Electronics Repair (sci.electronics.repair) Discussion of repairing electronic equipment. Topics include requests for assistance, where to obtain servicing information and parts, techniques for diagnosis and repair, and annecdotes about success, failures and problems.

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Default Hitachi Deskstar hard drive

In article ,
says...
On Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:11:06 -0000, krw wrote:

In article ,

says...
On Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:44:19 -0000, Clint Sharp wrote:

In message , William
Sommerwerck writes
My next computer will have integral RAID, and I won't have to manually back
up again, ever. (Except possibly Really Important stuff, just to be safe.)
With respect William, part of my job is recovering data off
failed/corrupted RAID sets. Do not rely on RAID to keep your data safe,
if the chances of two disks failing in a RAID 5 set then I must be the
luckiest (they weren't my RAID sets) man alive because I've seen it
dozens of times in the past 5 years. If you value your data then back it
up somewhere safe.

Use RAID 6. You have TWO redundancies.


Still doesn't protect you from the loose nut behind the keyboard.

And you can add some hotswaps too.


That's essentially a backup scheme, not significantly different
than cloning drives.


Never used a hotswap, but I'm assuming that they are idle empty drives which will automatically take over any other which fails.


No, they're cold standbys that can be "swapped in" with power on
("hot"). RAID ("mirrors") will take over automatically on failure,
but again, they don't solve the "loose nut" problem.

One of the simple solutions is to have a mirrored setup with
additional mirror drives left off-line. To do a backup, one
connects one of the off-line drives and the system builds a
"clone" of the original drive on the "backup" drive. Then take
that drive off line and put it out of the reach of the loose nut
(fire, system crash, whatever). TO restore the system, simply
reconnect the mirrored drive and rebuild the system drive as a
mirror of the "backup" drive.

I do something functionally the same, but don't use RAID of any
sort. I back up my laptop (using the supplied utility) once a week
to a USB drive that's online whenever I'm docked (also used for
music archives, etc.), then copy that drive to another USB drive
once in a while.

--
Keith
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Default Hitachi Deskstar hard drive

On Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:34:04 -0000, krw wrote:

In article ,
says...
On Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:11:06 -0000, krw wrote:

In article ,

says...
On Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:44:19 -0000, Clint Sharp wrote:

In message , William
Sommerwerck writes
My next computer will have integral RAID, and I won't have to manually back
up again, ever. (Except possibly Really Important stuff, just to be safe.)
With respect William, part of my job is recovering data off
failed/corrupted RAID sets. Do not rely on RAID to keep your data safe,
if the chances of two disks failing in a RAID 5 set then I must be the
luckiest (they weren't my RAID sets) man alive because I've seen it
dozens of times in the past 5 years. If you value your data then back it
up somewhere safe.

Use RAID 6. You have TWO redundancies.

Still doesn't protect you from the loose nut behind the keyboard.

And you can add some hotswaps too.

That's essentially a backup scheme, not significantly different
than cloning drives.


Never used a hotswap, but I'm assuming that they are idle empty drives which will automatically take over any other which fails.


No, they're cold standbys that can be "swapped in" with power on
("hot").


Err.... so how does that differ from me having several spare drives sat on the shelf that I can put in when required? I thought the idea was these were put online AUTOMATICALLY. The option I saw to add a hotswap on one of my raid controllers seemed to imply that I'd set up one of the drives that was plugged in to be one.

Correction - I meant to write a hot SPARE, not a hot SWAP.

RAID ("mirrors") will take over automatically on failure,
but again, they don't solve the "loose nut" problem.

One of the simple solutions is to have a mirrored setup with
additional mirror drives left off-line. To do a backup, one
connects one of the off-line drives and the system builds a
"clone" of the original drive on the "backup" drive. Then take
that drive off line and put it out of the reach of the loose nut
(fire, system crash, whatever). TO restore the system, simply
reconnect the mirrored drive and rebuild the system drive as a
mirror of the "backup" drive.


That's a good idea. Although I wouldn't do it with a cheapo onboard controller. Those things fall over sometimes when drives "fail".

Trouble is, the machine I'm about to build is planned to have 4 drives in a RAID 5 array for speed aswell as resilience. How would I back this up in that manner? I suppose I'd need 8 drives - a mirrored RAID 5?

I do something functionally the same, but don't use RAID of any
sort. I back up my laptop (using the supplied utility) once a week
to a USB drive that's online whenever I'm docked (also used for
music archives, etc.), then copy that drive to another USB drive
once in a while.


I have three machines on a network on all the time. So the main one is backed up to the other two automatically every night. Every so often I use a USB drive to dump one of the backup copies onto and hide it out of reach of the computers.

--
http://www.petersparrots.com http://www.insanevideoclips.com http://www.petersphotos.com

Money can't buy you true love.
It does however put you in a good bargaining position.
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Default Hitachi Deskstar hard drive

In article ,
says...
On Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:34:04 -0000, krw wrote:

In article ,

says...
On Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:11:06 -0000, krw wrote:

In article ,

says...
On Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:44:19 -0000, Clint Sharp wrote:

In message , William
Sommerwerck writes
My next computer will have integral RAID, and I won't have to manually back
up again, ever. (Except possibly Really Important stuff, just to be safe.)
With respect William, part of my job is recovering data off
failed/corrupted RAID sets. Do not rely on RAID to keep your data safe,
if the chances of two disks failing in a RAID 5 set then I must be the
luckiest (they weren't my RAID sets) man alive because I've seen it
dozens of times in the past 5 years. If you value your data then back it
up somewhere safe.

