[filmscanners] RE: keeping the 16bit scans

["Austin Franklin" <austin@darkroom.com>]

Hi Frank,

> I've never seen a CD go bad,

I have...I have a box of them, and I have Plextor writers.

> but you've got to expect
> that hard disks will go bad in a couple years on average, if you keep
> them spinning 24/7 like I do.

You EXPECT that?  I have not had a hard disk (Seagate Barracuda/Cheetah) go
bad on me, and I have over 20 of them, and some of them are 7 or more years
old.  The MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) of them is something like 25
years if I remember correctly, if kept on for 24/7/365.  I'll check their
web site and see...OK, Seagate Cheetah X15-36LP, which is an Ultra160 15k
spindle speed drive...1,200,000 hours.  OVER ONE MILLION HOURS!  That comes
out to 50,000 days or 7,142.8 weeks or 137 years.  That's what they claim.
I'm fine with 25 years my self ;-)

Now, I have seen the cheapo IDE drives go bad.  Well, you get what you pay
for.  I have stuck with Seagate Barracuda/Cheetah drives since they were
introduced, and never had a problem that wasn't Microsoft "bad OS behavior"
related.

> If you shut your machine down when you're
> not using it, they should last five years, even the new ones that are
> only guaranteed for a year.

I'd expect high end drives to last 10+ years 24/7/365, at least and it
appears they will last even longer.  They tend, in my case, to obsolete
themselves long before they die.

> There is no evidence for the lower reliability, however. The reason the
> warranties are being reduced is because it's such a cutthroat business.

Agreed.

> It is to keep overhead costs down. Disks in general are as reliable as
> they ever have been, although an occasional model gets a bad rep, like
> the 75 gig IBM drive. But they apparently corrected their problems with
> the 120.

I have seen the same as well.

Regards,

Austin

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