I am looking for an 80 Gb Hitachi Deskstar hard drive, Model
HDS728080PLA380. My brother's machine quit with the Hitachi "click of
death" and I am trying to find a working hard drive like his to swap
parts and try to recover their data. Anyone have one sitting around?
I think his machine is an HP.

WT

WT wrote:
I am looking for an 80 Gb Hitachi Deskstar hard drive, Model
HDS728080PLA380. My brother's machine quit with the Hitachi "click of
death" and I am trying to find a working hard drive like his to swap
parts and try to recover their data. Anyone have one sitting around?
I think his machine is an HP.

WT


Oy,There's a reason those drives got the nickname "deathstar".
I had one,until I tossed it out. :-(

Meat Plow wrote:

On Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:35:26 -0800, PhattyMo wrote:


WT wrote:

I am looking for an 80 Gb Hitachi Deskstar hard drive, Model
HDS728080PLA380. My brother's machine quit with the Hitachi "click of
death" and I am trying to find a working hard drive like his to swap
parts and try to recover their data. Anyone have one sitting around?
I think his machine is an HP.

WT


Oy,There's a reason those drives got the nickname "deathstar".
I had one,until I tossed it out. :-(


I've got two 40 gig DeathStars on a Promise ATA RAID 1 controller
inside a P3-800 box that I used to use for a work PC. It ran
continuously for 2 years before being replaced by a Dell. Although I
haven't fired it up in a year I have no doubt that it will work. I was
under the assumption that the DeathStar laptop drive earned the
reputation rather than the desktop drives, maybe I'm wrong.

I don't think the problems were (are?) limited to laptop drives.

--
The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to
minimize spam. Our true address is of the form .

On Sat, 08 Nov 2008 04:35:26 -0000, PhattyMo wrote:

WT wrote:
I am looking for an 80 Gb Hitachi Deskstar hard drive, Model
HDS728080PLA380. My brother's machine quit with the Hitachi "click of
death" and I am trying to find a working hard drive like his to swap
parts and try to recover their data. Anyone have one sitting around?
I think his machine is an HP.

WT


Oy,There's a reason those drives got the nickname "deathstar".
I had one,until I tossed it out. :-(

I've seen the same number of faults with Maxtors. And Seagates. And Western Digitals. I can only conclude all drives are equal.

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

This girl walks into a hardware store as she needs a new hinge for a door at home.
As she brings it to the counter, the clerk asks, "Wanna screw for that hinge?"
To which she replies, "No, but I'll suck you off for that toaster on the top shelf."

On Sat, 08 Nov 2008 03:42:07 -0000, WT wrote:

I am looking for an 80 Gb Hitachi Deskstar hard drive, Model
HDS728080PLA380. My brother's machine quit with the Hitachi "click of
death" and I am trying to find a working hard drive like his to swap
parts and try to recover their data. Anyone have one sitting around?
I think his machine is an HP.

How much is the data worth?
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...m=280222608592

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

What should you do if a girl sits on your hand?
Try to get her off.

On Nov 7, 10:42*pm, WT wrote:
I am looking for an 80 Gb Hitachi Deskstar hard drive, Model
HDS728080PLA380. *My brother's machine quit with the Hitachi "click of
death" and I am trying to find a working hard drive like his to swap
parts and try to recover their data. *Anyone have one sitting around?
I think his machine is an HP.

* WT

I have had this problem before a few times and have tried changing the
logic board on the drives, NEVER with any success.

Hitachi says this is because you have to find a drive with the same
FIRMWARE (whatever that means with a disc drive!) and in practice you
never will. There are complex pieces of astronomically expensive
equipment designed to re-write firmware, none apparently which do this
to failed drives.

Besides, why are you so sure it is some part wihch can be switched?

The only real solution is to find someone like OnTrack who can take
your drive apart in a Clean Room and read the data on the platters.
The outfits which do this have a lock on the market and know they can
screw users into paying any amount they choose to charge to do this.
(because companies are usually happy to pay any amount to do this).
As you have probably found out. These companies even have intricate
programs which con you into believing that they can do this and are
the only people who can. If it was so easy to get drives working
again, dont you think they would be able to repair your drive?

When you do this, the next problem appears which is that the will send
you DVDs with thousands of numbered directories and tens of thousands
of (numbered, not named) files on them which will take you hundreds of
hours to go through.