Use RAID 6. You have TWO redundancies.

Still doesn't protect you from the loose nut behind the keyboard.

And you can add some hotswaps too.

That's essentially a backup scheme, not significantly different
than cloning drives.

Never used a hotswap, but I'm assuming that they are idle empty drives which will automatically take over any other which fails.


No, they're cold standbys that can be "swapped in" with power on
("hot").


(Your word wrap is broken.)

Err.... so how does that differ from me having several spare drives
sat on the shelf that I can put in when required? I thought the
idea was these were put online AUTOMATICALLY. The option I saw
to add a hotswap on one of my raid controllers seemed to imply
that I'd set up one of the drives that was plugged in to be one.


No, "hot swap" has nothing to do with backup. If you have spare
drives sitting on the shelf they're not much use when your data goes
away. You *can* use the hot-swap feature with a RAID array to do a
backup by having the array perform the mirror then unplug the drive
and stick it on the shelf. By itself, hot-swap doesn't do anything
for you.


Correction - I meant to write a hot SPARE, not a hot SWAP.


Why would your spare need to be "hot"? I think we're talking past
each other...

RAID ("mirrors") will take over automatically on failure,
but again, they don't solve the "loose nut" problem.

One of the simple solutions is to have a mirrored setup with
additional mirror drives left off-line. To do a backup, one
connects one of the off-line drives and the system builds a
"clone" of the original drive on the "backup" drive. Then take
that drive off line and put it out of the reach of the loose nut
(fire, system crash, whatever). TO restore the system, simply
reconnect the mirrored drive and rebuild the system drive as a
mirror of the "backup" drive.


That's a good idea. Although I wouldn't do it with a cheapo onboard
controller. Those things fall over sometimes when drives "fail".


Huh? "Cheapo" RAID controllers are nothing more than *ATA ports.
If a drive fails you still have the other. With "my" proposal you
still have one "hot" and another, with the backup data, sitting on
the shelf. The *ATA controllers haven't gone anywhere.

Trouble is, the machine I'm about to build is planned to have 4
drives in a RAID 5 array for speed aswell as resilience. How
would I back this up in that manner? I suppose I'd need 8
drives - a mirrored RAID 5?


Don't do RAID-5. If you want speed do Raid 1/0. You're going to
need two drives for the striped pair though. I wouldn't run a
striped set though. Too much risk with too little gain.

I do something functionally the same, but don't use RAID of any
sort. I back up my laptop (using the supplied utility) once a week
to a USB drive that's online whenever I'm docked (also used for
music archives, etc.), then copy that drive to another USB drive
once in a while.


I have three machines on a network on all the time. So the main one
is backed up to the other two automatically every night. Every so
often I use a USB drive to dump one of the backup copies onto and
hide it out of reach of the computers.


We have two systems (our laptops) that get backed up to USB drives.
The desktop never gets backed up (nothing important ever gets put on
it). I don't lose sleep over losing data and can't be bothered with
the network.

--
Keith
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Default Hitachi Deskstar hard drive

On Fri, 14 Nov 2008 04:52:07 -0800, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:
Actually, what I'm currently doing for desktops is probably equally
dangerous. After about 4 years running, I buy a bigger|better|faster
drive, mirror the contents of the old drive to the new drive, and then
use the old drive for backups. In other words, pre-emptive
replacement.


What's dangerous about that? Considering how cheap hard drives are, it makes
perfect sense. If you buy two $60 drives every four years, that's $30 a
year -- 60 cents a week. That is cheap protection, and even cheaper
peace-of-mind.


I haven't counted for a while, but I think I have about 50 customers
(those that call for work more than once per year) involving about 150
machines. Pre-emptive drive replacement has totally prevented drive
failures, and the attendent all night restore session. However, it
also has produced in a rather motly collection of "used" drives,
mostly 10 thru 40GBytes. They still work, but being past their prime,
they're not suitable for use in a customers machine. I use them for
backups, but that's also risky if I run into one of those failures
that isn't dependent on running the drive. With 4 years runtime on
these drives, they're sure to fail within about 2-3 years of normal
use. I sell a few, with the usual disclaimer and non-warranty, but
after having to deal with a few irate former friends, I just stockpile
them. Anything where S.M.A.R.T. shows a climbing error rate, gets
recycled.


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D
http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
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What's dangerous about that? Considering how cheap hard drives
are, it makes perfect sense. If you buy two $60 drives every four
years, that's $30 a year -- 60 cents a week. That is cheap protection,
and even cheaper peace-of-mind.


