference between failures od HDDs and SSDs, however with laptop drives (and other portable devices like older HDD based MP3/media players) that are often subject to movement and shock HDDs have a much higher failure rate. Back when we were still using laptops with mechanical HDDs at work very few laptops made it to their 3-4 year retirement date without at least one HDD replacement (it was/is common for people to carry their laptops to meetings with them still running, not a good practice, but given that they take several minutes to boot up with all the corporate bloatware, understandable), once we switched to laptops with SSDs failures became very rare.

Granted with the high I/O loads of most "modern" OSs and HDDs poor random read/write speeds they are a pretty poor option for an OS drive with most current OSs regardless, largely limiting their usefulness to bulk data storage (a second drive in a PC specifically for data storage or a NAS).

[brethin]

Re: failing hard drives after sitting for years...

Spinners don't die sitting if stored properly, unlike food in my refrigerator!

[Per Hansson]

Re: failing hard drives after sitting for years...

yea and to add on to that. backblaze also did some tests and they also found that ssds werent any reliable than hdds either. so that sure debunked the long-ongoing myth that ssds are more reliable than their spinning rust counterparts.

"The 2022 Drive States review is based on data recorded from 2,906 SSD boot units, Backblaze states, and it is essentially confirming what the company was saying in its 2022 mid-year report. SSDs are more reliable than HDDs, Backblaze says, as they show a lower AFR rate (0.98%) compared to HDDs (1.64%)."

Source: https://www.techspot.com/news/97909-...backblaze.html

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: failing hard drives after sitting for years...

nope. that translates into an afr difference of between 0.66%. 0.66% is statistically insignificant and will not translate into any noticeable difference in practice or in real world usage. backblaze mentioned that before in a previous report of theirs. funny how they omitted it. techspot is politically biased in favor of ssds for some reason.

[Per Hansson]

Re: failing hard drives after sitting for years...

techspot is politically biased in favor of ssds for some reason.

Ehh, no.
If you pick up your calculator and divide 1.64 by two you will see that mechanical HDD's are twice as likely to fail as SSD's.
But because you have some agenda to proove so fuck statistics and lets just make stuff up like we go, like Techspot is biased because they report on the actual statistics.
Maybe you should become a politician.

[eccerr0r]

Re: failing hard drives after sitting for years...

come on, both of you are stretching the wording of the difference between failure rates...

[jiroy]

Re: failing hard drives after sitting for years...

Well , that really triggered my curiosity , so I dipped into my oldest hard disks , the ide ones . Some are 30 years old , probably . One of them , in the attached pictures is a 4.7 gb, lol ..
Anyway , I put them to the hardest test it can be ... Installing a system . Till now , the first 4 chosen had 4 different operational systems : w98SE , XPSP3 , VISTA Enterprise and W7 32 Bit .
All the tests were made successfully on a Acer Travelmate 7110 , probably my last system to have an ide slot .

[eccerr0r]

Re: failing hard drives after sitting for years...

I have not tested my 40MB IDE disk in ages.

The oldest HDD I've actually powered on in the last year or so may be one of the following:
a 2GB WD 3.5" IDE
a 700MB Quantum 3.5" SCSI
and I think I have a 400MB Conner (??) 3.5" IDE.
These disks were dumped in my old K6-233. At one point I did lvm on them so that I could get a bit more space out of them, but I just ignored them now since if one fails I lose the whole array...

---

hmm... recently also picked up a 20GB (seagate), 210MB (conner), and 340MB (maxtor) 3.5" disks. Now I wonder if any of these actually work as I've been too lazy to test them. Probably should just pitch them if they don't.

[jiroy]

Re: failing hard drives after sitting for years...

I'll keep my oldest old hard disks a secret ... Antics and collectors !!

[eccerr0r]

Re: failing hard drives after sitting for years...

I used to have ST412 and TM503 hard disks too...alas not sure if my parents tossed them.
One used to be able to store a whole OS in 10MB ...

BTW these disks *can* and have be low level formatted

(Also had in past: ST225R ST225N ST251 Miniscribe3425 and more ... alas unsure of their fates... but pretty sure these will work as these can always be LLFed again and again. Well not the ST225N, that one I'm not sure.)

[eccerr0r]

Re: failing hard drives after sitting for years...

LOL I had a Conner CFS425 and a Conner CFS210 installed in a system. I accidentally set both to slave and was wondering why I suddenly had a CFS635 installed in my machine...

[jiroy]

Re: failing hard drives after sitting for years...

Those are for amateur collectors ... newbies

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: failing hard drives after sitting for years...

Ehh, no.
If you pick up your calculator and divide 1.64 by two you will see that mechanical HDD's are twice as likely to fail as SSD's.

again misleading percentages and this isnt the first time someone has tried to post misleading percentages on this forum. the average home user and consumer typically runs less than a handful of drives. 1, 2 or 3% difference does jack on such a small sample size. if u run a data center with hundreds or thousands of drives then the difference may start to add up.

But because you have some agenda to proove so fuck statistics and lets just make stuff up like we go, like Techspot is biased because they report on the actual statistics.

when u report on something u have to report the whole truth and nothing but the truth. this is a matter of principle, integrity and honesty. reporting half-truths or lying by omission is nothing more than propaganda and will be dismissed as such.

Maybe you should become a politician.

thanks but i'd rather become a lawyer instead.

LOL I had a Conner CFS425 and a Conner CFS210 installed in a system. I accidentally set both to slave and was wondering why I suddenly had a CFS635 installed in my machine...

huh? it actually added up the model numbers of the drives? im gonna assume this is a joke post, bro? unless its serious then do post a screenshot of the issue for our amusement.

[eccerr0r]

Re: failing hard drives after sitting for years...

No it wasn't a joke, it really did print it - but it was nonfunctional as a real disk. It's not actually adding, it's a bitwise or of the two.

[brethin]

Re: failing hard drives after sitting for years...

I have a small box of mfm and rll drives with the controllers and cabels, I should test them and see how they are.

[jiroy]

Re: failing hard drives after sitting for years...

My final count on ide drives , 23 one working perfectly . Only 3 failed , but they were marked (bad sectors) by me sometime in the past . Amazingly , they're all speedy gonzales and fun to work with , despite working on 2 GB Rams only .
I bet new drives ain't that reliable anymore ...
Taking advantage now on some old programs and some of them are a real treaure .

[eccerr0r]

Re: failing hard drives after sitting for years...

2 GB Rams??? What do you mean?

I was testing the disks on my k6-233. Probably could use any PCI machine as I have a boatload of PCI IDE controllers...

[jiroy]

Re: failing hard drives after sitting for years...

The Acer travelmate 7110 limit is 2 GB Rams , but I usually boost its performance with USB Sticks assigned into Rams .
All older systems (laptops only) were and/or will be gifted to my friends at some point in time .. That's my habit .

[eccerr0r]

Re: failing hard drives after sitting for years...

Not an option on my K6-233, it's maxxed out at 256MB RAM and doesn't even cache it, won't cache unless it has less than 64MB RAM.

At least it can deal with regular 3.5" (and even 5.25" FH) disks.