In article , wrote:
On Nov 7, 10:42=A0pm, WT wrote:
I am looking for an 80 Gb Hitachi Deskstar hard drive, Model
HDS728080PLA380. =A0My brother's machine quit with the Hitachi "click of
death" and I am trying to find a working hard drive like his to swap
parts and try to recover their data. =A0Anyone have one sitting around?
I think his machine is an HP.

=A0 WT

I have had this problem before a few times and have tried changing the
logic board on the drives, NEVER with any success.

Hitachi says this is because you have to find a drive with the same
FIRMWARE (whatever that means with a disc drive!) and in practice you
never will. There are complex pieces of astronomically expensive
equipment designed to re-write firmware, none apparently which do this
to failed drives.

Besides, why are you so sure it is some part wihch can be switched?


I have repaired many different brands of drives by replacing the logic board
from a known good drive to a bad drive.Saved many 18GB WD drives back then.
After i recovered the data, i replaced the boad back on the good drive.

The only real solution is to find someone like OnTrack who can take
your drive apart in a Clean Room and read the data on the platters.
The outfits which do this have a lock on the market and know they can
screw users into paying any amount they choose to charge to do this.
(because companies are usually happy to pay any amount to do this).
As you have probably found out. These companies even have intricate
programs which con you into believing that they can do this and are
the only people who can. If it was so easy to get drives working
again, dont you think they would be able to repair your drive?

When you do this, the next problem appears which is that the will send
you DVDs with thousands of numbered directories and tens of thousands
of (numbered, not named) files on them which will take you hundreds of
hours to go through.

On Nov 9, 2:11*pm, (GMAN) wrote:
In article , wrote:





On Nov 7, 10:42=A0pm, WT wrote:
I am looking for an 80 Gb Hitachi Deskstar hard drive, Model
HDS728080PLA380. =A0My brother's machine quit with the Hitachi "click of
death" and I am trying to find a working hard drive like his to swap
parts and try to recover their data. =A0Anyone have one sitting around?
I think his machine is an HP.

=A0 WT

I have had this problem before a few times and have tried changing the
logic board on the drives, NEVER with any success.

Hitachi says this is because you have to find a drive with the same
FIRMWARE (whatever that means with a disc drive!) and in practice you
never will. There are complex pieces of astronomically expensive
equipment designed to re-write firmware, none apparently which do this
to failed drives.

Besides, why are you so sure it is some part wihch can be switched?

I have repaired many different brands of drives by replacing the logic board
from a known good drive to a bad drive.Saved many 18GB WD drives back then.

On Sun, 09 Nov 2008 16:31:18 -0000, wrote:

On Nov 7, 10:42*pm, WT wrote:
I am looking for an 80 Gb Hitachi Deskstar hard drive, Model
HDS728080PLA380. *My brother's machine quit with the Hitachi "click of
death" and I am trying to find a working hard drive like his to swap
parts and try to recover their data. *Anyone have one sitting around?
I think his machine is an HP.

* WT

I have had this problem before a few times and have tried changing the
logic board on the drives, NEVER with any success.

Hitachi says this is because you have to find a drive with the same
FIRMWARE (whatever that means with a disc drive!) and in practice you
never will. There are complex pieces of astronomically expensive
equipment designed to re-write firmware, none apparently which do this
to failed drives.

But surely you can change the firmware of the good drive? And you can do it with software, at least I just did it with a bank of Maxtor SCSI drives on a server.

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

Some people are like slinkies, not really good for anything, but they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs.

On Nov 10, 1:48*pm, "Peter Hucker" wrote:
On Sun, 09 Nov 2008 16:31:18 -0000, wrote:
On Nov 7, 10:42*pm, WT wrote:
I am looking for an 80 Gb Hitachi Deskstar hard drive, Model
HDS728080PLA380. *My brother's machine quit with the Hitachi "click of
death" and I am trying to find a working hard drive like his to swap
parts and try to recover their data. *Anyone have one sitting around?
I think his machine is an HP.

* WT

I have had this problem before a few times and have tried changing the
logic board on the drives, NEVER with any success.

Hitachi says this is because you have to find a drive with the same
FIRMWARE (whatever that means with a disc drive!) and in practice you
never will. There are complex pieces of astronomically expensive
equipment designed to re-write firmware, none apparently which do this
to failed drives.

But surely you can change the firmware of the good drive? *And you can do it with software, at least I just did it with a bank of Maxtor SCSI drives on a server.

