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[rickyboy]

Just out of curiousity how full was the drive?  You should always leave a quarter of the full capacity of the hard drive free or you risk unrecoverable read errors.  Fried a few drives myself from filling them too full.

Also don't defrag a hard drive that's nearly full also lost a few doing this.  People always advise to defrag drives when they are going a bit wonky I've found it finishes them off.

Have you checked for smart errors?  You'll be able to get a few programs off www.download.com to read them if you haven't already.  Just type S.M.A.R.T into the search box.

Makes no difference - all drives built in last 15yrs or so use hidden sectors for sector mapping

Really?    I've fried a few drives which had no problems until they got full - all laptop drives.  Could it be that they heat more when full?  Just seems like too much of a coincedence for me.  All new drives bought in the last 4 years.

[TheBoy]

Just out of curiousity how full was the drive?  You should always leave a quarter of the full capacity of the hard drive free or you risk unrecoverable read errors.  Fried a few drives myself from filling them too full.

Also don't defrag a hard drive that's nearly full also lost a few doing this.  People always advise to defrag drives when they are going a bit wonky I've found it finishes them off.

Have you checked for smart errors?  You'll be able to get a few programs off www.download.com to read them if you haven't already.  Just type S.M.A.R.T into the search box.

Makes no difference - all drives built in last 15yrs or so use hidden sectors for sector mapping

Really?    I've fried a few drives which had no problems until they got full - all laptop drives.  Could it be that they heat more when full?  Just seems like too much of a coincedence for me.  All new drives bought in the last 4 years.

Coincidence. No more heat when full, as only heat comes from spindle motor and stepper (and drive electronics).

You could argue that a full drive will be doing far more seeks as it will normally be heavier fragmented, and also that a fuller drive will have had more use, but neither should have that dramatic effect.

MTBF on drives is normally rated at a usage ratio, normally in the region of 20-30% for desktop drives, and 70% for server class drives. This usage is to do with seeks and reading/writing, not capacity usage.

[cem_devecioglu]

300 Gb and above is really high capacities which in my idea must be kept under a raid system. Even a SATA raid array would be much safer..Or at least mirroring..

Another factor is that if price is not a big concern I would definitely go after SCSI( named SAS now :-?) MTBF times for SCSI disks are really enough long..(million hrs)

And under any circumstance would prefer bios level raid...

[TheBoy]

300 Gb and above is really high capacities which in my idea must be kept under a raid system. Even a SATA raid array would be much safer..Or at least mirroring..

Another factor is that if price is not a big concern I would definitely go after SCSI( named SAS now :-?) MTBF times for SCSI disks are really enough long..(million hrs)

And under any circumstance would prefer bios level raid...

SCSI (and SAS) are server class disks, so do tend to have better MTBF (and at higher usage ratios), though tend to be lower capacities than the latest consumer level SATA types

SAS is the newer (and not backwards compatible, unlike previous SCSI types) form, and is serial (Serial Attached SCSI), much like SATA is the new (P)ATA.

[Mr Skrunts]

The drive was formated to a small cluster size, with 2 x100GB partitions and the rest left to the 3rd partiition..

40+25+ 55 GB of those partititions filled.

The drive is in a bay of it's owm as a slave (sata) my main drive being the boot/system drive on IDE (200gb) and 2 spaces above the slave.

The reason for the drive is to store an exstensive collection of personal photo's and scans, plus pictures collected ower years of surfing.  Then I was going to scan alll my old bills before I move.

I dont defrag at all, but find by backing up from the end of a month by moving the files to annother hard drive, then they are sorted and stored as they are moved.

80% of the files may just be coppies with just maybe 5% of my latest photo's possibly being lost if the drive cannot be resurected.  In all truth I have not tried it at all yet I have had a bad week in all area's of life and his was just the icing on the cake, knowing the mood I was in, I moved it to one side and if I had carried on the drive would have ended up planted in the TFT.

I think the whole problem is a heat issue.  I bought some fancy heat pipe hard drive coolers for my last server and naver used them, so will test and check it all at the weekend and install the coolers.

Thanks for all the advice and help, very much appreciated.  

[rickyboy]

Just out of curiousity how full was the drive?  You should always leave a quarter of the full capacity of the hard drive free or you risk unrecoverable read errors.  Fried a few drives myself from filling them too full.

Also don't defrag a hard drive that's nearly full also lost a few doing this.  People always advise to defrag drives when they are going a bit wonky I've found it finishes them off.

Have you checked for smart errors?  You'll be able to get a few programs off www.download.com to read them if you haven't already.  Just type S.M.A.R.T into the search box.

Makes no difference - all drives built in last 15yrs or so use hidden sectors for sector mapping

Really?    I've fried a few drives which had no problems until they got full - all laptop drives.  Could it be that they heat more when full?  Just seems like too much of a coincedence for me.  All new drives bought in the last 4 years.

