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The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Discussion in 'Building a new PC' started by ddp, Sep 13, 2010.

Page 77 of 399
  1. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    Is why I have two sets of hard drives, with an identical copy of the data on each. Still less space than all those disks, and still less cost!
     
    sammorris, Mar 28, 2011
    #1521
  2. rick5446

    rick5446 Guest

    I thought the courts hear in USA ruled that the Operating system had to be furnished over and above the recovery units already on the Computer, Sh#t you even have to furnish your own Discs now.
    Most of the CRAP in the 16Gig recovery is trials and Advertising
     
    rick5446, Mar 28, 2011
    #1522
  3. creaky

    creaky Moderator Staff Member

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    Yep, old style xbox in bedroom and lounge, and HTPC in same rooms. Thus any media can be watched in those rooms over the network or any other device on the network around the house (and garden).
    Sure, i was one of the blank DVD advocates for a few years, but once i hit a couple thousand of the things i realised that time had marched on and in 2007 i bought loads of 500GB drives, then last year time (and movie sizes) had marched on again and i wouldn't "get out of bed for less than" 2TB drives. So much time spent faffing with DVD's over the years, but it was the best method for the time, now i'm just glad that's it's now so little effort with huge hard drives.

    Yes i always had tyhe mindset that the DVD's were a great fallback for restoring data, however even just re-ripping hundreds of them made me wise up to the fact that losing a hard drive and then re-ripping (again!) and re-copying hundreds of Gig of stuff was just a complete and utter waste of life, so i've started to mass-destroy huge amounts of DVD's. Very satisfying to know that i don't have to see so many DVD's anymore, and have a second (external) hard drive to rely on. Much better in my opinion and (for me) far more resilient than RAID. But each to their own..
     
    Last edited: Mar 28, 2011
    creaky, Mar 28, 2011
    #1523
  4. Mr-Movies

    Mr-Movies Active member

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    That product key is worthless even if you find a retail or oem disc so you are pretty much screwed. You can either use their 16GB's of crap or buy an oem disc with a good key.
     
    Mr-Movies, Mar 28, 2011
    #1524
  5. rick5446

    rick5446 Guest

    Only buy 2Ts myself any more
    I Like the SAMSUNGS , then WD Blacks . Price and Warranty conscious ya know
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 28, 2011
    rick5446, Mar 28, 2011
    #1525
  6. omegaman7

    omegaman7 Senior member

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    I've personally had 2 hard drives go south. One was nearly 10yrs old. Expected. The other was a Western Digital Raptor. I bought it used on ebay. I immediately noticed reallocated sector counts. Windows became erratic. So I discontinued using the drive. I've used it once since, for file transfers over a network. It became more erratic. Causing windows to act funny, as well as posting funny. Removed the drive and all was well. Who knows what the previous guy did with the drive.
    I don't think hard drives are invincible, but my personal luck with them has been admirable. My brother on the other hand... well you know. I think I partially blame myself though, for not properly cooling the system. System cooling will be something that has my complete attention in the future. This mistake will not happen again.
    I only hope that quality control for hard drives, is some of the best known to mankind. This is peoples precious data for gods sake!!!
     
    omegaman7, Mar 28, 2011
    #1526
  7. Mr-Movies

    Mr-Movies Active member

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    I prefer the Blacks too but haven't use the Samsungs' I'll have to try them as many people like you seem to like them.
     
