Remember the days when 1gb was so huge, you thought you'd never be able to fill it?
I guess, if you look at it that way.
Course, anyone who keeps up-to-date on their drive conditions and S.M.A.R.T. info should be able to avoid such problems anyway.
Course, anyone who keeps up-to-date on their drive conditions and S.M.A.R.T. info should be able to avoid such problems anyway.
We're discussing a data loss scenario here. When you're comparing a single drive solution to a multiple drive solution, assuming equal reliability, your single drive has the same chance of failure as any one drive in your multiple drive solution. This means that in a data loss scenario, which is what we're discussing, you don't keep all your data with a single drive solution when experiencing your first catastrophic failure - you lose all your data.Flaming_Maniac wrote:
If you want to keep all your data (and who doesn't?) you want fewer high capacity drives.
When you experience data loss, you will lose all of it if you use just one single drive. Going purely from an MTBF perspective, you're just as likely to lose both your smaller disks as you are losing just your one big disk. Realistically, however, you're extremely unlikely to lose both of your smaller disks at the same time to mechanical errors.
If you want to minimise data volatility, and you have the choice between storing all your data on a single drive, and storing half of your data on one drive, and the other half of your data on another drive, you choose the latter.
Why do you have to use abbreviations that only you understand to make yourself look good?mikkel wrote:
We're discussing a data loss scenario here. When you're comparing a single drive solution to a multiple drive solution, assuming equal reliability, your single drive has the same chance of failure as any one drive in your multiple drive solution. This means that in a data loss scenario, which is what we're discussing, you don't keep all your data with a single drive solution when experiencing your first catastrophic failure - you lose all your data.Flaming_Maniac wrote:
If you want to keep all your data (and who doesn't?) you want fewer high capacity drives.
When you experience data loss, you will lose all of it if you use just one single drive. Going purely from an MTBF perspective, you're just as likely to lose both your smaller disks as you are losing just your one big disk. Realistically, however, you're extremely unlikely to lose both of your smaller disks at the same time to mechanical errors.
If you want to minimise data volatility, and you have the choice between storing all your data on a single drive, and storing half of your data on one drive, and the other half of your data on another drive, you choose the latter.
Last edited by Mitch92uK (2008-07-05 03:55:16)
but is the Spinpoint F1 1TB not cheaper and the same?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6822152102
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6822152102
Cheaper and, I would say, better.menzo2003 wrote:
but is the Spinpoint F1 1TB not cheaper and the same?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6822152102
Which is why I bought a few last month (only £70 each, not bad at all).
I don't know about your situation, but the MTBF has been stated on the box of every single retail drive I've ever bought. Most people who know enough to be talking about digital data protection know what MTBF means.Mitch92uK wrote:
Why do you have to use abbreviations that only you understand to make yourself look good?mikkel wrote:
We're discussing a data loss scenario here. When you're comparing a single drive solution to a multiple drive solution, assuming equal reliability, your single drive has the same chance of failure as any one drive in your multiple drive solution. This means that in a data loss scenario, which is what we're discussing, you don't keep all your data with a single drive solution when experiencing your first catastrophic failure - you lose all your data.Flaming_Maniac wrote:
If you want to keep all your data (and who doesn't?) you want fewer high capacity drives.
When you experience data loss, you will lose all of it if you use just one single drive. Going purely from an MTBF perspective, you're just as likely to lose both your smaller disks as you are losing just your one big disk. Realistically, however, you're extremely unlikely to lose both of your smaller disks at the same time to mechanical errors.
If you want to minimise data volatility, and you have the choice between storing all your data on a single drive, and storing half of your data on one drive, and the other half of your data on another drive, you choose the latter.
