Do hard drives fail from open covers?

[James Sweet]

Yes. Besides that, the faillure rate on those Maxtor drives seems a bit
above average anyway.

Don't even get me started on that one, probably half the dead drives I've
harvested have been Maxtor, I'd never buy another one. For a couple years
Western Digital was making some real crap too, but they seem to have
improved remarkably.

 

[Jamie]

The argument is true but does not support the assertion

Multiple platter hard disk drives are higher capacity, faster, and
sell for more money. That is the reason they were produced then
and that is the reason they are produced now.




Never have been.

incorrect.
i had WD drives in the past that performed translations and
i am sure the're still drives out there today that still do.

 

[John Doe]

jdoe usenet.love.invalid says...

Yes, because data densities, in terms of bits per square inch,
has increased dramatically as storage technology has progressed.

Try rereading the question you're replying to.

That's because you're not taking into consideration the
improvements

And you are not taking into consideration the demand for even
greater improvements.

None of us can force you to believe anything, nor do I think
anyone would presume to try. I know what I've seen, I know
what I've read,
Citations?

and I know it to be the truth. If you choose not to believe it,
that's your privilege.

Considering your first answer is completely off base, yes I might
have a difficult time believing what you say.

Keep the peace(es).


--
Dr. Anton T. Squeegee, Director, Dutch Surrealist Plumbing Institute.
(Known to some as Bruce Lane, ARS KC7GR,
kyrrin (a/t) bluefeathertech[d=o=t]calm -- www.bluefeathertech.com
"If Salvador Dali had owned a computer, would it have been equipped
with surreal ports?"


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From: Dr. Anton T. Squeegee <SpammersAreVermin dev.null>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.basics,sci.electronics.repair
Subject: Re: Do hard drives fail from open covers?
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[John Doe]

Oh, please.

Exactly. But in the reply before yours, Dr. Anton T. Squeegee
actually disputes that.

Go figure. Lots of shooting from the hip going on.

The context was that of a guy who opened 3 new drives to
see how much data they held. The point of the first remark quoted
above was that you can't tell that way. It wasn't a comprehensive
statement about all hard drives, their capacity and the number of
platters.

Didn't you and John Doe notice this? Why bicker?

Yes I did, and I agree with that. But that's not what I was replying
to and that is why I asked plainly.

Didn't you notice that the author you are replying to is John Doe?

 

[John Doe]

I've opened a lot of dead drives to harvest the magnets and

You're reading way too much into what I'm saying.
Nope.

All I'm suggesting is that
older drives typically have more platters than newer drives, and
it's because of much lower data density on the platters.

Apparently, consumer demand for greater capacity does not figure
into your equation. In fact, demand for greater capacity
increases.

I didn't see single
platter drives until just a few years ago,

The only one I have taken apart, over five years ago, had a single
platter.

Why do you have to see? All you have to do is look at the maker's
web site.

before that they almost always
had 2-4 for typical consumer sized drives.

Nowadays they have that many for typical consumer sized drives.
Just look at a maker's web site.

The typical number of platters has been decreasing because
platters, heads, and the associated electronics cost money, as
soon as they can bump the data density up high enough to reduce
the number of platters they do it, that's why 120 gig drives
which are currently the largest single platter drives available
are also generally the lowest price per gig.

You are ignoring other factors.

.... consumers want greater capacity, multiple platters increases
capacity

.... the electronics is always much faster than the hardware, so
multiple platters means faster data transfer

 

[John Doe]

troll

 

[John Doe]

They have been, mostly before the IDE interface was introduced.
Some early IDE drives reported the true number of heads/sectors
as well.

Thanks.

Here is some further reading, for what it's worth.

http://cma.zdnet.com/book/upgraderepair/ch15/ch15.htm#Heading4

"These [pre/early-IDE] drives also did not support sector
translation, in which the physical parameters could be altered to
appear as any set of logical cylinders, heads, and sectors."

