[filmscanners] RE: keeping the 16bit scans

["LAURIE SOLOMON" <laurie@advancenet.net>]

Alas Austin, I have to chime in here.  You are speaking about SCSI drives
not EIDE drives.  I cannot refute or verify what you say about them; but in
the context of this thread, we are talking about reliability of HD as
compared to CDs and DVDs for purposes of archiving image files where the
people engaged in the debate are using precisely those "cheap 7200 rpm EIDE
hard drives that range in sizes from 30 GB to 200 GB that they can buy
online or at Circuit City or Best Buy.  Thus, for purposes of this
discussion as well as the sorts of drives that Frank has in mind, he is
probably right in his expectations as to the actual life of consumer hard
drives available today.

Many of the slower, smaller EIDE hard drives that were being sold only a few
years ago in my experience have had a better track record and longeviety
than is the case with the newer faster, larger EIDE drives.  Some of my
older drives lasted from 5-8 years before either failing or becoming
obsolete with respect to contemporary comp;uter operating speeds; whereas
some of the 120 GB EIDE 7200 rpm ATA 133 hard drives from Maxtor and Western
Digital that I have bought just this year have failed and needed to be
replaced within a month or two in the case of one Maxtor and one Western
Digital drive and within 3-6 months in the case of another Maxtor and
another Western Digital.  This is the first time I have ever had four for
four drives fail in such a short time after purchase.  It could be unique;
but I think that it may also be that quality and quality control has gone
down with cost cutting as well as the higher speeds and larger disks causing
unanticipated heat problems, resulting in more random failures than was
previously the case.

-----Original Message-----
From: filmscanners_owner@halftone.co.uk
[mailto:filmscanners_owner@halftone.co.uk]On Behalf Of Austin Franklin
Sent: Friday, March 28, 2003 8:36 PM
To: laurie@advancenet.net
Subject: [filmscanners] RE: keeping the 16bit scans


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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