Drive Death

Why is it that I have never - repeat, never - had an internal drive die on me, and that I have a whole graveyard of dead external drives?

Right now two of the drives running in my current desktop Mac were were purchased when I bought my previous desktop Mac and moved over. And that was when the first silver/metal G5s came out. When was that ... about 5 or 6 years ago?

Best wishes,

Harry.

Harry Bromley-Davenport.

In my experience, the best way to kill a hard drive is to unplug it and put it on a shelf. Hard drives in my computers (which are basically spinning 24 hours a day for work systems, 12-16 hours a day for personal systems) seem to be infallible. Firewires that get put on shelves, in my experience, have about a 50/50 chance of ever coming back off in working order.

> Firewires that get put on shelves, in my experience, have about a 50/50 chance of ever coming
> back off in working order.

That's definitely not the case where I am. I keep my non-active Promax FireWire drives, half a dozen, in their boxes in their foam things. They only see action every three to six months. In seven years of owning them, not a single one has ever failed to mount on any computer.

However, Jeff's main point holds -- you cannot count on drives sitting there to come back, necessarily. Just because they're not spinning doesn't mean they won't fail -- these are physical objects with electronic components. Dust, static, rust and plain old inactivity can cause them to fail. So you should check any drive at least once every couple of months, and have backups. It's highly unlikely for two drives to fail at the same time. However, if you don't check them for a long period of time, one could die, and then the backup could die eight months later, and you wouldn't find out until it's too late.


www.derekmok.com

I have to agree with Derek, in my case i've had harddrives sit on a shelf for a year or two or longer and i have yet (touch wood!) had one die on me.

I have however had an internal drive go... External drives take more wear and tear, they have more things to go wrong (the sata bridge) they get moved, bumped around... none of that can help their chances much when up against a static drive inside your mac with one simple connection.

It's the enclosures. You can't group this into "all externals" either. WD MyBook has THE WORST external casings...then LaCie...then G-Raid. When buying an external unit, the first question asked should be "how large is the fan?". If the rep says "What fan?"...run.

I am currently going to be testing this unit for a friend on mine:

[www.raidon.com.tw]

Look at the 4th picture. It is the back of the unit. See that it has one HUGE FAN for the 4 drive bay = LONG COOL life for those hot spinning hard drives...and it's RAID 5 so there's performance AND protection from a failing drive.

I will do a write-up when I am finished...but I may just move from Caldigit over to these RAIDON GR5630 Series if the assessment goes well.

Joey's "Tip 'O The Day":
Don't be cheap when buying a RAID. You will get what you pay for and pay for what you get if your cheap!!

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

> I may just move from Caldigit over to these RAIDON GR5630 Series if the assessment goes well.

Man, is it me, or do these guys need a better website? They need a "Store", or "Dealers", or "Buy" link.


www.derekmok.com

[www.CalDigit.com]

Michael Horton
-------------------

<<<the first question asked should be "how large is the fan?". If the rep says "What fan?"...run. >>>

Yes. Heat will do it. For a while I bought external enclosures that used to have fans in them and I would put them back in. If I played my cards right the screws would line up.

You don't need much, either. I found that the little 25mm fans would start and run on 7 volts down from the cabinet 12. Any air movement is good and the noise goes down at the lower speed. You want to avoid creating an oven.

I put a nice drive into one of those new "super cool" sealed aluminum cases and did a backup while I was watching it. I aborted when I couldn't put my hand on the case any more. That case is either in the garage or the trash, I forget.

Koz

Jeff is right, taking drives out & storing them for long periods is not the best idea, any magnetic device could degrade over time, it happens. I always suggest spinning them up every couple months if you are going to leave them on the shelf....

Jonathan Schilling | VP of Sales and Marketing
RAIDON-USA Technology, Inc.
Stardom Storage Solutions
Tel: 323-803-8884
Fax:323-372-3758
Email: jon@raidon-usa.com

Oh, and nobody will be shocked if you need to throw the case away and save the drive. We've done that several times.