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

Some people are like slinkies, not really good for anything, but they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Interesting! i tried that and all I found was that to change the
firmware on a Travelstar, you had to buy tens of thousands of dollas
worth of equipment. And then there was no place to download 'new'
firmware. (which was what made me think that this whole firmware thing
was a big hoax: If there is something wrong or old or non-functional
about firmware, why on earth would the manufacturer not want you to
update your hardware which suffers from this old firmware?)

How on earth did you do this, where was the download site for the new
firmware and does maxtor treat their drives any different from IBM/
Hitachi?

On Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:17:48 -0000, wrote:

On Nov 10, 1:48*pm, "Peter Hucker" wrote:
On Sun, 09 Nov 2008 16:31:18 -0000, wrote:
On Nov 7, 10:42*pm, WT wrote:
I am looking for an 80 Gb Hitachi Deskstar hard drive, Model
HDS728080PLA380. *My brother's machine quit with the Hitachi "click of
death" and I am trying to find a working hard drive like his to swap
parts and try to recover their data. *Anyone have one sitting around?
I think his machine is an HP.

* WT

I have had this problem before a few times and have tried changing the
logic board on the drives, NEVER with any success.

Hitachi says this is because you have to find a drive with the same
FIRMWARE (whatever that means with a disc drive!) and in practice you
never will. There are complex pieces of astronomically expensive
equipment designed to re-write firmware, none apparently which do this
to failed drives.

But surely you can change the firmware of the good drive? *And you can do it with software, at least I just did it with a bank of Maxtor SCSI drives on a server.

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

Some people are like slinkies, not really good for anything, but they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Interesting! i tried that and all I found was that to change the
firmware on a Travelstar, you had to buy tens of thousands of dollas
worth of equipment. And then there was no place to download 'new'
firmware. (which was what made me think that this whole firmware thing
was a big hoax: If there is something wrong or old or non-functional
about firmware, why on earth would the manufacturer not want you to
update your hardware which suffers from this old firmware?)

How on earth did you do this, where was the download site for the new
firmware and does maxtor treat their drives any different from IBM/
Hitachi?

The maxtor site will not hand out firmware, they say to consult the system manufacturer. In my case it was a Dell poweredge server, and Dell gave me the firmware (on a bootable CD). I think the difference is they are SCSI drives, and firmware is more important?

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

You know you've spent too much time on the computer when you spill milk and the first thing you think is, 'Edit, Undo.'

wrote in news:3161c9d3-6e40-4aae-9af9-
:

Interesting! i tried that and all I found was that to change the
firmware on a Travelstar, you had to buy tens of thousands of dollas
worth of equipment. And then there was no place to download 'new'
firmware. (which was what made me think that this whole firmware thing
was a big hoax: If there is something wrong or old or non-functional
about firmware, why on earth would the manufacturer not want you to
update your hardware which suffers from this old firmware?)

How on earth did you do this, where was the download site for the new
firmware and does maxtor treat their drives any different from IBM/
Hitachi?


This guy has a series of lectures on how to fix hard drives
http://electronic-day.blogspot.com/s...Repair%20Hard%
20Drive

He changes electronics, sometimes heads, sometimes motors.

The electronics has a map of bad sectors remapped to spares. Those will be
wrong.
But some data recovery is better than none.

The electronics needs to be produced within a few months of the 'target
drive', even if the model and rev numbers are the same, changes occur.
But some data recovery is better than none.





--
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

On Fri, 7 Nov 2008 19:42:07 -0800 (PST), WT
wrote:

I am looking for an 80 Gb Hitachi Deskstar hard drive, Model
HDS728080PLA380. My brother's machine quit with the Hitachi "click of
death" and I am trying to find a working hard drive like his to swap
parts and try to recover their data. Anyone have one sitting around?
I think his machine is an HP.

I've taken apart one of these drives and found that the plating on the
glass platter has been partially worn off. Not as bad as in these
photos, but still with an easily visible gap:
http://www.astro.ufl.edu/~ken/crash/index.html
Head crash at its worst.
http://www.berdonclaims.com/cases/details.asp?CaseID=173
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitachi_Deskstar

There are some other possible problems. See:
http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-ibm-deskstar-hard-disk-drive.htm
for URL's and refernces.

The "firmware" is actually on the first few tracks of the drive. It
gets loaded into RAM on bootup. It cannot be easily re-written or
replaced.

Methinks you will not have any success recovering data from a drive
that exhibits the "click of death" problem. I once wasted about $300
only to discover it was hopeless.