Perhaps I need to start reading more boxes then, to become more like you, in your situation. Idiot.mikkel wrote:
I don't know about your situation, but the MTBF has been stated on the box of every single retail drive I've ever bought. Most people who know enough to be talking about digital data protection know what MTBF means.Mitch92uK wrote:
Why do you have to use abbreviations that only you understand to make yourself look good?mikkel wrote:
We're discussing a data loss scenario here. When you're comparing a single drive solution to a multiple drive solution, assuming equal reliability, your single drive has the same chance of failure as any one drive in your multiple drive solution. This means that in a data loss scenario, which is what we're discussing, you don't keep all your data with a single drive solution when experiencing your first catastrophic failure - you lose all your data.
When you experience data loss, you will lose all of it if you use just one single drive. Going purely from an MTBF perspective, you're just as likely to lose both your smaller disks as you are losing just your one big disk. Realistically, however, you're extremely unlikely to lose both of your smaller disks at the same time to mechanical errors.
If you want to minimise data volatility, and you have the choice between storing all your data on a single drive, and storing half of your data on one drive, and the other half of your data on another drive, you choose the latter.
Perhaps you should. You look a lot less stupid when you have even the faintest of ideas about the things you talk about.Mitch92uK wrote:
Perhaps I need to start reading more boxes then, to become more like you, in your situation. Idiot.mikkel wrote:
I don't know about your situation, but the MTBF has been stated on the box of every single retail drive I've ever bought. Most people who know enough to be talking about digital data protection know what MTBF means.Mitch92uK wrote:
Why do you have to use abbreviations that only you understand to make yourself look good?
I think you have some serious issues that you need to take out of this thread.
Last edited by mikkel (2008-07-05 04:58:40)
$40 saved that is going to disappear within few couple years of runtime to power consumption.Poseidon wrote:
So? It's still 40 bucks cheaper. So much for that whole price-performance argument that ATi fans put up....Sup wrote:
2 drives-more heat, more energy consumedPoseidon wrote:
I'd rather get two 500 gb Barracudas.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6822148288
Cheaper.
Not to mention that with hard drives, you're really looking at price/GB. In this, the WD isn't all that more expensive than the Barracuda. The only thing the SG really has going for it is the warranty.
Last edited by unnamednewbie13 (2008-07-05 07:07:19)
If I lost half of my data I would be just as pissed as losing all of it. I mean seriously, go through all your shit and try to split it in half. If I have it on my computer, I have it there for a reason. That, and if it's important enough to be kept, it should be backed up, not halved on two drives and hope that the one it isn't on dies first.mikkel wrote:
We're discussing a data loss scenario here. When you're comparing a single drive solution to a multiple drive solution, assuming equal reliability, your single drive has the same chance of failure as any one drive in your multiple drive solution. This means that in a data loss scenario, which is what we're discussing, you don't keep all your data with a single drive solution when experiencing your first catastrophic failure - you lose all your data.Flaming_Maniac wrote:
If you want to keep all your data (and who doesn't?) you want fewer high capacity drives.
When you experience data loss, you will lose all of it if you use just one single drive. Going purely from an MTBF perspective, you're just as likely to lose both your smaller disks as you are losing just your one big disk. Realistically, however, you're extremely unlikely to lose both of your smaller disks at the same time to mechanical errors.
If you want to minimise data volatility, and you have the choice between storing all your data on a single drive, and storing half of your data on one drive, and the other half of your data on another drive, you choose the latter.
exactly. RAID is not a back (neither is just splitting between 2 drives) up plan it is drive redundancy. If your PSU blows up, You have a good chance of losing all data on all drives in the system. Back up means having the data in more than one location, as in a second computer, cd/dvd's and such. All my important data is on my desktop, server, and laptop. Anything on my main storage drive that is not backed up is not that important or hard to replace.Flaming_Maniac wrote:
If I lost half of my data I would be just as pissed as losing all of it. I mean seriously, go through all your shit and try to split it in half. If I have it on my computer, I have it there for a reason. That, and if it's important enough to be kept, it should be backed up, not halved on two drives and hope that the one it isn't on dies first.mikkel wrote:
We're discussing a data loss scenario here. When you're comparing a single drive solution to a multiple drive solution, assuming equal reliability, your single drive has the same chance of failure as any one drive in your multiple drive solution. This means that in a data loss scenario, which is what we're discussing, you don't keep all your data with a single drive solution when experiencing your first catastrophic failure - you lose all your data.Flaming_Maniac wrote:
If you want to keep all your data (and who doesn't?) you want fewer high capacity drives.
