My Hard Drives Never Crash

I was just thinking about this today. You'll get a laugh also. I have 3
computers here at home all circa pentium II/III 400/450. Each one has
three used hard drives installed in the 2 gig to 8 gig range. Each one
is connected to two [in series] of those ten dollar surge protectors
[$3.50 wholesale BTW which is what I paid]. I need the additional
outlets anyway for all the perifs on each.

Since 1994 [ten years] I've never had a hard drive go bad and only a
single one developed a bad sector which still worked perfect but I
tossed it out anyway. Every modem also runs through the surge protector
phone sockets. We never turn the systems off during lignting storms no
matter how bad and even stay on during times when you see the electric
"browning" out and such.

Is it luck, or do those ten dollar surge protectors really prolong the
life of hard drives? I know for a fact they work for modems. In other
words, most [regular, non-tech] folks dont run their PCs through _any_
surge protector and it seems those are the same folks I get to replace
hard drives and modems on to pay my bills.

Or, is it the fact that since I'm a stickler for properly running
cooling fans. eg whenever I take any of my pcs apart I always check if
the power supply fan and additional 3 inch fan I always put in is
spinning up to speed, if not it gets replaced. Perhaps a combination of
these two habits extends the life of my hard drives?

 

I've only had one hard drive fail, a 160 gig Maxtor I bought new one year
ago, it lasted six months, computer acted weird from day one, then it died.
New drive, and computer, is working fine. I have two Wal-Mart surge
Protectors, one plugged into the second, computer plugged into that, plus a
whole house surge protector.

 

My machines run through a couple of UPSs, one APC and one CyberPower. The
only problem I've had with hard drives is with Maxtor's 80GB series of
drives, as I had 3 fail in under 2 years. At that point I said screw
Maxtor and picked up a WD 120GB SE drive and it's been purring along nicely
ever since. Otherwise, nope, no hard drive failures for me either.

 

There might be something to it. I have had 2 - 400mhz boxes with original
4.3gig hard drives since 1999. Have a surge protector in my main fuse panel
plus a $10.00 protector strip on each. I live in a rural area where power
line variations are common and lightening storms can be pretty nasty. At
least 1 system is ON all the time and have never had a HD or Modem failure.
I also "clean and lube" at least twice a year.

 

I haven't had a single hard drive of mine die either. This goes from my
200GB Western Digital SE drive to my 70MB drive on my first 286...

--Adam

 

I still have a couple old 1.something GB drives that are used every day.
One's a Conner. The few failures I've had happened right away. One 30GB
Maxtor that lasted about 2 months and a couple WD drives that were promptly
replaced by WD. Maxtor did a good job replacing the failed drive as well.

 

You were born with a horse shoe up your ass.

 

With a close hit in a storm, a ten dollar surge protector will not do
anything worthwhile to stop the surge. The gap in the fusing system is
too small and rarely has a interrupting insulator switch. The lightening
has just super heated a strip of air over two thousand feet long and
possibly for miles, close to the temperatures on the surface of the sun,
a 1 inch switch is really going to pass unnoticed. It is however, much
better than nothing for normal line variation.

JJ

 

Had no drives fail at all in my machines until last year. A samsung 80GB
drive went completely tits-up on me then, and I just recently RMA'd a
Western Digital 80GB JB model (8MB cache) because the drive's motor suddenly
became louder than the 5 fans in my PC. Decided not to trust it at that
point. Saw several posts on WD's forum that many others are doing the same.
Whisper quiet, then one day they start whining like a damn banshee.
Wondering about WD quality again, these days. Replaced it with a Seagate
Barracuda 8MB 120GB.


...

 

On my own personal computers, I only had one drive go bad, and that was on
my first computer, back in about 1983 or so. This was an old Zenith XT 4.77
mHz machine with two 20 mb drives. After that I have been very lucky. I
never had any fail since then!

After that, I never had a drive go bad on me. I would think it is
mother-luck that was riding with me, since my machines are in use 24/7.
This is especially since the net came in to existence.

At some of my work contracts, these clients have many machines, and hard
drive failures are very rare. There are a few machines with dedicated tasks
that have been running for over 5 years now, and have never been turned off.
They are still going very strong.

Most of the problems I have with machines are made by the users rather than
by hardware failures. The users love to blame the machines and call them
all kinds of nasty names. But, hardware failures are rare.

Where I work, I did recently have several hardware failures on one of the
machines that is about 6 years old. About 2 years ago, the sound card
failed. Then last year the CD drive failed. Just last week the mother board
completely died. This machine is a dual CPU 200 MMX Pro. I found a
replacement mother board from another machine we had, and it is now up and
running again. This is our proxy server here where I work. The 2 hard
disks, and the rest of the machine, is running like a Swiss watch. This
machine is only used for the router, and for the I/O for the printers, and
for the internet access.



--

Greetings,

Jerry G.
======


I was just thinking about this today. You'll get a laugh also. I have 3
computers here at home all circa pentium II/III 400/450. Each one has
three used hard drives installed in the 2 gig to 8 gig range. Each one
is connected to two [in series] of those ten dollar surge protectors
[$3.50 wholesale BTW which is what I paid]. I need the additional
outlets anyway for all the perifs on each.

Since 1994 [ten years] I've never had a hard drive go bad and only a
single one developed a bad sector which still worked perfect but I
tossed it out anyway. Every modem also runs through the surge protector
phone sockets. We never turn the systems off during lignting storms no
matter how bad and even stay on during times when you see the electric
"browning" out and such.

Is it luck, or do those ten dollar surge protectors really prolong the
life of hard drives? I know for a fact they work for modems. In other
words, most [regular, non-tech] folks dont run their PCs through _any_
surge protector and it seems those are the same folks I get to replace
hard drives and modems on to pay my bills.

Or, is it the fact that since I'm a stickler for properly running
cooling fans. eg whenever I take any of my pcs apart I always check if
the power supply fan and additional 3 inch fan I always put in is
spinning up to speed, if not it gets replaced. Perhaps a combination of
these two habits extends the life of my hard drives?

 

LOL. My house when I moved in had a real horse shoe tacked up in the
"lucky" U style "suppossedly" for "good luck". My neighbors even told me
I "had" to keep it up like that.

When I had it vinyl sided the workers put it back up in "standard" style
ie hanging down. At first I panicked which is odd as I'm not one of
those "dont walk under a ladder" types but I let it ride, and so far, no
change whatsover in "luck" at all. Everythings been good.

 

I like "firm" women as well. I dated some well endowed women in the past
and when they layed down their bumber bullets seemed to point in
opposite directions.

 

I feel lucky that the first PC I used was a 286 I had to use at work as
a "hand-me-down".

It had no extra ram, just the 640K I believe. I learned some good
lessons about backing up your work when it used to crash and you'd lose
the Quatro Pro spreadsheet one was
working on

 

That's how you know they are real. But, when they defy gravity, they are
suspect. ~

 

LOL....so true.

 

LOL, I remember the feeling. Now they have those 'auto-recovery' things
which help crash your computer to begin with

 

All the more fun to push them together and reestablish deviance of gravity!