I haven't counted for a while, but I think I have about 50 customers
(those that call for work more than once per year) involving about 150
machines. Pre-emptive drive replacement has totally prevented drive
failures, and the attendent all night restore session. However, it
also has produced in a rather motly collection of "used" drives,
mostly 10 thru 40GBytes. They still work, but being past their prime,
they're not suitable for use in a customers machine. I use them for
backups, but that's also risky if I run into one of those failures
that isn't dependent on running the drive. With 4 years runtime on
these drives, they're sure to fail within about 2-3 years of normal
use. I sell a few, with the usual disclaimer and non-warranty, but
after having to deal with a few irate former friends, I just stockpile
them. Anything where S.M.A.R.T. shows a climbing error rate, gets
recycled.


How does one access the S.M.A.R.T. data? (You don't need to explain, just
point.)

I was planning on making my initial installation of XP on a lightly used
drive I'd put a "vanilla" installation of 2000 on, so I could de-crap my
regular drive of malware. (I don't know how I was able to boot them
simultaneously without screwing up things, but I did.) Perhaps I'll just buy
a new drive right off the bat, and when XP is fully installed, get a second
drive.




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Default Hitachi Deskstar hard drive

On Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:44:15 -0000, krw wrote:

In article ,
says...
On Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:34:04 -0000, krw wrote:

In article ,

says...
On Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:11:06 -0000, krw wrote:

In article ,

says...
On Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:44:19 -0000, Clint Sharp wrote:

In message , William
Sommerwerck writes
My next computer will have integral RAID, and I won't have to manually back
up again, ever. (Except possibly Really Important stuff, just to be safe.)
With respect William, part of my job is recovering data off
failed/corrupted RAID sets. Do not rely on RAID to keep your data safe,
if the chances of two disks failing in a RAID 5 set then I must be the
luckiest (they weren't my RAID sets) man alive because I've seen it
dozens of times in the past 5 years. If you value your data then back it
up somewhere safe.

Use RAID 6. You have TWO redundancies.

Still doesn't protect you from the loose nut behind the keyboard.

And you can add some hotswaps too.

That's essentially a backup scheme, not significantly different
than cloning drives.

Never used a hotswap, but I'm assuming that they are idle empty drives which will automatically take over any other which fails.

No, they're cold standbys that can be "swapped in" with power on
("hot").


(Your word wrap is broken.)


YOU wrap it. I don't kow the width of your monitor.

Err.... so how does that differ from me having several spare drives
sat on the shelf that I can put in when required? I thought the
idea was these were put online AUTOMATICALLY. The option I saw
to add a hotswap on one of my raid controllers seemed to imply
that I'd set up one of the drives that was plugged in to be one.


No, "hot swap" has nothing to do with backup. If you have spare
drives sitting on the shelf they're not much use when your data goes
away. You *can* use the hot-swap feature with a RAID array to do a
backup by having the array perform the mirror then unplug the drive
and stick it on the shelf. By itself, hot-swap doesn't do anything
for you.

Correction - I meant to write a hot SPARE, not a hot SWAP.


Why would your spare need to be "hot"? I think we're talking past
each other...


I assume it's a drive which the system can bring into play as needed, immediately one fails.

RAID ("mirrors") will take over automatically on failure,
but again, they don't solve the "loose nut" problem.

One of the simple solutions is to have a mirrored setup with
additional mirror drives left off-line. To do a backup, one
connects one of the off-line drives and the system builds a
"clone" of the original drive on the "backup" drive. Then take
that drive off line and put it out of the reach of the loose nut
(fire, system crash, whatever). TO restore the system, simply
reconnect the mirrored drive and rebuild the system drive as a
mirror of the "backup" drive.


That's a good idea. Although I wouldn't do it with a cheapo onboard
controller. Those things fall over sometimes when drives "fail".


Huh? "Cheapo" RAID controllers are nothing more than *ATA ports.
If a drive fails you still have the other.


If they were nothing more than *ATA ports, you couldn't make a RAID array with them.

With "my" proposal you
still have one "hot" and another, with the backup data, sitting on
the shelf. The *ATA controllers haven't gone anywhere.


My point is I've (more than once) seen ONE drive fail, then the controller is incapable of using a degraded array and corrupts everything.

Trouble is, the machine I'm about to build is planned to have 4
drives in a RAID 5 array for speed aswell as resilience. How
would I back this up in that manner? I suppose I'd need 8
drives - a mirrored RAID 5?


Don't do RAID-5. If you want speed do Raid 1/0. You're going to
need two drives for the striped pair though. I wouldn't run a
striped set though. Too much risk with too little gain.


Do you mean RAID 1+0? As in a striped mirror? Why would this be faster than a RAID 5?

I do something functionally the same, but don't use RAID of any
sort. I back up my laptop (using the supplied utility) once a week
to a USB drive that's online whenever I'm docked (also used for
music archives, etc.), then copy that drive to another USB drive
once in a while.


I have three machines on a network on all the time. So the main one
is backed up to the other two automatically every night. Every so
often I use a USB drive to dump one of the backup copies onto and
hide it out of reach of the computers.


We have two systems (our laptops) that get backed up to USB drives.
The desktop never gets backed up (nothing important ever gets put on
it). I don't lose sleep over losing data and can't be bothered with
the network.


