Re: Hard Disks

> In other words, buy Dorothy's fans to cool your hard
> drives - whatever make you have.

That was not my point - look after your data or you'll need Odie :-)

Hard drives are ironic...
o Electro-mechanical devices mostly unchanged from 1970s
o Mechanical motor spins physical discs
o Mechanical actuator moves an arm over the discs

Contrast with memory...
o Mechanical devices soon obsoleted
o Electrical replacement by Magnetic Core - no moving parts
o Electronic replacement decades ago

Of course, HDs do provide bulk, fast, reliable storage cheaply.

Perhaps HDs will at last catch up re 32GB NAND from Samsung.
o No mechanical vulnerability
---- Operating shock of chips is routinely 1,000G
---- No moving parts re motor, platters, head actuator, heads
o No mechanical limitations
---- No limits from speed of platter rotation & head actuator seeking speed
---- True random access versus HD electromechanical latency
o Better usability from MS-IE-20.13235b & Win-SuX
---- Lots of tiny files & multi-threads = lots of I/O seek slowdown
o Packaging density
---- Not as high as a hard drive, but potentially more mobile packaging
o Less temperature dependent
---- Semiconductor drives potentially offer a greater range

It will not replace HDs, but may eventually relegate HDs to "bulk near-line
storage" with the NAND 32GB drives being "online storage" re latency.

o HD SDTR bandwidth -- has improved 80x since 1992
o HD Seeking performance -- has improved 10x since 1992
o CPU-to-RAM performance -- probably improved 500x since 1992

It is the latter two comparisons which dominate mechanical HDs.

The same is true w.r.t. reliability - HDs are still 1970s mechanical.
One other factor is the move from aluminium to glass platters,
often as thin as a microscope slide, is another issue for HDs.

So HD reliability still has a lot of electrical & mechanical risk to it.
Preference is for Seagate, but I've had 1 go flaky (caught early). It
seems some of the Maxtors don't fail gracefully but more outright.

Some HDs do suffer more from head detachment & PCB failures.
The higher GB Barracuda seem more prone to failure than the 40-80GB.
That may simply be from a small sample - one problem of comments.

Just when a technology appears completely perfect, it is replaced.
Not quite true for combustion engines, but nearing I suspect for HDs.

Backups matter :-)
--
Dorothy Bradbury


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