Hard Disc

John Aldred wrote:
Mark wrote:

On Thu, 14 Jul 2011 23:07:19 +0100, John Aldred
wrote:

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

I've just had another HD failure on a PC.
Is there a decent make to go for - about 500 thingies? IDE type.
I usually go for Western Digital.
Both Amazon and Pixmania have these in the capacity you require.
-----------------^^^^^^^^

Aaaargh! Never buy anything from Pixmania.

Never had any real problems with Pixmania - but they are a bit slow on
delivery.

Could try BestBuy.co.uk. They also stock Western Digital drives (500GB,
PATA). Can't give a recommendation as I have never had any dealings with
them.

If you have a Nectar card, BestBuy are giving triple points if you go
through the Nectar website.

--
Adrian

"Brian Gaff" wrote in message ...
Most IDEs seem now to be the new ones with adaptors fitted. I think if you have a lot of faiures, you might need to look at the
connections on the pc in question. One very good way to kill a drive prematurely is to power cycle it while its writing data, or
have dodgy data cables.

Or if the data is mega important, get a raid array.



Adapters often have those cheap male Molex connectors where the pins are not
supported properly and get pushed out of the back rather than mate properly.
Basically not fit for purpose.
The worst one I saw was where the red 5v pin came out completely, shorted to the
chassis and blew up the PSU.

--
Graham.

%Profound_observation%

On 16/07/2011 11:09, Graham. wrote:
The worst one I saw was where the red 5v pin came out completely, shorted to the
chassis and blew up the PSU.

I have a soft spot for Molex connectors. I went around the world once
for them!

(I was in the USA on a support call, and had just finished when we had
another call from Sydney. So I got on a 'plane. The second one turned
out to be dud Molex connectors into hard drives, and I came back the
other way. The only time I've gone all the way around in one trip.)

Andy

"Brian Gaff" wrote in message
...
Most IDEs seem now to be the new ones with adaptors fitted. I think if you
have a lot of faiures, you might need to look at the connections on the
pc in question. One very good way to kill a drive prematurely is to power
cycle it while its writing data, or have dodgy data cables.

Or if the data is mega important, get a raid array.


One chap on alt.binaries.chatter was very boastful of how clever he was for
having set up raid on his PC - but after several absences from the group it
transpired that some vital raid component was prone to failure.

On each occasion he discovered that the way the raid file allocation was
done, meant that the data on his array of drives was incompatible with the
replacement controller.

Of course this meant he lost the data on *ALL* his drives - not just one. In
the end he was forced to concede that failure of one single raid component
defeated the whole object of the excercise.

That has happened to me 8 years ago, a Adaptec 2400A controller with 4 off
80GB drives in a RAID 5 array giving 240GB

I had a few drives fail, swiftly replaced by replacement 80GB's. I went
through 6 drives in total.

Then one day the Adaptec 2400A controller died... lost the lot.

I now have NAS boxes in the loft, one has two Adaptec 2400A controllers in
it, with 8 500GB drives hanging off, one array is a mirror of the other so I
have 2 Raid 5 arrays of 1.5TB

The other NAS box has two Adaptec 6 port SAT raid controllers, each with 6
drives making 12 drives. Again all 500GB drives, all in a Raid 5 array & 1
hot spare giving two lots of 2TB arrays.

This backs up the other NAS box with the two 1.5TB arrays, so I can have up
to three controller cards fail and I'll still have a working data set.

If both Machines should die, then hopefully I can transfer the cards and
their associated drives to another machine and still get at my data.

The mantra of backup backup backup is so true....

Stephen.


"Ian Field" wrote in message
...

"Brian Gaff" wrote in message
...
Most IDEs seem now to be the new ones with adaptors fitted. I think if
you have a lot of faiures, you might need to look at the connections on
the pc in question. One very good way to kill a drive prematurely is to
power cycle it while its writing data, or have dodgy data cables.

Or if the data is mega important, get a raid array.


One chap on alt.binaries.chatter was very boastful of how clever he was
for having set up raid on his PC - but after several absences from the
group it transpired that some vital raid component was prone to failure.

On each occasion he discovered that the way the raid file allocation was
done, meant that the data on his array of drives was incompatible with the
replacement controller.

Of course this meant he lost the data on *ALL* his drives - not just one.
In the end he was forced to concede that failure of one single raid
component defeated the whole object of the excercise.

In article , Ian Field wrote:
One chap on alt.binaries.chatter was very boastful of how clever he was for
having set up raid on his PC - but after several absences from the group it
transpired that some vital raid component was prone to failure.

On each occasion he discovered that the way the raid file allocation was
done, meant that the data on his array of drives was incompatible with the
replacement controller.

Of course this meant he lost the data on *ALL* his drives - not just one. In
the end he was forced to concede that failure of one single raid component
defeated the whole object of the excercise.

And the moral is; keep it simple. Anything that's too complicated for its own
good will eventually trip itself up and cause more trouble than it's worth. I
use a shareware program called "Second Copy" which does exactly what its name
suggests - it makes a second copy of whatever files or folders you care to
designate, wherever you want it to, e.g. an outboard disk drive or another
computer on the network. If my main computer went into such profound meltdown
that it became completely unsusable and had to be replaced, I'd just plug the
backup drive into the new one - or a spare one, Windows, Linux, whatever - and
all my own stuff would be available straight away, just as it was.

Rod.
--
Virtual Access V6.3 free usenet/email software from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtual-access/

Chkdsk actually got my faulty one working again. I did a clone of it to a
new HD which appears to work fine. My important data is backed up
elsewhere - but loading in all the operating system etc fresh would be a
right pain.

--
*Seen it all, done it all, can't remember most of it*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 14/07/2011 18:29, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
I've just had another HD failure on a PC.
Is there a decent make to go for - about 500 thingies? IDE type.


Maybe think about the cause of failure, most notably heat? 'Another'
sounds ominous.

I'd think about SATA and change the MB (etc) - the difference in disk
price makes a new MB a possibility, especially if you factor in
potential power savings.

Rob

Ian Field wrote:

One chap on alt.binaries.chatter was very boastful of how clever he was for
having set up raid on his PC - but after several absences from the group it
transpired that some vital raid component was prone to failure.

On each occasion he discovered that the way the raid file allocation was
done, meant that the data on his array of drives was incompatible with the
replacement controller.

Of course this meant he lost the data on *ALL* his drives - not just one. In
the end he was forced to concede that failure of one single raid component
defeated the whole object of the exercise.

In a commercial setup where warranty replacement or spare hardware (of
exactly the same type) is available it makes sense, for budget home use,
software raid often makes more sense, for exactly that reason.

On Fri, 15 Jul 2011 14:57:52 +0000 (UTC), J G Miller
wrote:

On Friday, July 15th, 2011 at 15:35:39h +0100, Fred explained:

1. Not UK so no SOGA

Even if you go in person to their brick and mortar store in Fulham
(792 Fulham Road) and buy it there?

Pixmania have a UK shop?
--
(\__/) M.
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(")_(") their inaction to the problem. I am blocking some articles
posted from there. If you wish your postings to be seen by
everyone you will need use a different method of posting.