The network is automatic. It's no hassle at all once it's set up.

--
http://www.petersparrots.com http://www.insanevideoclips.com http://www.petersphotos.com

A Russian, an American, and a Blonde were talking one day.
The Russian said, "We were the first in space!"
The American said, "We were the first on the moon!"
The Blonde said, "So what? We're going to be the first on the sun!"
The Russian and the American looked at each other and shook their heads.
"You can't land on the sun, you idiot! You'll burn up!" said the Russian.
To which the Blonde replied, "We're not stupid, you know. We're going at night!"
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On Sat, 15 Nov 2008 04:00:54 -0800, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:

How does one access the S.M.A.R.T. data? (You don't need to explain, just
point.)


I use a Windoze program called "SpeedFan". (Click on the SMART tab):
http://www.almico.com/sfscreenshots.php
It produces a gorgeous web page report, warning of impending doom,
that's suitable for shoving down the customers throat.
http://www.almico.com/sfarticle.php?id=2
For Linux, I use SmartmonTools:
http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net
http://gsmartcontrol.berlios.de
which is more detailed, but kinda messy.

The easy way to test older drives is with a USB to IDE (or SATA)
adapter. For 3.5" drives, you need to supply power to the drive. I
can run through a mess of drives in literally minutes by simply
plugging and unplugging the USB cable, while swapping drives. Much
easier than trying to test drives inside the machine.

Note that some drives report garbage or lies for S.M.A.R.T. I don't
want to post my list of suspected culprits. Just note that any drive
that reports absolute perfection, that's also obviously old, is lying.

I was planning on making my initial installation of XP on a lightly used
drive I'd put a "vanilla" installation of 2000 on, so I could de-crap my
regular drive of malware. (I don't know how I was able to boot them
simultaneously without screwing up things, but I did.) Perhaps I'll just buy
a new drive right off the bat, and when XP is fully installed, get a second
drive.


Careful with the 2nd drive. If it's the slave off a different model
IDE master drive, the slave sometimes runs slower, or slows down the
main drive. Run some drive benchmarks on the main drive alone, and
then with the slave attached. A 2nd external (USB) drive is just
fine. Get an external case and you have a tolerable "backup" drive.


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D
http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
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Posts: 349
Default Hitachi Deskstar hard drive

In article ,
says...
On Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:44:15 -0000, krw wrote:

In article ,

says...
On Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:34:04 -0000, krw wrote:

In article ,

says...
On Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:11:06 -0000, krw wrote:

In article ,

says...
On Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:44:19 -0000, Clint Sharp wrote:

In message , William
Sommerwerck writes
My next computer will have integral RAID, and I won't have to manually back
up again, ever. (Except possibly Really Important stuff, just to be safe.)
With respect William, part of my job is recovering data off
failed/corrupted RAID sets. Do not rely on RAID to keep your data safe,
if the chances of two disks failing in a RAID 5 set then I must be the
luckiest (they weren't my RAID sets) man alive because I've seen it
dozens of times in the past 5 years. If you value your data then back it
up somewhere safe.

Use RAID 6. You have TWO redundancies.

Still doesn't protect you from the loose nut behind the keyboard.

And you can add some hotswaps too.

That's essentially a backup scheme, not significantly different
than cloning drives.

Never used a hotswap, but I'm assuming that they are idle empty drives which will automatically take over any other which fails.

No, they're cold standbys that can be "swapped in" with power on
("hot").


(Your word wrap is broken.)


YOU wrap it. I don't kow the width of your monitor.


No, the standard is to wrap it at something less than 80 chars. Not
wrapping text is *rude*.

Err.... so how does that differ from me having several spare drives
sat on the shelf that I can put in when required? I thought the
idea was these were put online AUTOMATICALLY. The option I saw
to add a hotswap on one of my raid controllers seemed to imply
that I'd set up one of the drives that was plugged in to be one.


No, "hot swap" has nothing to do with backup. If you have spare
drives sitting on the shelf they're not much use when your data goes
away. You *can* use the hot-swap feature with a RAID array to do a
backup by having the array perform the mirror then unplug the drive
and stick it on the shelf. By itself, hot-swap doesn't do anything
for you.

Correction - I meant to write a hot SPARE, not a hot SWAP.


Why would your spare need to be "hot"? I think we're talking past
each other...


I assume it's a drive which the system can bring into play as needed, immediately one fails.


Hot swap simply means that another can be brought on line while the
system is powered on. It doesn't mean the drive has anything on it.
Mirroring is a method of putting the backup data on the drive.

RAID ("mirrors") will take over automatically on failure,
but again, they don't solve the "loose nut" problem.

One of the simple solutions is to have a mirrored setup with
additional mirror drives left off-line. To do a backup, one
connects one of the off-line drives and the system builds a
"clone" of the original drive on the "backup" drive. Then take
that drive off line and put it out of the reach of the loose nut
(fire, system crash, whatever). TO restore the system, simply
reconnect the mirrored drive and rebuild the system drive as a
mirror of the "backup" drive.

That's a good idea. Although I wouldn't do it with a cheapo onboard
controller. Those things fall over sometimes when drives "fail".


