[lug] Backup

[Dean Brissinger]

On Tuesday, December 27, 2005 10:52 AM Zan Lynx wrote:

> On Mon, 2005-12-26 at 08:23 -0700, Sean Reifschneider wrote:
>> On Fri, Dec 23, 2005 at 02:39:01AM -0700, Nate Duehr wrote:
>>> Always liked Seagate drives better anyway...  ;-)
>> 
>> I recently tried some Seagate 300GB drives and out of 4 I had one
>> fail in the first month...  Not overly impressed with those 300GB
>> SATA drives. 
> 
> Infant mortality.  It's quite a common problem in electronics.  But
> if it works past the first few weeks, it's likely good for years. 

Seagate has known problems with their big disks.  Something to due with
a change in the bearing size and amount of lubricant that causes an
internal ESD buildup.  This is a known problem that seagate hasn't been
very willing to fess up to in the Fibre and SCSI market (all disks have
the problem but only 10% expect failure?).  The bottom line is that
under heavy write access the bearings break down and stall the platter.
The drives can be power cycled a number of times as a temporary
recovery.

I've also seen heat kill all brands of big disks.  A good chassis is
worth the extra money.  Thus far my WD 300's are doing good with 24/7
read/write activity after a month.  I stuck a big fan in front of them
to blow the heat away though.