Coincidence. No more heat when full, as only heat comes from spindle motor and stepper (and drive electronics).

You could argue that a full drive will be doing far more seeks as it will normally be heavier fragmented, and also that a fuller drive will have had more use, but neither should have that dramatic effect.

MTBF on drives is normally rated at a usage ratio, normally in the region of 20-30% for desktop drives, and 70% for server class drives. This usage is to do with seeks and reading/writing, not capacity usage.

Thanks for the info!  

[Marks DTM Calib]

Just out of curiousity how full was the drive?  You should always leave a quarter of the full capacity of the hard drive free or you risk unrecoverable read errors.  Fried a few drives myself from filling them too full.

Also don't defrag a hard drive that's nearly full also lost a few doing this.  People always advise to defrag drives when they are going a bit wonky I've found it finishes them off.

Have you checked for smart errors?  You'll be able to get a few programs off www.download.com to read them if you haven't already.  Just type S.M.A.R.T into the search box.

Makes no difference - all drives built in last 15yrs or so use hidden sectors for sector mapping

Really?    I've fried a few drives which had no problems until they got full - all laptop drives.  Could it be that they heat more when full?  Just seems like too much of a coincedence for me.  All new drives bought in the last 4 years.

Coincidence. No more heat when full, as only heat comes from spindle motor and stepper (and drive electronics).

You could argue that a full drive will be doing far more seeks as it will normally be heavier fragmented, and also that a fuller drive will have had more use, but neither should have that dramatic effect.

MTBF on drives is normally rated at a usage ratio, normally in the region of 20-30% for desktop drives, and 70% for server class drives. This usage is to do with seeks and reading/writing, not capacity usage.

Not a coincidence at all, the greater the amount of free space the greater the wear leveling capability.

What you have to consider is that hard drives and flash drives always have read errors. These are due to the surface slowly deteriating due to the number of writes and in the case of flash, the bits simply flipping!.

What the drives do to counter this is to

1) Use error correction to allow read errors to be recovered.

2) Wear level as in following a read/write, the data is written to a different part of the disc. Mo advanced controllers (almost all HDD's and the best quality flash card - silicon systems, also do this to static data!)

So, fill the disk up and you thrash a small area......and it WILL fail faster.


So, format or not......you cant actually tell where the real data is on a disk!

[dippydave]

I've been looking at the 'Drobo' which is like a raid array/NAS drive for dummies. it's not cheap as it comes empty but you can put any SATA drive in. It's in my shopping list as for now nearly everything is backed up on duplicate drives or DVD. Seeing as i've hit the two terabyte mark for data tho i really need some array for piece of mind!

I've used loads of Maxtors that've never failed. quite a few Seagates that have been fine until a 500Gb barracuda .10 went on me. and now a couple of samsung spinpoints (1TB) that are doing very nicely. i believe that all manufactures are fine, just some people have luck!

For hot environments i also have an Antec MX-1 external drive caddy that is the coolest i have ever touched! In my desktop i put in an Icybox backplane module that not only monitors the temp of the drives within, makes them easy to swap, but also adds an extra fan!
I got me stuff from overclockers

hope that's vaguely helpful.

[philhoward]

We use Silicon Systems CF cards in our Industrial PC based control systems.  I tried their MTBF program recently...1317 years!

[Mr Skrunts]

I've been looking at the 'Drobo' which is like a raid array/NAS drive for dummies. it's not cheap as it comes empty but you can put any SATA drive in. It's in my shopping list as for now nearly everything is backed up on duplicate drives or DVD. Seeing as i've hit the two terabyte mark for data tho i really need some array for piece of mind!

I've used loads of Maxtors that've never failed. quite a few Seagates that have been fine until a 500Gb barracuda .10 went on me. and now a couple of samsung spinpoints (1TB) that are doing very nicely. i believe that all manufactures are fine, just some people have luck!

For hot environments i also have an Antec MX-1 external drive caddy that is the coolest i have ever touched! In my desktop i put in an Icybox backplane module that not only monitors the temp of the drives within, makes them easy to swap, but also adds an extra fan!
I got me stuff from overclockers

hope that's vaguely helpful.

Samsungs put me off a while ago, they allways sounded like they were going to fall apart, they allways rattled.

Never had issues with Hujitsu drives till thay stopped makeing them and I believe they joined with Maxtor, Whom I have just had 4 failures in a row with.

Seagate I allways thought were too slow


Anybody use the Raptor Drives.

I bought a Linksys NAS unit (IDE)  firking night nare setting up software wise, wouldnt let me past the oassword that didnt exist.

had it online last week.  Now wont come back on line, tried rebooting the modem, PC and NAS all in different order, PAIN IN THE BUTT.  Reason I bought it was to switch it on and do weekly back ups.

LINKSYS more hassle with thier products than any one elses.   :-/