When you experience data loss, you will lose all of it if you use just one single drive. Going purely from an MTBF perspective, you're just as likely to lose both your smaller disks as you are losing just your one big disk. Realistically, however, you're extremely unlikely to lose both of your smaller disks at the same time to mechanical errors.
If you want to minimise data volatility, and you have the choice between storing all your data on a single drive, and storing half of your data on one drive, and the other half of your data on another drive, you choose the latter.
You're pushing it here. This may apply for you, but I'm fairly certain that if we did a poll here asking people what they'd rather lose, with the options being their music, their movies, or both, the latter won't be winning the poll.Flaming_Maniac wrote:
If I lost half of my data I would be just as pissed as losing all of it. I mean seriously, go through all your shit and try to split it in half. If I have it on my computer, I have it there for a reason. That, and if it's important enough to be kept, it should be backed up, not halved on two drives and hope that the one it isn't on dies first.mikkel wrote:
We're discussing a data loss scenario here. When you're comparing a single drive solution to a multiple drive solution, assuming equal reliability, your single drive has the same chance of failure as any one drive in your multiple drive solution. This means that in a data loss scenario, which is what we're discussing, you don't keep all your data with a single drive solution when experiencing your first catastrophic failure - you lose all your data.Flaming_Maniac wrote:
If you want to keep all your data (and who doesn't?) you want fewer high capacity drives.
When you experience data loss, you will lose all of it if you use just one single drive. Going purely from an MTBF perspective, you're just as likely to lose both your smaller disks as you are losing just your one big disk. Realistically, however, you're extremely unlikely to lose both of your smaller disks at the same time to mechanical errors.
If you want to minimise data volatility, and you have the choice between storing all your data on a single drive, and storing half of your data on one drive, and the other half of your data on another drive, you choose the latter.
I'm not talking about RAID at all, and we aren't talking about backups. We're talking about which would be the better option in the event of a catastrophic failure, and given the choice of losing all of your data, or half of your data, most people would choose losing half of their data. It's really just that simple.jaymz9350 wrote:
exactly. RAID is not a back (neither is just splitting between 2 drives) up plan it is drive redundancy. If your PSU blows up, You have a good chance of losing all data on all drives in the system. Back up means having the data in more than one location, as in a second computer, cd/dvd's and such. All my important data is on my desktop, server, and laptop. Anything on my main storage drive that is not backed up is not that important or hard to replace.
Of course given the chance between losing all or some of your data people will choose some. The real choice however is risking everything on one drive, or only having to lose half your data by doubling the risk.mikkel wrote:
You're pushing it here. This may apply for you, but I'm fairly certain that if we did a poll here asking people what they'd rather lose, with the options being their music, their movies, or both, the latter won't be winning the poll.Flaming_Maniac wrote:
If I lost half of my data I would be just as pissed as losing all of it. I mean seriously, go through all your shit and try to split it in half. If I have it on my computer, I have it there for a reason. That, and if it's important enough to be kept, it should be backed up, not halved on two drives and hope that the one it isn't on dies first.mikkel wrote:
We're discussing a data loss scenario here. When you're comparing a single drive solution to a multiple drive solution, assuming equal reliability, your single drive has the same chance of failure as any one drive in your multiple drive solution. This means that in a data loss scenario, which is what we're discussing, you don't keep all your data with a single drive solution when experiencing your first catastrophic failure - you lose all your data.