Incidentally, nobody does backups until AFTER they've lost a massive
amount of data and correspondly massive amount of time and money.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

WT wrote:

I am looking for an 80 Gb Hitachi Deskstar hard drive, Model
HDS728080PLA380. My brother's machine quit with the Hitachi "click of
death" and I am trying to find a working hard drive like his to swap
parts and try to recover their data. Anyone have one sitting around?
I think his machine is an HP.

Try ebay. They turn up occasionally.

Graham

Ok, I now know what specific drive I need.

Hitachi Deskstar drive:
Model HDS728080PLA380
P/N:0A31048
MLC:BA1468

Incidentally, nobody does backups until AFTER they've lost a massive
amount of data and correspondly massive amount of time and money.

Not I. I back up my hard drive periodically. When W2K "collapsed" several
years, I had full backup and lost nothing.

William Sommerwerck wrote:

Incidentally, nobody does backups until AFTER they've lost a massive
amount of data and correspondly massive amount of time and money.

Not I. I back up my hard drive periodically. When W2K "collapsed" several
years, I had full backup and lost nothing.

.... only the time to reinstall every single program. Does your backup
care for the bookmarks of your browser, the mails of your emailer and
so forth, which all happily sit somewhere else than in the "My Data"
directory?

The only real thing is a disk imager, working and tested - for your
OS, the hard disk size you use, and the file system you have :-).
To have an incremental backup, too, would be fine.

Regards,
H.

"Heinz Schmitz" wrote in message
...
William Sommerwerck wrote:

Incidentally, nobody does backups until AFTER they've lost
a massive amount of data and correspondly massive amount
of time and money.

Not I. I back up my hard drive periodically. When W2K "collapsed"
several years, I had full backup and lost nothing.

... only the time to reinstall every single program. Does your backup
care for the bookmarks of your browser, the mails of your emailer and
so forth, which all happily sit somewhere else than in the "My Data"
directory?

The only real thing is a disk imager, working and tested -- for your
OS, the hard disk size you use, and the file system you have :-).
To have an incremental backup, too, would be fine.

When I said "full backup", I meant full backup. I use Copy Commander 9.1.
Unlike Ghost (and likely most other products) that claim to produce an exact
copy, Copy Commander actually creates a bootable backup. I periodically copy
the entire drive to a second hard drive. If the main drive fails, all I have
to do is stick in a jumper and swap cables, then restart. As this isn't
something I do every day, Really Important files are also backed up to a Zip
disk.

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.)

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.




--
Clint Sharp

On Wed, 12 Nov 2008 13:10:13 -0000, William Sommerwerck wrote:

"Heinz Schmitz" wrote in message
...
William Sommerwerck wrote:

Incidentally, nobody does backups until AFTER they've lost
a massive amount of data and correspondly massive amount
of time and money.

Not I. I back up my hard drive periodically. When W2K "collapsed"
several years, I had full backup and lost nothing.

... only the time to reinstall every single program. Does your backup
care for the bookmarks of your browser, the mails of your emailer and
so forth, which all happily sit somewhere else than in the "My Data"
directory?

The only real thing is a disk imager, working and tested -- for your
OS, the hard disk size you use, and the file system you have :-).
To have an incremental backup, too, would be fine.

When I said "full backup", I meant full backup. I use Copy Commander 9.1.
Unlike Ghost (and likely most other products) that claim to produce an exact
copy, Copy Commander actually creates a bootable backup. I periodically copy
the entire drive to a second hard drive. If the main drive fails, all I have
to do is stick in a jumper and swap cables, then restart. As this isn't
something I do every day, Really Important files are also backed up to a Zip
disk.

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.)

If you're going for raid, buy a raid controller card, and look at the performance (tom's hardware etc) of each. There is a vast difference in performance between them, and onboard controllers really suck. In fact all the ones I've used don't show much speed increase over a single drive!

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

For the first time in many years, an old man traveled from his rural town to the city to attend a movie.
After buying his ticket, he stopped at the concession stand to purchase some popcorn.
Handing the attendant $1.50, he couldn't help but comment, "The last time I came to the movies, popcorn was only 15 cents."
"Well, sir," the attendant replied with a grin, "You're really going to enjoy yourself. We have sound now."

William Sommerwerck wrote:
"Heinz Schmitz" wrote in message
...
William Sommerwerck wrote:

Incidentally, nobody does backups until AFTER they've lost
a massive amount of data and correspondly massive amount
of time and money.