Koz

Koz,

Just make sure that the drive can still be recognized, for instance, as an internal drive once it's been removed from it's enclosure, especially if a MAPPING table is involved such is the case with MANY drive enclosure manufactures & populated chassis. Sometimes removing a drive & inserting it to be read in a internal drive situation can be problematic.

>Checking ahead of time with a KNOWLEDGEABLE sales person at a drive enclosure company will save you potential headaches down the line.<

Jonathan Schilling | VP of Sales and Marketing
RAIDON-USA Technology, Inc.
Stardom Storage Solutions
Tel: 323-803-8884
Fax:323-372-3758
Email: jon@raidon-usa.com

I have a nice shiny collection of G-tech drives now. All dead.

Never again will I stick with one manufacturer on the inane principal that loyalty begets good service.

Harry.

Mike,

I think Derek's post was referring specifically to Stardom/RAIDON's site though, www.raidon-usa.com, (I would suggest our US branch office site over the Taiwan site that Joey referenced at this point.... I'm now working with this company to strengthen such things such as "where to buy pages", the copy in general, etc.

Our products can be purchased at Promax, Melrose Mac, Trans Intl, OWC, New Egg, among others, feel free to contact me directly if you'd like more information.

Bottom line? Our products are good, the do sell themselves.......a little help doesn't hurt though....

Jonathan Schilling | VP of Sales and Marketing
RAIDON-USA Technology, Inc.
Stardom Storage Solutions
Tel: 323-803-8884
Fax:323-372-3758
Email: jon@raidon-usa.com

Harry,

Touche, agreed.

Jon

i think climate is a big part also. I got a chance to visit a few studios recently (4). Most of their drives were stored in a storage room in these plastic non-water-resistent cases. Some were just on a shelf with a label.

Neat yes, but 1 of the smaller facilities had a dust free, air filter, humidity controlled nearly clean room for their offline drives.

the guy was telling me that temperature changes and humidity can cause condensation on the flat disc in the drive. So they keep the drive room at 60 - 70 degrees fahrenheit and humidity below 40. The air in the room is also filtered for dust.

I have a small dehumidifier for my dv storage cabinet. But my drive are in those little plastic cases, which take on dust and helps condensation in a humid room.

Guess what i am building now?

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

>I am currently going to be testing this unit for a friend on mine

The triple interface is very very handy. I'm working off a Stardom Deckraid, and the Firewire port busted out on me last night. I'm currently going to tape off that RAID 5 and USB 2. Fingers crossed.



www.strypesinpost.com

strypes,

Please let us know if we can be of any assistance.

Jonathan Schilling | VP of Sales and Marketing
RAIDON-USA Technology, Inc.
Stardom Storage Solutions
Tel: 323-803-8884
Fax:323-372-3758
Email: jon@raidon-usa.com

Thanks, Jon. I dropped an email to tech support earlier this morning. Kinda weird that all the firewire ports suddenly stopped working. It's not the mac, coz i've swapped macs, and mounted a firewire drive on that same mac without issues.



www.strypesinpost.com

That is very interesting G...any more info on your dead ports? Did you find a cause? I would hate to be in the middle of a remote job with one of these units. I am looking at a Raidon RAID 5 external 4 drive tower unit...but now the website wont load.

www.raidon.com.tw

I am sure Stardom / Raidon Tech Support is as good as CalDigit because I know Jon is always on the case...but hoping the units are as good as (biting fingernails - need to make a decision soon)

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Jon S. writes-

[Jeff is right, taking drives out & storing them for long periods is not the best idea, any magnetic device could degrade over time, it happens. I always suggest spinning them up every couple months if you are going to leave them on the shelf....]

SUD! Spin-Up Day! Twice a year. Lot of fun. All 16 LaCie D2 Quadras, from earliest 400 to latest eSATA-800-400-USB2.0 work fine.