Huh? "Cheapo" RAID controllers are nothing more than *ATA ports.
If a drive fails you still have the other.


If they were nothing more than *ATA ports, you couldn't make a RAID array with them.


Wrong. Ever hear of "software"? Every one of those RAID
controllers is nothing more than an ATA port and some software. Some
had the software in a ROM, but not that's not common anymore. Often
the OS ships with the necessary drivers. The hardware is nothing
but an *ATA port though.

With "my" proposal you
still have one "hot" and another, with the backup data, sitting on
the shelf. The *ATA controllers haven't gone anywhere.


My point is I've (more than once) seen ONE drive fail, then the controller is incapable of using a degraded array and corrupts everything.


With striping I can believe this. If it's mirrored simply use the
other drive (not stored in the system).

Trouble is, the machine I'm about to build is planned to have 4
drives in a RAID 5 array for speed aswell as resilience. How
would I back this up in that manner? I suppose I'd need 8
drives - a mirrored RAID 5?


Don't do RAID-5. If you want speed do Raid 1/0. You're going to
need two drives for the striped pair though. I wouldn't run a
striped set though. Too much risk with too little gain.


Do you mean RAID 1+0? As in a striped mirror? Why would this be faster than a RAID 5?


Yes, call it whatever you want. RAID-5 requires work to do the
redundancy. Mirroring requires little CPU overhead. It's just
stuffing bits.

I do something functionally the same, but don't use RAID of any
sort. I back up my laptop (using the supplied utility) once a week
to a USB drive that's online whenever I'm docked (also used for
music archives, etc.), then copy that drive to another USB drive
once in a while.

I have three machines on a network on all the time. So the main one
is backed up to the other two automatically every night. Every so
often I use a USB drive to dump one of the backup copies onto and
hide it out of reach of the computers.


We have two systems (our laptops) that get backed up to USB drives.
The desktop never gets backed up (nothing important ever gets put on
it). I don't lose sleep over losing data and can't be bothered with
the network.


The network is automatic. It's no hassle at all once it's set up.


Nothing is "automatic". It requires management. Too much bother
when IDE drives are *cheap*.

--
Keith
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Posts: 415
Default Hitachi Deskstar hard drive

On Sat, 15 Nov 2008 18:56:20 -0000, krw wrote:

In article ,
says...
On Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:44:15 -0000, krw wrote:

In article ,

says...
On Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:34:04 -0000, krw wrote:

In article ,

says...
On Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:11:06 -0000, krw wrote:

In article ,

says...
On Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:44:19 -0000, Clint Sharp wrote:

In message , William
Sommerwerck writes
My next computer will have integral RAID, and I won't have to manually back
up again, ever. (Except possibly Really Important stuff, just to be safe.)
With respect William, part of my job is recovering data off
failed/corrupted RAID sets. Do not rely on RAID to keep your data safe,
if the chances of two disks failing in a RAID 5 set then I must be the
luckiest (they weren't my RAID sets) man alive because I've seen it
dozens of times in the past 5 years. If you value your data then back it
up somewhere safe.

Use RAID 6. You have TWO redundancies.

Still doesn't protect you from the loose nut behind the keyboard.

And you can add some hotswaps too.

That's essentially a backup scheme, not significantly different
than cloning drives.

Never used a hotswap, but I'm assuming that they are idle empty drives which will automatically take over any other which fails.

No, they're cold standbys that can be "swapped in" with power on
("hot").

(Your word wrap is broken.)


YOU wrap it. I don't kow the width of your monitor.


No, the standard is to wrap it at something less than 80 chars. Not
wrapping text is *rude*.


Not a lot of people still have 80 column screens. Yours might be 120 for example. Your software should wrap my text at 120. If you make the window a bit smaller, it'll wrap to 100, etc. Even Notepad can wrap to window!!!

Err.... so how does that differ from me having several spare drives
sat on the shelf that I can put in when required? I thought the
idea was these were put online AUTOMATICALLY. The option I saw
to add a hotswap on one of my raid controllers seemed to imply
that I'd set up one of the drives that was plugged in to be one.

No, "hot swap" has nothing to do with backup. If you have spare
drives sitting on the shelf they're not much use when your data goes
away. You *can* use the hot-swap feature with a RAID array to do a
backup by having the array perform the mirror then unplug the drive
and stick it on the shelf. By itself, hot-swap doesn't do anything
for you.

Correction - I meant to write a hot SPARE, not a hot SWAP.

Why would your spare need to be "hot"? I think we're talking past
each other...


I assume it's a drive which the system can bring into play as needed, immediately one fails.


Hot swap simply means that another can be brought on line while the
system is powered on. It doesn't mean the drive has anything on it.


But it gives you added protection, because as soon as one drive fails, the hotswap drive is brought into use, not when you notice it and physically put one in.

Mirroring is a method of putting the backup data on the drive.

RAID ("mirrors") will take over automatically on failure,
but again, they don't solve the "loose nut" problem.