Not I. I back up my hard drive periodically. When W2K "collapsed"
several years, I had full backup and lost nothing.

... only the time to reinstall every single program. Does your backup
care for the bookmarks of your browser, the mails of your emailer and
so forth, which all happily sit somewhere else than in the "My Data"
directory?

The only real thing is a disk imager, working and tested -- for your
OS, the hard disk size you use, and the file system you have :-).
To have an incremental backup, too, would be fine.

When I said "full backup", I meant full backup. I use Copy Commander 9.1.
Unlike Ghost (and likely most other products) that claim to produce an exact
copy, Copy Commander actually creates a bootable backup. I periodically copy
the entire drive to a second hard drive. If the main drive fails, all I have
to do is stick in a jumper and swap cables, then restart. As this isn't
something I do every day, Really Important files are also backed up to a Zip
disk.

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.)

RAID is _not_ a backup. It doesn't protect against software & operator
error, for example.

Jerry

Heinz Schmitz wrote:
William Sommerwerck wrote:

Incidentally, nobody does backups until AFTER they've lost a massive
amount of data and correspondly massive amount of time and money.

Not I. I back up my hard drive periodically. When W2K "collapsed" several
years, I had full backup and lost nothing.

... only the time to reinstall every single program. Does your backup
care for the bookmarks of your browser, the mails of your emailer and
so forth, which all happily sit somewhere else than in the "My Data"
directory?

All of the programs and data are on the backup, that's why it's called
a backup.
Yes.
What's the "My Data" directory and why would I only backup 1
directory?


The only real thing is a disk imager, working and tested - for your
OS, the hard disk size you use, and the file system you have :-).
To have an incremental backup, too, would be fine.

Depends, what you're using. I do a full backup every few months, then
a weekly differential. Current work in progress gets copied to a USB
memory stick as appropriate.
And, yes, I periodically test my backups by doing restores.

Jerry

"Clint Sharp" wrote in message
...
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.

I read this recently elsewhere, and find it very hard to believe that two
drives -- even identical ones purchased at the same time -- would fail
essentially simultaneously.

If you're going for raid, buy a raid controller card, and look at
the performance (tom's hardware etc) of each. There is a vast
difference in performance between them, and onboard controllers
really suck. In fact all the ones I've used don't show much speed
increase over a single drive!

I was looking at an Adaptec card the other, and was appalled at the $350
price tag.

"William Sommerwerck" wrote in
message ...
"Clint Sharp" wrote in
message
...
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.

I read this recently elsewhere, and find it very hard to
believe that two
drives -- even identical ones purchased at the same
time -- would fail
essentially simultaneously.

I had a situation with Seagate drives where the scenario
above happened. There were two identical drives in a
computer purchased at the same time. After about 3 years one
failed due to increasing bad sectors being found.and was
replaced. One week later, the identical failure occurred in
the second drive. I doubt power supply problems or any other
common cause due the computer was involved.

David

"David" wrote in
:


"William Sommerwerck" wrote in
message ...
"Clint Sharp" wrote in
message
...
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.

I read this recently elsewhere, and find it very hard to
believe that two
drives -- even identical ones purchased at the same
time -- would fail
essentially simultaneously.

I had a situation with Seagate drives where the scenario
above happened. There were two identical drives in a
computer purchased at the same time. After about 3 years one
failed due to increasing bad sectors being found.and was
replaced. One week later, the identical failure occurred in
the second drive. I doubt power supply problems or any other
common cause due the computer was involved.

David



any speculation on what was "causing" the "bad sectors"?

I wonder if it's an electrolytic cap problem?(on the drives) ;-}

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
kua.net

On 13 Nov 2008 17:07:42 GMT, Jim Yanik wrote:

any speculation on what was "causing" the "bad sectors"?

Head clog. It's a direct function of the runtime of the drive (and
the number of starts and stops). Also, various chemical outgassing
and corrosion issues inside the HDA.

I've seen exactly the same thing in various RAID arrays. Near
simultaneous failures of the drives. Years ago, I had one RAID 5
array that killed 4 drives in about a week. It was pure luck that I
was able to keep the beast up while re-mirroring a drive, only to have
the next drive subsequenty fail.