    Last edited: Mar 28, 2011
    Mr-Movies, Mar 28, 2011
    #1527
  8. rick5446

    rick5446 Guest

    They are by far the coolest running HDDs (samsung)not a hint of warmth
     
    rick5446, Mar 28, 2011
    #1528
  9. creaky

    creaky Moderator Staff Member

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    I've seen lots of disc failures over the years, and a lot of those were from Enterprise systems/Enterprise discs. Though said setups spend the bulk of their lives up and spinning, sometimes for a year or more at a time. Hard drives don't like that too much, i had one server (and disc arrays) that was up continuously for approx 3 years, when it finally had a (brief) powerdown and (unsurprisingly) upon the next powerup a number of those discs gave up the ghost. That server was being decommissioned by that point so any data loss was ok, but it's just one of a few reasons why i don't bother with RAID at home (even though my discs aren't up continously for years at a time), I just find it infinitely simpler to keep manual backups of my data onto separate (external) hard drives. Very little maintenance (no stupid amount of hours building/rebuilding RAIDs) and the portability is a bonus. I should really start keeping my external drives elsewhere though, maybe at work.
    I do miss the big setups sometimes, the scary things we used to ie expand the normal mirrors to say, 4 mirrors, then break off 1 or more mirrors and attach elsewhere for copying (or safety during upgrades etc) but the resynch's, whilst very clever, are something i don't miss, 14 hour rebuilds on Production systems during monthend or bill runs or what have you, don't miss that stress :), but the buzz from breaking away large chunks of data, seamlessly, in Production was nice. The buzz from getting everything back together if of course nice, but the 14 hours wait sort of chips away from the end buzz.
     
    Last edited: Mar 28, 2011
    creaky, Mar 28, 2011
    #1529
  10. omegaman7

    omegaman7 Senior member

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    omegaman7, Mar 28, 2011
    #1530
  11. creaky

    creaky Moderator Staff Member

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    I think so. Have a look at the Netgear Stora, you can buy just the chassis and chuck a couple of 2TB disks in fairly cheaply (over here they're cheap to build anyways)
     
    creaky, Mar 28, 2011
    #1531
  12. Mr-Movies

    Mr-Movies Active member

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    Your right Creaky RAID at home is typically I little much and you can be asking for headaches besides the expense. In business servers 1u and up you normally have a better controller, with cache made for raid, hot swap bays and so on. You can do this at home but the expense isn't worth it you're better off just buying a ton of drives like you’re doing.
     
    Mr-Movies, Mar 28, 2011
    #1532
  13. omegaman7

    omegaman7 Senior member

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    I think 1Tb mirrored would be enough for my brother.
     
    omegaman7, Mar 28, 2011
    #1533
  14. creaky

    creaky Moderator Staff Member

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    Yeah we have loads of RAID setups at work (nothing like the last job) but that's ok, we have more than enough setups to look after (a lot of linux as well as Windows), i'm glad i worked on some big stuff in the past but i sure don't miss the stress!. Each to their own, each to their own :)
     
    creaky, Mar 28, 2011
    #1534
  15. omegaman7

    omegaman7 Senior member

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    omegaman7, Mar 28, 2011
    #1535
  16. Estuansis

    Estuansis Active member

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    I ran both RAID 1 and RAID 0 for a while playing with my options. Most of my storage goes to my Intel quad core box which houses a 500GB Samsung HD501LJ and 2 Western Digital 1TB Green drives. Soon to be 3 1TB green drives :p

    Redundancy is, to me, a waste of money and time. If something is so important to you where you need to make constant backups, don't keep it on mechanical storage. By simple fact of how mechanical storage works, it's entirely unreliable, period.
     
    Estuansis, Mar 28, 2011
    #1536
  17. creaky

    creaky Moderator Staff Member

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    Dunno, just make sure to factor in which devices allow the disks to be used as separate disks (ie some devices only allow RAIDing of both disks); you might not want access to separate disks, it's just something to bear in mind maybe.
     
    creaky, Mar 28, 2011
    #1537
  18. omegaman7

    omegaman7 Senior member

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    I stand to lose a lot, if even one drive fails. Redundancy is a very viable option to me :p I'm still nervous about the green drives, even though I seem to have purchased some real winners. *touch wood*

    Yah, I've been noticing that in my searches. What I want is something that allows raid 1. If one of the drives fail, I can then recover the remaining drive to a new array.
     
    Last edited: Mar 28, 2011
    omegaman7, Mar 28, 2011
    #1538
  19. theonejrs

    theonejrs Senior member

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    Oman7,

    I would avoid the DuoPro like the plague! The model listed is over 3 years old (2008), and if a drive goes down, you have no access to the remaining drive until you replace the bad drive, according to the manual! Overheating seems to be a problem as well! Sounds like Epic fail to me!

    Russ
     
    theonejrs, Mar 28, 2011
    #1539
  20. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    That would be a problem with all RAID enclosures, only you wouldn't get the data back even if you replaced the faulty drive.
     
    sammorris, Mar 28, 2011
    #1540
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