One of the simple solutions is to have a mirrored setup with
additional mirror drives left off-line. To do a backup, one
connects one of the off-line drives and the system builds a
"clone" of the original drive on the "backup" drive. Then take
that drive off line and put it out of the reach of the loose nut
(fire, system crash, whatever). TO restore the system, simply
reconnect the mirrored drive and rebuild the system drive as a
mirror of the "backup" drive.

That's a good idea. Although I wouldn't do it with a cheapo onboard
controller. Those things fall over sometimes when drives "fail".

Huh? "Cheapo" RAID controllers are nothing more than *ATA ports.
If a drive fails you still have the other.


If they were nothing more than *ATA ports, you couldn't make a RAID array with them.


Wrong. Ever hear of "software"? Every one of those RAID
controllers is nothing more than an ATA port and some software. Some
had the software in a ROM, but not that's not common anymore. Often
the OS ships with the necessary drivers. The hardware is nothing
but an *ATA port though.


If it was entirely OS software, booting the OS would be impossible.

With "my" proposal you
still have one "hot" and another, with the backup data, sitting on
the shelf. The *ATA controllers haven't gone anywhere.


My point is I've (more than once) seen ONE drive fail, then the controller is incapable of using a degraded array and corrupts everything.


With striping I can believe this. If it's mirrored simply use the
other drive (not stored in the system).


They were RAID 5 arrays.

Trouble is, the machine I'm about to build is planned to have 4
drives in a RAID 5 array for speed aswell as resilience. How
would I back this up in that manner? I suppose I'd need 8
drives - a mirrored RAID 5?

Don't do RAID-5. If you want speed do Raid 1/0. You're going to
need two drives for the striped pair though. I wouldn't run a
striped set though. Too much risk with too little gain.


Do you mean RAID 1+0? As in a striped mirror? Why would this be faster than a RAID 5?


Yes, call it whatever you want. RAID-5 requires work to do the
redundancy. Mirroring requires little CPU overhead. It's just
stuffing bits.


Perhaps. But consider my new system - I want 4 hard disks. If I use RAID 1+0, then when writing, I'm splitting the drive's work by a factor of 2. When reading I'm splitting it by a factor of 4. If I use RAID 5, when writing I'm splitting the drive's work by a factor of 3, when reading I'm splitting the work by a factor of 3. Depends whether reading is more important than writing.

Also I get 50% more capacity. Which also means the data I store will be closer together on the platters, speeding the drives' seek time up.

I've just looked up some graphs and it appears 1+0 is the best way for performance. The parity calculations are perhaps the problem like you said.

The question I now have is.... if I'm using 1+0, there's no calculations to do, so is there any advantage to me getting a powerful raid controller card, or will the onboard controller do just as well?

I've just checked, and it appear it does support 1+0 (some don't).
http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets...storage_sb.htm

I do something functionally the same, but don't use RAID of any
sort. I back up my laptop (using the supplied utility) once a week
to a USB drive that's online whenever I'm docked (also used for
music archives, etc.), then copy that drive to another USB drive
once in a while.

I have three machines on a network on all the time. So the main one
is backed up to the other two automatically every night. Every so
often I use a USB drive to dump one of the backup copies onto and
hide it out of reach of the computers.

We have two systems (our laptops) that get backed up to USB drives.
The desktop never gets backed up (nothing important ever gets put on
it). I don't lose sleep over losing data and can't be bothered with
the network.


The network is automatic. It's no hassle at all once it's set up.


Nothing is "automatic". It requires management. Too much bother
when IDE drives are *cheap*.


It requires management ONCE when I set up the schedule. From then on it does it at 3am every night, without my intervention.

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In article ,
says...
On Sat, 15 Nov 2008 18:56:20 -0000, krw wrote:

In article ,

says...
On Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:44:15 -0000, krw wrote:

In article ,

says...
On Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:34:04 -0000, krw wrote:

In article ,

says...
On Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:11:06 -0000, krw wrote:

In article ,

says...
On Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:44:19 -0000, Clint Sharp wrote:

In message , William
Sommerwerck writes
My next computer will have integral RAID, and I won't have to manually back
up again, ever. (Except possibly Really Important stuff, just to be safe.)
With respect William, part of my job is recovering data off
failed/corrupted RAID sets. Do not rely on RAID to keep your data safe,
if the chances of two disks failing in a RAID 5 set then I must be the
luckiest (they weren't my RAID sets) man alive because I've seen it
dozens of times in the past 5 years. If you value your data then back it
up somewhere safe.

Use RAID 6. You have TWO redundancies.

Still doesn't protect you from the loose nut behind the keyboard.

And you can add some hotswaps too.

That's essentially a backup scheme, not significantly different
than cloning drives.

Never used a hotswap, but I'm assuming that they are idle empty drives which will automatically take over any other which fails.

No, they're cold standbys that can be "swapped in" with power on
("hot").

(Your word wrap is broken.)

YOU wrap it. I don't kow the width of your monitor.


No, the standard is to wrap it at something less than 80 chars. Not
wrapping text is *rude*.


Not a lot of people still have 80 column screens. Yours might be 120 for example. Your software should wrap my text at 120. If you make the window a bit smaller, it'll wrap to 100, etc. Even Notepad can wrap to window!!!