However, things got worse after that. I decided to give up on RAID
and went to independent drives, with some of the drives acting as an
image backup of the main drives. They would get backed up at night.
In theory, all I had to do was remove the main drive, shove in the
image backup, and putter along merrily. I never had to do that.
Instead, both sets of drives again failed nearly simultaneously about
2 years later. Even though one set of drives was activily seeking,
while the other was just spinning, the lifetimes were about the same.

So, I thought I was safe by removing the backup drives. Different
customer, same problem. I had box of brand new drives sitting on the
shelf. One drive in a RAID 5 array was acting funny (according to
the Mylex controller), so I replaced it with a new drive, which failed
in about a week. So, I crammed in another new drive, which also
lasted about a week. Then the drives in the active RAID 5 array
started to fail. I bought some new drives from a different vendor,
and rebuilt the array, thus saving the day. With these dogs, it
didn't matter if the drives were running or just sitting in the box.
Both ways, they failed nearly simultaneously. (Maybe there's a
failure timer inside the drive).

Moral: You can't win.

Lately, I've been doing much better on the drive lifetime and RAID. I
still have some striped arrays (for speed) running. I'm using various
Seagate drives and have had no failures for about 3 years. With my
luck, they'll probably all die at once, but so far, the stats show
that they're doing fine.

Note that this is all hardware RAID. I won't use software RAID due to
some bad experiences trying to recover.

Incidentally, my office SCO Unix box has been continuously running a
Conner 1060s SCSI drive since about 1993. I keep waiting for it to
fail, so I have an excuse to build up something better. The 486DX2/66
mother board has died twice. One power supply died. Some RAM went
bad. But, the hard disk and Ineptec 1542 controller keeps plunking
along for 15 years. Hint: It's always on.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

Jeff Liebermann wrote:

snip

Incidentally, my office SCO Unix box has been continuously running a
Conner 1060s SCSI drive since about 1993. I keep waiting for it to
fail, so I have an excuse to build up something better. The 486DX2/66
mother board has died twice. One power supply died. Some RAM went
bad. But, the hard disk and Ineptec 1542 controller keeps plunking
along for 15 years. Hint: It's always on.


As part of power consumption mitigation this summer, I finally swapped
out my two HP C3010 2GB 5400 RPM 5 1/4 inch SCSI drives that had been
running here continuously since 1998, and many years (perhaps nearly
as long) prior to that on someone else's Sun box; they made a _lot_
of heat, but the driver (on AT&T SVR4) never reported an error the
entire time I ran them. I did cool them well however.

There is/was an electric lamp (bulb - carbon filament I believe) that
is/has been running continuously more than 100 years in a fire station
in the SF area; there ought to be a survey of rotating mass storage
installations to find the longest running examples out there.

Michael

In article t, msg wrote:
Jeff Liebermann wrote:

snip

Incidentally, my office SCO Unix box has been continuously running a
Conner 1060s SCSI drive since about 1993. I keep waiting for it to
fail, so I have an excuse to build up something better. The 486DX2/66
mother board has died twice. One power supply died. Some RAM went
bad. But, the hard disk and Ineptec 1542 controller keeps plunking
along for 15 years. Hint: It's always on.


As part of power consumption mitigation this summer, I finally swapped
out my two HP C3010 2GB 5400 RPM 5 1/4 inch SCSI drives that had been
running here continuously since 1998, and many years (perhaps nearly
as long) prior to that on someone else's Sun box; they made a _lot_
of heat, but the driver (on AT&T SVR4) never reported an error the
entire time I ran them. I did cool them well however.

There is/was an electric lamp (bulb - carbon filament I believe) that
is/has been running continuously more than 100 years in a fire station
in the SF area; there ought to be a survey of rotating mass storage
installations to find the longest running examples out there.

Michael


http://www.worldrecordsacademy.
org/technology/longest-burning_light_bulb_The_Centennial_Light_sets_world _reco
rd_80242.htm

Heres the address if you want to see in person
4550 East Ave., Livermore, CA

Hmmm... I'm backing up to a drive that runs only when it's being backed up
to. So that, in theory, would pretty much eliminate the possibility of
simultaneous failure.

On Thu, 13 Nov 2008 19:38:31 -0800, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:

Hmmm... I'm backing up to a drive that runs only when it's being backed up
to. So that, in theory, would pretty much eliminate the possibility of
simultaneous failure.