Treat them nicely with clean power, don't drop them-- they are inexpensive, the connectors inside can come loose-- but they work fine used sensibly; you can probably say this about most FW drives, although they are finally becoming less relevant for live editing. Great for archive.

- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytip:
Invoke Big Timecode window with Control-T!

Your Final Cut Studio KeyGuide? Power Pack.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

No causes yet, tech support got back. I hope I don't have to RMA the unit. 2 TBs of data will take quite a few hours to back up via USB, not to mention I have to find 2 TBs of space to put it.

Oh yea, I did manage to go to tape off USB. DvcproHD 720p25 to Digital Beta. In fact, I sent all 4 copies out to tape without issues. And I did have a plan B, which is to clear space on a 12 bay Fibre Channel RAID and go to tape from there. But shifting footage around isn't the kind of fun I want early in the morning.

Okay, I just ran a the AJA system test on it. It's configured with 4 1.5TB Seagate Barracudas. Off USB I get 14.9MB/s write speed and 16.6 MB/s read. This is off USB.



www.strypesinpost.com

You couldn't export a movie file? That would have lowered the amount of data you needed to move considerably. Also, an export process isn't real time, so it wouldn't have been affected by the USB issue.


www.derekmok.com

>You couldn't export a movie file?

I could, but the Fibre Channel arrays are full. Both Fibre Channel arrays have slightly less than 10% free space and are waiting for archival. Exporting a QT movie onto the other array would have been plan B if USB didn't work out.



www.strypesinpost.com

> Exporting a QT movie onto the other array would have been plan B if USB didn't work out.

Or exporting directly onto the USB drive, or onto the system drive. Exporting is not a real-time operation; the USB limitations on data streaming should not be a problem.


www.derekmok.com

Hey Guys,

The factory site is www.raidon.com.tw

Our US branch is www.raidon-usa.com I apologize for the english being poor on both sites, this is something that I'm going to be working on in time. I've been in contact with Gerard & we're looking into his situation. Yes our support is good, it has to be....

Jonathan Schilling | VP of Sales and Marketing
RAIDON-USA Technology, Inc.
Stardom Storage Solutions
Tel: 323-803-8884
Fax:323-372-3758
Email: jon@raidon-usa.com

Loren,

There ya go, real world usage from a real world user...

If you are going to shelve your drives, do spin them up on occasion.

Thanks for being in contact, Jon.

Derek, for the data rates, there shouldn't be much difference between going to tape from my final sequence and a SCQT (which will take probably half an hour to export). The audio is all bounced to 4 tracks, and the sequence consists of only 1 video layer, everything in DvcproHD, and most of it is read from the Color render files. A SCQT is less complex than reading a sequence from different file locations, but that's about it.



www.strypesinpost.com

> A SCQT is less complex than reading a sequence from different file locations, but that's about it.

There's one major advantage. If your system can't output the file properly, you can move to almost anywhere you want by moving one file, rather than everything. Also, if there's any data corruption, dead drives etc., it's an insurance policy -- you only need one file intact to meet the deadline, but if anything in the 500 files accessed by the timeline gets corrupt, you're stuck.

So, I'd always argue that the half hour would be worth it, to save potentially hours, even days of problems.


www.derekmok.com

Ah, I get you. I do output a single QT file, but it's right after I go to tape usually.



www.strypesinpost.com

Hi,
Hoping for some expert advice. I've had one G-tech 1TB drop dead and another start to mount and unmount very slowly and make labored noises in the past week, both are less than 2 years old. Does anyone have a good unbiased recommendation for good affordable data recovery in the LA area?
And in general, it seems like a unusual coincidence for both to fail. Is there a preference (sleep mode?) or circumstance that could be wearing out the drives? I have heard varied suggestions for maximum storage on drives ranging from 75-90% of total capacity- any thoughts?
many thanks,
c