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Re: Kills Linux hdd's?



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On Friday 31 December 1999 04:03 pm, Frank Brodbeck wrote:
> Hello everybody.
> I'm having over here great trouble. The following is my cruel fate:

Cruel fate:  this *is* going to be a good story, I'll read on :)
At this time I often switched from linux to Windows and vice versa.

Yuppers, that would be a cruel situation.  I did it too for a small time, but 
I just couldn't ignore RMS's suggestions of implied migration.


>It was a Quantum Fireball with about 14 GByte.

Killed a few of those too, but I used combo of Windows & DOS then.

> It twanged like the read/write header of the hdd would somehow hang.

Time to backup what you can and toss it in the trash.

>The harddisk was a Western Digital with 20 GByte capacity. 

Killed at least two of those.  One via a nasty power surge/outage and second 
with 100 watts of high frequency amateur radio signal, the rig was poorly 
grounded and fed in via temporary sound card connection.

> Now I got this new hdd. A WD 40GByte diskspace.
> She lasted from October last year till a few days ago.

That would cause me to look at grid power supply, computer power supply (do 
use minimum 300 watt).  I learned that the last 20GB drive on a windows box I 
had given away died very much like yours did.  Leads me to think WD isn't 
what an IBM is.

> I wasn't able to rescue the important stuff but at least
> some personal data. 

My fear is loss of school work.  I keep back-up copies on two computers, and 
burn a CDWR disk from time to time.  The rest of the data was found on the 
net and can be re-smurfed if I still want the data locally.  I also don't 
worry about backing up my OS.  Waste of time IMO as Debian has an excellent 
web presence.

> Friends of mine, interested in hardware but not all really
> familiar with the stuff and also Microsoftlovers keep on telling me
> 'Linux is the source of all evil'.

Finding good and intelligent friends is always difficult.  Dumb(er) friends 
seem to always be in ample supply.  :)

> I'm pretty unused to make real analyzes and so I hope that someone
> could tell me how to find the source that leads to those hdd damages.
> Could it be a unlucky hardware setting of mine?
>
> Frank

I repeat; check your grid power supply, too much makes bad things happen, but 
too little also has bad effects on current hardware.  UPS is a very good 
investment, and better UPS's offer clean and regulated supply of power to 
your devices.  Next check the power supply in your case.  Many weird things 
have happened with the cheaper power supplies.  300 watts is a good minimum, 
350-400 is even better.

I am having excellent luck with my IBM 60GB drives.  They are far quieter 
than the WD's were.  The IBM's also moves data faster than the 7200 RPM WD 
drives.  They price so closely at retail that I don't see price as an issue 
today.  I am not impressed with the amount of WD failures I have expereinced 
or learned about, so I decided to stop buying them.

Backup stuff you want to keep on CDR or CDRW disks.  They stand a better 
chance at surviving all sorts of terrible things like magnets, damp 
conditions, and electrical spikes.  They are also nicely portable and easy to 
keep safe.

I don't think your drive failures have anything to do with Linux at all.  You 
don't mention what type of file system you use, but I would expect you used 
the defacto EXT2.  If you did use another FS, you may wish to investigate 
further for future installs.  

I do wish you success at recovery.

tatah
- -- 

Jaye Inabnit\ARS ke6sls\/A GNU-Debian linux user\/ http://www.qsl.net/ke6sls
If it's stupid, but works, it ain't stupid. I SHOUT JUST FOR FUN.
Free software, in a free world, for a free spirit. Please Support freedom!

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