When you experience data loss, you will lose all of it if you use just one single drive. Going purely from an MTBF perspective, you're just as likely to lose both your smaller disks as you are losing just your one big disk. Realistically, however, you're extremely unlikely to lose both of your smaller disks at the same time to mechanical errors.
If you want to minimise data volatility, and you have the choice between storing all your data on a single drive, and storing half of your data on one drive, and the other half of your data on another drive, you choose the latter.I'm not talking about RAID at all, and we aren't talking about backups. We're talking about which would be the better option in the event of a catastrophic failure, and given the choice of losing all of your data, or half of your data, most people would choose losing half of their data. It's really just that simple.jaymz9350 wrote:
exactly. RAID is not a back (neither is just splitting between 2 drives) up plan it is drive redundancy. If your PSU blows up, You have a good chance of losing all data on all drives in the system. Back up means having the data in more than one location, as in a second computer, cd/dvd's and such. All my important data is on my desktop, server, and laptop. Anything on my main storage drive that is not backed up is not that important or hard to replace.
I get the feeling that you're approaching this from a wrong angle.Flaming_Maniac wrote:
Of course given the chance between losing all or some of your data people will choose some. The real choice however is risking everything on one drive, or only having to lose half your data by doubling the risk.mikkel wrote:
You're pushing it here. This may apply for you, but I'm fairly certain that if we did a poll here asking people what they'd rather lose, with the options being their music, their movies, or both, the latter won't be winning the poll.Flaming_Maniac wrote:
If I lost half of my data I would be just as pissed as losing all of it. I mean seriously, go through all your shit and try to split it in half. If I have it on my computer, I have it there for a reason. That, and if it's important enough to be kept, it should be backed up, not halved on two drives and hope that the one it isn't on dies first.I'm not talking about RAID at all, and we aren't talking about backups. We're talking about which would be the better option in the event of a catastrophic failure, and given the choice of losing all of your data, or half of your data, most people would choose losing half of their data. It's really just that simple.jaymz9350 wrote:
exactly. RAID is not a back (neither is just splitting between 2 drives) up plan it is drive redundancy. If your PSU blows up, You have a good chance of losing all data on all drives in the system. Back up means having the data in more than one location, as in a second computer, cd/dvd's and such. All my important data is on my desktop, server, and laptop. Anything on my main storage drive that is not backed up is not that important or hard to replace.
Harddrives are rated at a certain MTBF based on averages and mathematical estimations. As with all averages and estimations, you can't know precisely what the result will be, but from an analytical perspective, you can adhere to the averages just fine.
If you're playing a lottery, you have a higher chance of winning if you buy two tickets instead of one. In the lottery, you're dealing with probability. This isn't like the lottery, though. We aren't dealing with probability, but with lifetime estimations. The drives are mechanical, and they WILL fail. No matter how many drives you buy, each drive will fail, and it carries a mean time between failures with it. If our drives have a MTBF of 100,000 hours, your drive is estimated to die after 100,000 hours of use. If you have two drives, your two drives are estimated to fail after 100,000 hours of use.
By buying multiple drives, you aren't significantly increasing the chance of any of your drives failing unexpectedly over time. You're simply buying more drives that are all expected to fail after the same amount of use. I realise that buying multiple drives increases the slight chance of having a drive with a built-in defect that may manifest itself before reaching its expected operating life, but not only is this chance still present if you buy just one drive, but you know that the drives will ultimately fail no matter what you do.
Keeping this in mind, would you rather carry all of your eggs in one basket, knowing that the basket will break, or would you carry your eggs in two baskets, knowing that your baskets will break, but at least being able to make an omelette of the eggs in the other basket when the inevitable happens?
Last edited by mikkel (2008-07-05 12:30:10)
Yeah. I also remember when 4MB was ungodly huge. I bet we'll never fill petabytes, either.TheAussieReaper wrote:
Remember the days when 1gb was so huge, you thought you'd never be able to fill it?