 

[Jim Adney]

Three of my 60-80 Gig Maxtor hard drives failed. First it will not look
for datas. Later it will not format. Then finally it will click forever and
won't boot. All three have the same thing in common, there covers
were opened for a second in a clean, dust free room out of curiosity.
Do hard drives fail from a quick cover removal?

Finding a room that is truly dust free is a BIG challenge. If you had
a true clean room, then you may have been clean, but most hard drives
which have been in use for any amount of time will have accumulated a
significant amount of dust on them. Just the process of opening such a
drive in a clean room would have contaminated the room.

One can occasionally get away with opening a drive. I've done it, and
I know others who have, but I would only do it with a drive which was
already considered scrap or worthless, or, as a last resort, to try to
get the platters spinning to copy the data off a hard drive that
wouldn't start without help.

Anything else is just another form of Russian Roulette, with one empty
chamber.

-

 

[James Sweet]

Apparently, consumer demand for greater capacity does not figure
into your equation. In fact, demand for greater capacity
increases.


The only one I have taken apart, over five years ago, had a single
platter.

Why do you have to see? All you have to do is look at the maker's
web site.

I don't have to see, I'm not the one who took apart working drives, I was
only chiming in that I've opened dozens of dead drives over the years to
harvest them for parts, and statistically the newer ones have fewer platters
than the older ones, I don't know why this is such a controversial statement
as it's simply what I've seen in a random sampling of drives that have
failed over the last 15 years or so.

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

Apparently, consumer demand for greater capacity does not figure
into your equation. In fact, demand for greater capacity
increases.

Consumer demand has nothing to do with it. You can demand anything
you want but until its feasible to build at a reasonable price, it won't
exist. All any consumer can do is chose the an item somewhere in the
range of what is offered. I'd love to have a 100 million terabyte data
storage system with a 1024 bit wide buss and under a pico second access
time, but it isn't going to happen in my lifetime. I'll be lucky if I
live long enough to see really good OCR software.

... the electronics is always much faster than the hardware, so
multiple platters means faster data transfer.

Really? It takes time to switch between heads, verify the head
location, synchronize the servo and collect the data. It would be like
reading more books at the same time, rather than finishing one before
starting another.

More heads slows it down unless you are reading each entire platter
at once, one side at a time. I have never seen this, even in the old 5
MB hard drives that I started with. If you want more speed you use RAID
arrays where you have multiple drives synched, and switch data access
between them.

--
Link to my "Computers for disabled Veterans" project website deleted
after threats were telephoned to my church.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[Mike Berger]

Yes, that will cause the drive to fail. Most drives have an air filter
that filters out particles bigger than a micron, and you're letting in
colossal pieces of dust.

 

[Mike Berger]

Please enlighten us on cheap and easy backups. That has not
been my experience. We have a couple of terabyte raids, and
a bunch of servers, and a lot of desktops to back up. We've
always found backups to be expensive and tedious.

 

[John Doe]

Please enlighten us on cheap and easy backups.

Hang out in the homebuilt PC group for a while and listen to all
of the sad stories people come and tell us about losing all of the
critical information on their hard disk drive because recovery is
going to cost USD1000. I'm not sure why they go there, but they
do. Their crying is a very good teacher.

A backup hard disk drive is dirt cheap. And it takes a few minutes
to do the backup.

That has not been my experience.

Because you don't realize the cost of going without backups.

We have a couple of terabyte raids, and
a bunch of servers, and a lot of desktops to back up. We've
always found backups to be expensive and tedious.

Sounds like something you and your boss should be discussing.

 

[JW]

Don't even get me started on that one, probably half the dead drives I've
harvested have been Maxtor

Yup same here - the 40GB Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 8. We've had literally
hundreds of them go south within the warranty period. Failure rate
compared to drives we've sold indicates >%7 failure rate.

What a dog.

 

[John Doe]

Apparently, consumer demand for greater capacity does not figure
into your equation. In fact, demand for greater capacity
increases.