Don't be an asshole. It runs it right off the right edge. I'm not
going to clean up your mess again. If you can't conform to the
minimal Usenet standards, you aren't worth speaking with. *PLONK*

--
Keith


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On Sat, 15 Nov 2008 10:22:44 -0800, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:

Failing Hard Drive Sounds:
http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php

--
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150 Felker St #D
http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
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Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
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"Peter Hucker" wrote in
news
No, the standard is to wrap it at something less than 80 chars. Not
wrapping text is *rude*.


Not a lot of people still have 80 column screens.


Doesn't matter. See below.

Yours might be 120
for example. Your software should wrap my text at 120. If you make the
window a bit smaller, it'll wrap to 100, etc. Even Notepad can wrap to
window!!!


There is a problem with people that insist that THEY have a special
dispensation to violate long established rules of the road, like the long
established usenet rule of the road that says 'thou shalt wrap thine text
at less than 76 before you rap on usenet, otherwise other usenet users will
consider you a kook and will soon cease to see anything you post because
you will earn a permanent place in their killfiles.'

[quote from http://linux.sgms-centre.com/misc/netiquette.php ]

Make sure your lines are no longer than 72 to 76 characters in length.

Once again, you can't assume that all e-mail and news clients behave like
yours, and while yours might wrap lines automatically when the text reaches
the right of the window containing it, not all do.

.....try and imagine how people will feel about your messages if they are
nothing but a succession of ... lines which spread off the screen.

Enough said...

If your mailer/newsreader doesn't wrap outgoing messages then at least have
the courtesy to do so manually before sending your message off.
[unquote]

Being courteous costs little and adds to the happiness in the world.

Remember that NOTHING said on usenet is ever lost.
Every smart and dumb thing we ever post is out there somewhere.

Being rude might bring YOU a little pleasure but it brings unhappiness to
others. Trolls enjoy being rude and the reactions being rude bring.

Is that _really_ what you want to do? Is that how you want future
generations to remember you?

--
bz

please pardon my infinite ignorance, the set-of-things-I-do-not-know is an
infinite set.

remove ch100-5 to avoid spam trap
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bz wrote:

"Peter Hucker" wrote in
news
No, the standard is to wrap it at something less than 80 chars. Not
wrapping text is *rude*.


Not a lot of people still have 80 column screens.


Doesn't matter. See below.

Yours might be 120
for example. Your software should wrap my text at 120. If you make the
window a bit smaller, it'll wrap to 100, etc. Even Notepad can wrap to
window!!!


There is a problem with people that insist that THEY have a special
dispensation to violate long established rules of the road, like the long
established usenet rule of the road that says 'thou shalt wrap thine text
at less than 76 before you rap on usenet, otherwise other usenet users will
consider you a kook and will soon cease to see anything you post because
you will earn a permanent place in their killfiles.'

[quote from http://linux.sgms-centre.com/misc/netiquette.php ]

Make sure your lines are no longer than 72 to 76 characters in length.

Once again, you can't assume that all e-mail and news clients behave like
yours, and while yours might wrap lines automatically when the text reaches
the right of the window containing it, not all do.

....try and imagine how people will feel about your messages if they are
nothing but a succession of ... lines which spread off the screen.

Enough said...

If your mailer/newsreader doesn't wrap outgoing messages then at least have
the courtesy to do so manually before sending your message off.
[unquote]

Being courteous costs little and adds to the happiness in the world.

Remember that NOTHING said on usenet is ever lost.
Every smart and dumb thing we ever post is out there somewhere.

Being rude might bring YOU a little pleasure but it brings unhappiness to
others. Trolls enjoy being rude and the reactions being rude bring.

Is that _really_ what you want to do? Is that how you want future
generations to remember you?



He is a troll, so that's exactly how he wants to be remembered.


--
http://improve-usenet.org/index.html

aioe.org, Goggle Groups, and Web TV users must request to be white
listed, or I will not see your messages.

If you have broadband, your ISP may have a NNTP news server included in
your account: http://www.usenettools.net/ISP.htm


There are two kinds of people on this earth:
The crazy, and the insane.
The first sign of insanity is denying that you're crazy.
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On Sat, 15 Nov 2008 21:14:12 -0000, krw wrote:

In article ,
says...
On Sat, 15 Nov 2008 18:56:20 -0000, krw wrote:

In article ,

says...
On Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:44:15 -0000, krw wrote:

In article ,

says...
On Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:34:04 -0000, krw wrote:

In article ,

says...
On Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:11:06 -0000, krw wrote:

In article ,

says...
On Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:44:19 -0000, Clint Sharp wrote:

In message , William
Sommerwerck writes
My next computer will have integral RAID, and I won't have to manually back
up again, ever. (Except possibly Really Important stuff, just to be safe.)
With respect William, part of my job is recovering data off
failed/corrupted RAID sets. Do not rely on RAID to keep your data safe,
if the chances of two disks failing in a RAID 5 set then I must be the
luckiest (they weren't my RAID sets) man alive because I've seen it
dozens of times in the past 5 years. If you value your data then back it
up somewhere safe.