How much of that 1TB is useable? My 160GB drives only come up to 149GB after formatting n such.
Loosing couple gigs is normal but not 10GB on a 160GB drive. Use Acronis disk director to recover those lost GBs.aimless wrote:
How much of that 1TB is useable? My 160GB drives only come up to 149GB after formatting n such.
160*976^3 = 148,754,268,160 ~ 149GiB..Sup wrote:
Loosing couple gigs is normal but not 10GB on a 160GB drive. Use Acronis disk director to recover those lost GBs.aimless wrote:
How much of that 1TB is useable? My 160GB drives only come up to 149GB after formatting n such.
On a 1TB drive, you'd get 1*976^4 = 907,401,035,776 ~ 907GiB to play with.
Last edited by mikkel (2008-07-05 12:51:10)
Chances are you will upgrade to a different disk or the S.M.A.R.T. system will pick it up before a natural disk death.mikkel wrote:
I get the feeling that you're approaching this from a wrong angle.Flaming_Maniac wrote:
Of course given the chance between losing all or some of your data people will choose some. The real choice however is risking everything on one drive, or only having to lose half your data by doubling the risk.mikkel wrote:
You're pushing it here. This may apply for you, but I'm fairly certain that if we did a poll here asking people what they'd rather lose, with the options being their music, their movies, or both, the latter won't be winning the poll.Flaming_Maniac wrote:
If I lost half of my data I would be just as pissed as losing all of it. I mean seriously, go through all your shit and try to split it in half. If I have it on my computer, I have it there for a reason. That, and if it's important enough to be kept, it should be backed up, not halved on two drives and hope that the one it isn't on dies first.
I'm not talking about RAID at all, and we aren't talking about backups. We're talking about which would be the better option in the event of a catastrophic failure, and given the choice of losing all of your data, or half of your data, most people would choose losing half of their data. It's really just that simple.
Harddrives are rated at a certain MTBF based on averages and mathematical estimations. As with all averages and estimations, you can't know precisely what the result will be, but from an analytical perspective, you can adhere to the averages just fine.
If you're playing a lottery, you have a higher chance of winning if you buy two tickets instead of one. In the lottery, you're dealing with probability. This isn't like the lottery, though. We aren't dealing with probability, but with lifetime estimations. The drives are mechanical, and they WILL fail. No matter how many drives you buy, each drive will fail, and it carries a mean time between failures with it. If our drives have a MTBF of 100,000 hours, your drive is estimated to die after 100,000 hours of use. If you have two drives, your two drives are estimated to fail after 100,000 hours of use.
By buying multiple drives, you aren't significantly increasing the chance of any of your drives failing unexpectedly over time. You're simply buying more drives that are all expected to fail after the same amount of use. I realise that buying multiple drives increases the slight chance of having a drive with a built-in defect that may manifest itself before reaching its expected operating life, but not only is this chance still present if you buy just one drive, but you know that the drives will ultimately fail no matter what you do.
Keeping this in mind, would you rather carry all of your eggs in one basket, knowing that the basket will break, or would you carry your eggs in two baskets, knowing that your baskets will break, but at least being able to make an omelette of the eggs in the other basket when the inevitable happens?
We aren't talking about upgrading to different disks. You can do that no matter how many disks you have, so it has no merit when trying establish the differences between having one and having multiple disks to store your data on. We're talking about a data loss scenario, and buying a new disk won't get the data on your old disk back. S.M.A.R.T. can't do anything about a sudden catastrophic failure, and even a "natural" disk death often manifests itself as a sudden failure, rather than a prolonged period of measurable wear.Flaming_Maniac wrote:
Chances are you will upgrade to a different disk or the S.M.A.R.T. system will pick it up before a natural disk death.mikkel wrote:
I get the feeling that you're approaching this from a wrong angle.Flaming_Maniac wrote:
Of course given the chance between losing all or some of your data people will choose some. The real choice however is risking everything on one drive, or only having to lose half your data by doubling the risk.