Only if it's a different maker, model, or lot number drive. Read my
rant again. One issue that I listed was having two identical drives,
one spinning, the other just sitting on the shelf, fail roughly
simultaneously. That can happen if the failure is caused by IC
package leakage, board contamination, tin whiskers, or divine
irritation. I only saw this problem once, so I suspect it's rather
unusual. Still, it's something to worry about. These daze, I avoid
running backups to identical drives out of paranoia.

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. Using various mirroring software, it's quite quick and
easy. Convincing the customers to replace a working drive is not so
easy. The theory is that the new drive will be more reliable and last
longer than the older backup drive. So far, it's been working well.
However, I now have a growing pile of very used "backup" drives that
are unsuitable for new systems or replacements.

For the servers, I like to use an active backup server. Only the data
gets synchronized with rsync, rdist, rcp and similar software. If the
main server is having a bad day, users simply point to the backup
server and blunder onward. The backup server is usually in a
different part of the building or off-site (in case of fire). Some of
these also have a tape drive, which I use sparingly.


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

In message , William
Sommerwerck writes
I read this recently elsewhere, and find it very hard to believe that two
drives -- even identical ones purchased at the same time -- would fail
essentially simultaneously.


Believe it, I see it plenty of times a year, usually with the same
reaction from the owners as you just had.

If it didn't happen why would there be companies specialising in data
recovery from failed RAID sets?

Don't forget if you have a mirror set it doesn't have to be a drive
failure, if your data gets corrupted you're still toast because the
corruption is faithfully mirrored too.

RAID is not a replacement for a good backup and your backup is only as
good as the last time you did a test restore.

--
Clint Sharp

Hmmm... I'm backing up to a drive that runs only when it's being
backed up to. So that, in theory, would pretty much eliminate the
possibility of simultaneous failure.

Only if it's a different maker, model, or lot number drive. Read my
rant again. One issue that I listed was having two identical drives,
one spinning, the other just sitting on the shelf, fail roughly
simultaneously.

Ouch.


That can happen if the failure is caused by IC
package leakage, board contamination, tin whiskers, or divine
irritation. I only saw this problem once, so I suspect it's rather
unusual. Still, it's something to worry about. These daze, I avoid
running backups to identical drives out of paranoia.

When I bought my current computer in 2001, I bought two identical drives,
and periodically backed up to the second. As I could not, at that time, make
a bootable backup, there was no problem with it running all the time, and I
even added a swap file to the second drive.

Several years ago, when W2K "collapsed" (for unknown reasons), I found that
the backup drive would no longer format. (I don't know why.) The main drive
was put aside, and I suspect it would work if I installed it. (Other than
the time lost reinstalling W2K and the applications, I lost nothing.)

It's frightening when you hear stories of hard drives failing nearly
simultaneously. I've been buying Seagates simply because they have a 5-year
warranty, and I'm not likely to change.

If one of my bootable drives failed, I would immediately (same day) purchase
a replacement and copy the backup drive to it, making the new drive the
primary drive.


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.

GMAN wrote:

http://www.worldrecordsacademy.
org/technology/longest-burning_light_bulb_The_Centennial_Light_sets_world _reco
rd_80242.htm

Heres the address if you want to see in person
4550 East Ave., Livermore, CA

Or view it remotely from a web cam
http://www.centennialbulb.org/cam.htm

This could start a religion.

"May the Blessings of the Centennial light bulb Almighty, and the
Fellowship of the Holy Illumination, descend upon us all. This day and
forever more."

--
Rev. Adrian Centennial light bulb

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. And you can add some hotswaps too.

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

As they say at Microsoft - "What do you want to reinstall today?"

On Thu, 13 Nov 2008 03:32:20 -0000, William Sommerwerck wrote:

If you're going for raid, buy a raid controller card, and look at
the performance (tom's hardware etc) of each. There is a vast
difference in performance between them, and onboard controllers
really suck. In fact all the ones I've used don't show much speed
increase over a single drive!

I was looking at an Adaptec card the other, and was appalled at the $350
price tag.

I'm buying an Areca controller (PCI express 8x, takes 4 SATA drives, 256MB cache/buffer). It's $500. But its performace (on graphs at Tom's Hardware) is astronomical.

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

A group of cowboys were branding some cattle.
While they were out the cook saw a sheep tied to a post. Thinking it was for that nights dinner he cooked it.
That night after dinner the cowboys were all sulking and ignoring the cook. He pulled one aside and asked, "Did I screw up the cooking?"
"No", the cowboy replied, "You cooked up the screwing."

On Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:17:40 -0000, Jerry Peters wrote:

William Sommerwerck wrote:
"Heinz Schmitz" wrote in message
...
William Sommerwerck wrote:

Incidentally, nobody does backups until AFTER they've lost
a massive amount of data and correspondly massive amount
of time and money.

Not I. I back up my hard drive periodically. When W2K "collapsed"
several years, I had full backup and lost nothing.

... only the time to reinstall every single program. Does your backup
care for the bookmarks of your browser, the mails of your emailer and
so forth, which all happily sit somewhere else than in the "My Data"
directory?

The only real thing is a disk imager, working and tested -- for your
OS, the hard disk size you use, and the file system you have :-).
To have an incremental backup, too, would be fine.

When I said "full backup", I meant full backup. I use Copy Commander 9.1.
Unlike Ghost (and likely most other products) that claim to produce an exact
copy, Copy Commander actually creates a bootable backup. I periodically copy
the entire drive to a second hard drive. If the main drive fails, all I have
to do is stick in a jumper and swap cables, then restart. As this isn't
something I do every day, Really Important files are also backed up to a Zip
disk.

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.)

RAID is _not_ a backup. It doesn't protect against software & operator
error, for example.

Or fire. Or theft.

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

The Web brings people together because no matter what kind of a twisted sexual mutant you happen to be, you've got millions of pals out there. Type in "Find people that have sex with goats that are on fire" and the computer will say "Specify type of goat." -- Rich Jeni

On Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:23:54 -0000, Jerry Peters wrote:

Heinz Schmitz wrote:
William Sommerwerck wrote:

Incidentally, nobody does backups until AFTER they've lost a massive
amount of data and correspondly massive amount of time and money.

Not I. I back up my hard drive periodically. When W2K "collapsed" several
years, I had full backup and lost nothing.

... only the time to reinstall every single program. Does your backup
care for the bookmarks of your browser, the mails of your emailer and
so forth, which all happily sit somewhere else than in the "My Data"
directory?

All of the programs and data are on the backup, that's why it's called
a backup.
Yes.
What's the "My Data" directory and why would I only backup 1
directory?


The only real thing is a disk imager, working and tested - for your
OS, the hard disk size you use, and the file system you have :-).
To have an incremental backup, too, would be fine.

Depends, what you're using. I do a full backup every few months, then
a weekly differential. Current work in progress gets copied to a USB
memory stick as appropriate.
And, yes, I periodically test my backups by doing restores.

I'm lazy, I get another computer to backup the main one every night.

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

You know you're a redneck when......
1. You take your dog for a walk and you both use the same tree.
2. You can entertain yourself for more than 15 minutes with a fly swatter.
3. Your boat has not left the driveway in 15 years.
4. You burn your yard rather than mow it.
5. You think "The Nutcracker" is something you do off the high dive.
6. The Salvation Army declines your furniture.
7.You offer to give someon! e the shirt off your back and they don't want it
8. You have the local taxidermist on speed dial.
9. You come back from the dump with more than you took.
10. You keep a can of Raid on the kitchen table.
11. Your wife can climb a tree faster than your cat.
12. Your grandmother has "ammo" on her Christmas list.
13. You keep flea and tick soap in the shower.
14. You've been involved in a custody fight over a hunting dog.
15. You go to the stock car races and don't need a program.
16. You know how many bales of hay your car will hold.
17. You have a rag for a gas cap.
18. Your house doesn't have curtains, but your truck does.
19. You wonder how service stations keep their rest-room's so clean.
20. You can spit without opening your mouth.
21. You consider your license plate personalized because your father made it.
22. Your lifetime goal is to own a fireworks stand.
23. You have a complete set of salad bowls and they all say "Cool Whip" on the side.
24. The biggest city you've ever been to is Wal-Mart.
25. Your working TV sits on top of your non-working TV.
26. You've used your ironing board as a buffet table.
27. A tornado hits your neighborhood and does $100,000 worth of improvements.
28. You've used a toilet brush to scratch your back.
29. You missed your 5th grade graduation because you were on jury duty.
30. You think fast food is hitting a deer at 65.

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.

--
Keith

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.

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

The waitress was tired of this one patron always hitting on
her, so she came up with a plan.

"I'll tell ya what, stud. I'll have sex with ya on two conditions.
First, it'll cost ya 50 bucks. Second, you have to guarantee
me that bells will ring and lights will flash."

He smiled, handed her $50 and led her over to the pinball
machine.