Consumer demand has nothing to do with it. You can demand
anything you want but until its feasible to build at a
reasonable price, it won't exist. All any consumer can do is
chose the an item somewhere in the range of what is offered.
I'd love to have a 100 million terabyte data storage system with
a 1024 bit wide buss and under a pico second access time, but it
isn't going to happen in my lifetime. I'll be lucky if I live
long enough to see really good OCR software.


<Snip a lot of nonsense.>

... the electronics is always much faster than the hardware, so
multiple platters means faster data transfer.

Really? It takes time to switch between heads, verify the head
location, synchronize the servo and collect the data. It would be like
reading more books at the same time, rather than finishing one before
starting another.

More heads slows it down unless you are reading each entire platter
at once, one side at a time. I have never seen this, even in the old 5
MB hard drives that I started with. If you want more speed you use RAID
arrays where you have multiple drives synched, and switch data access
between them.

--
Link to my "Computers for disabled Veterans" project website deleted
after threats were telephoned to my church.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

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[John Doe]

John Doe wrote:

<snipped babbling about terabyte hard disk drives and OCR software>

Really? ...
More heads slows it down ...

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/productkit.asp?DriveID=40
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/productkit.asp?DriveID=65

Identical drives except the larger drive with two platters has
faster Read Seek Times and faster Track-To-Track Seek Times.

--
Link to my "Computers for disabled Veterans" project website
deleted after threats were telephoned to my church.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

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[Michael A. Terrell]

Apparently, consumer demand for greater capacity does not figure
into your equation. In fact, demand for greater capacity
increases.

Consumer demand has nothing to do with it. You can demand
anything you want but until its feasible to build at a
reasonable price, it won't exist. All any consumer can do is
chose the an item somewhere in the range of what is offered.
I'd love to have a 100 million terabyte data storage system with
a 1024 bit wide buss and under a pico second access time, but it
isn't going to happen in my lifetime. I'll be lucky if I live
long enough to see really good OCR software.


<Snip a lot of nonsense.>

... the electronics is always much faster than the hardware, so
multiple platters means faster data transfer.

Really? It takes time to switch between heads, verify the head
location, synchronize the servo and collect the data. It would be like
reading more books at the same time, rather than finishing one before
starting another.

More heads slows it down unless you are reading each entire platter
at once, one side at a time. I have never seen this, even in the old 5
MB hard drives that I started with. If you want more speed you use RAID
arrays where you have multiple drives synched, and switch data access
between them.

--
Link to my "Computers for disabled Veterans" project website deleted
after threats were telephoned to my church.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

Path: newssvr33.news.prodigy.com!newsdbm06.news.prodigy.com!newsdst02.news.prodigy.com!newsmst01b.news.prodigy.com!prodigy.com!newscon06.news.prodigy.com!prodigy.net!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!elnk-atl-nf1!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net.POSTED!b1a104da!not-for-mail
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Nothing at all.

Plonk!
--
Link to my "Computers for disabled Veterans" project website deleted
after threats were telephoned to my church.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[[email protected]]

Please enlighten us on cheap and easy backups. That has not
been my experience. We have a couple of terabyte raids, and
a bunch of servers, and a lot of desktops to back up. We've
always found backups to be expensive and tedious.

In that case, just use a second raid for the backup. For mere mortals, a
DVD-writer is indeed a cheap way to make backups.

 

[Rich Grise]

Three of my 60-80 Gig Maxtor hard drives failed. First it will not look
for datas. Later it will not format. Then finally it will click forever and
won't boot. All three have the same thing in common, there covers
were opened for a second in a clean, dust free room out of curiosity.
Do hard drives fail from a quick cover removal?

Yup.

 

[Rich Grise]

The 20 Gig contains two platters. The 130 Gigs contains 3 platters. How
could 3 platters holds so much data? Straight from its factory wrapper,
I crack the lids open inside a large clean, clear plastic bag inside a hepa
filtered closet which still doesn't help.

Well, you're obviously an idiot. That is, if you're talking about
opening the lid of the drive itself. If you're talking about opening
the lid of the shipping container, then I don't even know what you're
talking about.