Harddrives are rated at a certain MTBF based on averages and mathematical estimations. As with all averages and estimations, you can't know precisely what the result will be, but from an analytical perspective, you can adhere to the averages just fine.
If you're playing a lottery, you have a higher chance of winning if you buy two tickets instead of one. In the lottery, you're dealing with probability. This isn't like the lottery, though. We aren't dealing with probability, but with lifetime estimations. The drives are mechanical, and they WILL fail. No matter how many drives you buy, each drive will fail, and it carries a mean time between failures with it. If our drives have a MTBF of 100,000 hours, your drive is estimated to die after 100,000 hours of use. If you have two drives, your two drives are estimated to fail after 100,000 hours of use.
By buying multiple drives, you aren't significantly increasing the chance of any of your drives failing unexpectedly over time. You're simply buying more drives that are all expected to fail after the same amount of use. I realise that buying multiple drives increases the slight chance of having a drive with a built-in defect that may manifest itself before reaching its expected operating life, but not only is this chance still present if you buy just one drive, but you know that the drives will ultimately fail no matter what you do.
Keeping this in mind, would you rather carry all of your eggs in one basket, knowing that the basket will break, or would you carry your eggs in two baskets, knowing that your baskets will break, but at least being able to make an omelette of the eggs in the other basket when the inevitable happens?
Hard drive debate = Epic.
People who are buying these high-end drives will be upgrading them before you can expect them to break. If they do keep them that long, the self diagnostic systems will detect the degradation of the disks so they can be replaced before any data loss. The assured death of a disk after a long period of time is a non-issue.mikkel wrote:
We aren't talking about upgrading to different disks. You can do that no matter how many disks you have, so it has no merit when trying establish the differences between having one and having multiple disks to store your data on. We're talking about a data loss scenario, and buying a new disk won't get the data on your old disk back. S.M.A.R.T. can't do anything about a sudden catastrophic failure, and even a "natural" disk death often manifests itself as a sudden failure, rather than a prolonged period of measurable wear.Flaming_Maniac wrote:
Chances are you will upgrade to a different disk or the S.M.A.R.T. system will pick it up before a natural disk death.mikkel wrote:
I get the feeling that you're approaching this from a wrong angle.
Harddrives are rated at a certain MTBF based on averages and mathematical estimations. As with all averages and estimations, you can't know precisely what the result will be, but from an analytical perspective, you can adhere to the averages just fine.
If you're playing a lottery, you have a higher chance of winning if you buy two tickets instead of one. In the lottery, you're dealing with probability. This isn't like the lottery, though. We aren't dealing with probability, but with lifetime estimations. The drives are mechanical, and they WILL fail. No matter how many drives you buy, each drive will fail, and it carries a mean time between failures with it. If our drives have a MTBF of 100,000 hours, your drive is estimated to die after 100,000 hours of use. If you have two drives, your two drives are estimated to fail after 100,000 hours of use.
By buying multiple drives, you aren't significantly increasing the chance of any of your drives failing unexpectedly over time. You're simply buying more drives that are all expected to fail after the same amount of use. I realise that buying multiple drives increases the slight chance of having a drive with a built-in defect that may manifest itself before reaching its expected operating life, but not only is this chance still present if you buy just one drive, but you know that the drives will ultimately fail no matter what you do.
Keeping this in mind, would you rather carry all of your eggs in one basket, knowing that the basket will break, or would you carry your eggs in two baskets, knowing that your baskets will break, but at least being able to make an omelette of the eggs in the other basket when the inevitable happens?
SMART (a diagnostic system in my Western Digital hard drives) 'predicted' a crash. I was able to back up all my data and after about fifteen minutes the drive failed. Saved me!Flaming_Maniac wrote:
If they do keep them that long, the self diagnostic systems will detect the degradation of the disks so they can be replaced before any data loss. The assured death of a disk after a long period of time is a non-issue.