[ale] [semi OT] encouraging and discouraging HDD and SSD observations

Brian MacLeod nym.bnm at gmail.com
Wed Nov 6 12:08:44 EST 2013


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Quite a bit of snippage follows. You're welcome.

On 11/5/13 9:22 PM, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:

> There may be 200X the people that read this list versus the few
> that post.  Not all have heard everything.  They come and go.  And,
> they may find search results in google which hit on the topic we're
> discussing. They are more likely to find newer threads rather than
> old ones. They're more likely to find this one by searching on hdd
> topics than the old ones on those topics.  Also, it's much easier
> for me to restate my reasons for feeling the way I do, if they're
> short, than it is to go searching through 3 years of archives.


I didn't say send _them_ on a search through the archives, I said you
can provide a link to YOUR OWN emails in the archives.  I have done
this myself when answering questions I know I have answered before:
because I know what I said, I can find those messages easily, get the
link from the archive, and post that in my response, rather than type
out the same stuff I did before.

And, contrary to your own belief, you are NOT short or brief on your
opinions.  That is part of what has been frustrating people when you
enter these discussions.


> How do I know it's proven and known to be useful?  I've seen it
> with my own eyes in my own experience, in terms of data recovery.


But there you go again, generalizing that your experience is the one
to be repeated, just as you believed your experience with longevity is
the one being repeated.

It's fine if you are sold on the product.  But to continually harass
the list because members of it don't agree with you is annoying at
best, alienating otherwise.


> I don't think my maintenance procedures helped kill the drives.  I
> think there are factors at play otherwise and I don't know what
> they are.


I'll say it one time more: you said these drives stay idle most of the
time, but occasionally get intense usage.  You still did not identify
that intense usage (and at this point, it doesn't matter, so there is
no need to expound).

I will stand by my statement that dramatic changes in use patterns
will kill drives.  I've seen it at home, and boy have I seen it at
work, no matter what quality level a drive is labelled.


> For the remainder of the thread, let's forget SpinRite.  Note that
> I did previously mention the Linux badblocks utility as an
> alternative to use.


I don't run that either.  A drive shows issues, it's out.  Plain and
simple.  I don't try to make it last longer, it's already failing.


> I've spent dozens, if not hundreds, of cumulative hours over the
> last decade reading blog posts, white papers, websites, and
> manufacturer faq's.  I've done tons of google searches on things
> like bit rot, data fading, coating failure, magnetic failure, grown
> defects, etc.  I don't claim to be an expert.  I just try to share
> things that I think are useful.  And, I have NEVER said my way is
> the only way to do things. It's the way I do things.  And, I think
> others could potentially benefit from doing some of these things.


Okay, but you tend to overshare beyond the attention span and
understandings of a beginner, and oversimplify and annoy the old guard
where it is too simplified.  And again, you do it repeatedly.  Find
one of your best hard drive posts, keep it in a easily located file
for reference, and when the subject comes up, post the link to the
archived copy.

You'd be amazed at how much that alone will drop the hostilities.


> So, to summarize, it is my strong belief that routine disk surface 
> analysis and data scrubbing can make a material improvement in the 
> usability of the magnetic part of a HDD, at the cost of a minimal 
> decrease in mechanical life.  This process, I believe, will
> actually prevent read and write errors and boot and operational
> failures over time by periodically reverifying the drives ability
> to store and recall data in every sector.  I cannot prove it, but
> that's what I believe.


I'm all for data scrubbing, and the more automated that gets, and
requires less dedicated resources of a computer, the better we all
are.  Routine disk surface analysis, I haven't seen a benefit in for
about 10-15 years.


> I cannot justify nas or raid equipment for me or my family members
> that I deal with.  I understand the advantages you've mentioned.
> But, for personal machines, we're usually dealing with individual
> machines with individual hard drives.  The additional cost of more
> advanced equipment is too high for us to pursue.


I understand that when people hear "NAS" or "SAN" they think big
bucks, and there are plenty of companies that believe that's the way
it should be.

However, hacking a $15-30 Pogoplug to install a linux distribution and
then attaching external hard drives to it is not expensive, nor is it
difficult.  Is it a high performance file server?  No.  Is it very
resilient?  Not really unless you make two such arrangements.

But it is a NAS.

As is recycling an older computer and installing NAS specific OS's
(FreeNAS, for example), and attaching regular hard drives.  It's
gotten pretty simple nowadays, and not really expensive.  And it's
certainly not advanced technology.


> Consumers operate in a vastly different space than most of the
> active posters on this list.  Some of the people reading this are
> average consumers.  They may never post at all.  The average
> consumer doesn't have backups at all, or doesn't have good recent
> ones.  Those are just the cold hard facts.  Obviously, we would
> encourage them to do better.


Yes, but it is nice to have those stubborn ones who I can make nice
side money off of when they don't listen to my advice.


> You've talked about the time I spend doing maintenance versus the
> money I save.  But, you haven't talked about the time I spend
> working through a drive recovery.  That can be substantial, and
> very painful, or at least very tedious.  As a result, it's in my
> best interest to prolong the time between those events as long as
> possible.


But what I think you are missing is that the architecture and
maintenance suggestions I have offered are less about prolonging the
time between events and more about avoiding those catastrophes altogether.

That doesn't obviate the need for backups, but you can use some of the
"regained" time to make the backup/restoration process even simpler
and less tedious.


> In all cases, when I get a new hard drive for any reason, I burn it
> in by reading and writing data to it for a few days.  If it has any
> infant mortality issues, I want them to show up quickly so I can
> return it to the vendor.  The actual face time required to do this
> varies and the loss of the pc usage varies depending on how I do
> this, but it does require some setup and babysitting time.


You shouldn't have to babysit.  Run a VM of Darik's Boot 'N Nuke
(DBAN), share the drive into the VM with USB passthrough and a USB
conversion device, fire it off and work on other things.


> Example 1: My primary hard drive fails without a recent, or
> decent, backup.  Or, the entire machine is stolen, or there's a
> fire, etc.  So, I have to completely rebuild my machine from
> scratch, install and configure the os, install and configure the
> apps, tweak numerous things, and download my data from the online
> backup.  I'll probably lose any data within the last 6 hours.  I
> don't wish to go into all the details here, but I do probably 300
> different things to a new pc build and it takes me a week.


Even when I ran MSWin, I had complete restoration in less than two
days, and at least basically usable within two hours. A week is a non
option since I don't vacation to see the family that long (and guess
who works on those machines).  Something's too complicated here.

This all goes back to a philosophy I had to develop early on in my
career: it's a machine, made by humans.  It will fail.  There's
nothing I can do to stop it.  I can spend effort trying to prolong it,
or I can spend effort developing processes to efficiently deal with
its demise.  But no matter what, I am guaranteed to have to deal with
its demise, for whatever the cause.

If I am guaranteed to have to deal with that, then my effort is best
spent not fighting it, but dealing with it. The customers and family I
have had adopt this mentality have saved more money, time, and mental
health than the one who continue to pay me to do this for them.

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