Use RAID 6. You have TWO redundancies.

Still doesn't protect you from the loose nut behind the keyboard.

And you can add some hotswaps too.

That's essentially a backup scheme, not significantly different
than cloning drives.

Never used a hotswap, but I'm assuming that they are idle empty drives which will automatically take over any other which fails.

No, they're cold standbys that can be "swapped in" with power on
("hot").

(Your word wrap is broken.)

YOU wrap it. I don't kow the width of your monitor.

No, the standard is to wrap it at something less than 80 chars. Not
wrapping text is *rude*.


Not a lot of people still have 80 column screens. Yours might be 120 for example. Your software should wrap my text at 120. If you make the window a bit smaller, it'll wrap to 100, etc. Even Notepad can wrap to window!!!


Don't be an asshole. It runs it right off the right edge. I'm not
going to clean up your mess again. If you can't conform to the
minimal Usenet standards, you aren't worth speaking with. *PLONK*


It runs off the right edge because your shoddy software isn't wrapping it. Open any word processor and start typing. Keep going till you come towards the edge. Tell me what happens next.

--
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"Good morning, ma'am, I've come to ask for collections, for the Salvation Army," said the man in the bright red Santa suit to the woman who opened the door wearing nothing but panties and a see-through negligee.
"How do I know that?" the young woman replied. "How do I know you're really with the Salvation Army? How do I know you aren't some sex fiend who has come to take advantage of a poor, defenseless female who's all alone in her house ... and will be until 5:30 this evening?"
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On Sun, 16 Nov 2008 15:53:11 -0000, bz wrote:

"Peter Hucker" wrote in
news
No, the standard is to wrap it at something less than 80 chars. Not
wrapping text is *rude*.


Not a lot of people still have 80 column screens.


Doesn't matter. See below.

Yours might be 120
for example. Your software should wrap my text at 120. If you make the
window a bit smaller, it'll wrap to 100, etc. Even Notepad can wrap to
window!!!


There is a problem with people that insist that THEY have a special
dispensation to violate long established rules of the road, like the long
established usenet rule of the road that says 'thou shalt wrap thine text
at less than 76 before you rap on usenet, otherwise other usenet users will
consider you a kook and will soon cease to see anything you post because
you will earn a permanent place in their killfiles.'

[quote from http://linux.sgms-centre.com/misc/netiquette.php ]

Make sure your lines are no longer than 72 to 76 characters in length.

Once again, you can't assume that all e-mail and news clients behave like
yours, and while yours might wrap lines automatically when the text reaches
the right of the window containing it, not all do.


If Windows Notepad can wrap, so can any email client. It's not rocket Science. My ZX Spectrum used to do it for christ's sake.

--
http://www.petersparrots.com http://www.insanevideoclips.com http://www.petersphotos.com

The subway car was packed. It was rush hour, and many people were forced to stand.
One particularly cramped woman turned to the man behind her and said,
"Sir, if you don't stop poking me with your thing, I'm going to the cops!"
"I don't know what you're talking about miss - that's just my pay check in my pocket."
"Oh really" she spat.
"Then you must have some job, because that's the fifth raise you've had in the last half hour."


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In article 39,
says...
"Peter Hucker" wrote in
news
No, the standard is to wrap it at something less than 80 chars. Not
wrapping text is *rude*.


Not a lot of people still have 80 column screens.



Not many have 1k character screens, nor the desire to try to read
fish food that long.

snip

Is that _really_ what you want to do? Is that how you want future
generations to remember you?


Trolls like to cause trouble. It's clear this troll feels no desire
to make his readers' lives easier (note the same attitude among top-
posters). As with everything he's ever done in his life, he failed.
My life is easier without another Europeon troll.

--
Keith
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On Sun, 16 Nov 2008 20:06:20 -0000, krw wrote:

In article 39,
says...
"Peter Hucker" wrote in
news
No, the standard is to wrap it at something less than 80 chars. Not
wrapping text is *rude*.

Not a lot of people still have 80 column screens.



Not many have 1k character screens, nor the desire to try to read
fish food that long.


If your computer is bright enough to wrap to window, the monitor can be ANY width.

snip

Is that _really_ what you want to do? Is that how you want future
generations to remember you?


Trolls like to cause trouble. It's clear this troll feels no desire
to make his readers' lives easier (note the same attitude among top-
posters). As with everything he's ever done in his life, he failed.
My life is easier without another Europeon troll.


Typical American. Because I'm in Europe, that must be the reason for everything.

--
http://www.petersparrots.com http://www.insanevideoclips.com http://www.petersphotos.com

A woman goes to England to attend a 2-week, company training session. Her husband drives her to the airport and wishes her to have a good trip.
The wife answers, "Thank you honey, what would you like me to bring for you?"
The husband laughs and says, "An English girl!"
The woman kept quiet and left.
Two weeks later he picks her up in the airport and asks, "So, honey, how was the trip?"
"Very good, thank you".
"And, what happened to my present?".
"Which present?"
"What I asked for. The English girl!"
"Oh, that? Well, I did what I could. Now we have to wait a few months to see if it is a girl."
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