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Strategies & Market Trends : A.I.M Users Group Bulletin Board -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: budweeder who wrote (17232)	11/7/2001 6:49:51 AM
From: Steve Grabczyk	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18928

From what I've been told, it's usually a mechanical failure involving the read/write heads literally 'crashing' on the surface, destroying the data. My brother once told me that the heads used to be 'parked' off the surface when not in use, but that slows the I/O rates, so that isn't typically done these days. I don't know this for sure as I'm not an engineer. Maybe when Bob G. gets back he can explain it further. Still, having some type of automatic backup process is really the best ounce of prevention one can have. In our operation at work, we have at least 15 servers plus a few larger Unix based computers for our main systems. These are all backed up every night to tape and other drives. The tapes are rotated over a three week schedule (21 sets of tape) and stored off site. The correct tapes are dropped off and the prior evening's are picked up every day. Regards, Steve

To: budweeder who wrote (17232)	11/11/2001 8:00:30 AM
From: rgammon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 18928

Hard Drive failures are usually mechanical failures as mentioned earlier. However, within the mechanical failure group are several widely disparate failure mechanisms. A drive that is getting LOUD is experiencing a bearings failure. It may take many months before the drive completely fails. At the limit, the drive will refuse to spinup at powerup. Avoid power cycling the drive, if at all possible, to extend the life of the drive. Make plans to purchase a new drive, and increase your backup frequency. Crashes of the read/write heads are possible, but really rare. The design of the surfaces of the heads and the platters means that the heads can now safely rest on the surface. Additionally, the engineers have figured out how to park the heads between tracks, so that if any scaring DOES occur, it produces limited effects on the data stored in the adjacent tracks. Note that track densities are such that there are no gaps worth mentioning between tracks. A magnetics engineer would tell you that the magnetic fields from adjacent tracks overlap each other. On an improperly assembled drive, the spring tension that loads the heads to the drive may be improper, too much, or too little. These thingys are engineered to make this much more difficult to happen than you might imagine, yet some drives are affected. With incorrect spring tension, the heads fly too close (or too far away) from the platters. Flying too close will gradually wear the surfaces of both the heads and the platter. This generates LOTS of bad sectors, and successive scandisk operations will find MORE bad sectors. If you see this happen, get a new drive ASAP(local not mail order, if possible), and begin a backup of ALL your data immediately. We had a flat tire on the middle of the 23 mile Atchalafaya bridge on our trip home. This was a slow gradual deflation, not a sudden one. I noticed two symptoms 1). The car wanted to SWAY in response to steering wheel inputs. 2). The car was developing a roar. I stopped in response to the increased noise. Fortunately, this was at one of the two exits near the middle of the bridge. Unfortunately the action of stopping fatally injured the tire, as the wheel came to rest and the last bit of air escaped, the rim cut the inside of the tire. With much anxiousness, I removed the compact spare. Happy, happy, joy, joy, it had air in it. There have been times when I needed this spare only to find that it too was deflated. While we were getting the tire replaced, a car pulled in with a tire that was missing its tread. A Firestone tire it was. They were on their way to a funeral when the tread came completely off the tire. Unusual to say the least, yet when viewed in the context of the truck tires problem, make me wonder when I'll EVER buy a Firestone tire. I am a confirmed Michelin bigot, its been 20 years since I bought anything but Michelin (although the tire store didn't have my size in a Michelin, and was forced to accept a Dunlop as a replacement - but these were unusual circumstances to be replacing a tire) Robert