Hard Drive Life Span

Chuck(G) · Post by **Chuck(G)** » Mon Dec 27, 2004 10:42 pm

Wayne, is the machine fast enough for you now? Why buy another, if so? I think of computers like cars (and I've been buying them for 30 years; computers, not cars). A new one loses a big chunk of its value the first 6 months you own it.

You might want to consider doing what I do--I pick up off-lease PC's made for the corporate environment. Cheap and usually better built than the made-for-the-retail-trade stuff. I'm writing this on an 1 GHz HP Vectra that set me back $130 two years ago. It's quiet as a mouse (you can't even tell when it's on) and it does what I need.

Traditionally, consumer-level hard drives are manufactured to sell for the lowest price. So five years on one isn't bad at all.

Yeah, it's getting time to change out the hard drive, though. There are some good deals out there this time of year.

WoodSheddin · Post by **WoodSheddin** » Mon Dec 27, 2004 11:10 pm

back up all yer important stuff now and start to plan for the inevitable. unless you feel the need for a faster machine i say keep daily backups of your most important stuff like Quicken and archive the other stuff which rarely gets altered like old documents, resumes, and photos. when the hard drive does die, throw out the entire machine and buy a new one. not worth investing in a hard drive for a machine that old.

if you are reasonably happy with that machine then when the time does come to replace it, buy the cheapest machine you can find at a reputable dealer. you should do pretty well for $700 or less.

daktx2 · Post by **daktx2** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 12:46 am

my advice is to buy a new PC. either camp out the best buy ads for something really cheap or get this emachines. its not what you'd want to play doom 3 on but it would work great for anything else. to get a DVD burner on it you could buy one and install it yourself or have best buy do it for you.

Chuck(G) · Post by **Chuck(G)** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 4:33 am

Well, if you're set on a new machine, figure out what you'd really like, then start cruising the "bargain finder" sites, like:

http://www.bensbargains.net
http://www.fatwallet.com
http://forums.anandtech.com

You can save some real money that way.

jlbreyer · Post by **jlbreyer** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 8:53 am

schlepporello wrote:<snip>
My desktop is starting to make a funny whirrin' noise (on occaision) and though I haven't taken it apart to investigate, I'm suspecting that my hard drive might be getting old and be making preparations for death. I'm curious as to if my suspicions might be valid and also if it's possible for a hard drive to eventually go bad after only five years of service.
<snip>

The other possibility for a 'whirrin' noise' is a fan. Unplug it. Crack open the case and clean out the dust. If it's that old and the fan(s) were not ball bearing fans, you could be getting a dry bearing.

OTOH, it sounds like you really, really want to get a new one. If so, the post Christmas sales are likely to be pretty good. Another place to look is:

http://www.pricewatch.com

I've found a few cheaper sources, but not many.

jlb

Lew · Post by **Lew** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 10:02 am

There are many possible sources for the noise that you mention. A cooling fan is one, but it is quite possible that the hard drive is another. To reiterate Sean's advice - BACK UP EVERYTHING IMPORTANT ON YOUR HARD DRIVE NOW.

Sorry to shout, but if there is any information that you care about, it's better to have a copy of it than to wish you did after the drive crashes. New hard drives are relatively inexpensive, and you could just replace the one that you have, but given the cost of PCs today you're probably better off just buying a new machine. You can buy a machine for around $500 or less that will be about 4 times faster, have nearly 3 times the disk space, and have a 1 year warranty. If your monitor is still good you can save a little more by not buying a new one. Here's just one example of the type of machine that should work for you:

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/product ... l=en&s=dhs

Or there's something like this:

http://www.emachines.com/products/produ ... ines_T2862

Or This:

http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopp ... uter_store

MartyNeilan · Post by **MartyNeilan** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 11:15 am

My take on harddrives - they can last a day or a decade; ALWAYS be prepared for a crash. I have seen drives crash within the first week of coming out of the box; the notorious Compaq "bigfoot" drives would sometimes crash within a day. For the last few years, I have been running mirrored harddrives at home, first with Windows 2000 then XP Professsional. What mirroring does is have two identical harddrives store the same thing. If one crashes, 100% of your data is intact on the second harddrive. I do not believe XP home can do mirroring.
Corporations always either mirror their server drives, or better yet use RAID 5 - a series of drives (usually five or more) with a piece of each drive "striped" across each - if one crashes the others pick up for it; and you have more space than mirroring. Of course, the cost of a RAID card usually puts it out of reach of teh average home user.
BTW, you may see RAID 0 and RAID 1 used in advertisements - 0 means the drives have no redundant data and 1 is another name for mirroring.

gwwilk · Post by **gwwilk** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 11:34 am

If you're looking for an almost foolproof backup system check out Acronis True Image: http://www.acronis.com/ It can take a bare drive and restore your system to it from your backup image. It's better than Norton's Ghost, has multiple ways to backup and restore, boots from CD, and saves/restores to/from outboard USB/firewire drives. I've used it to backlevel a system that I thought had acquired a virus by formatting the hard drive and then going back in time to try to find an 'uninfected' system. Turned out that the problem was a rogue program that was spawning hundreds of thousands of processes and slowing the machine to a crawl after several hours of running, but I ended up with the same system I started with! I also recommend outboard USB 2.0 and/or firewire drives as repositories of important files and backup images. I used to assemble them myself from parts, but they're now cheaper to buy assembled. The 'Save' directory on my home network, acessible from any of my computers, has been on an outboard firewire drive for the last several years.

I'm betting on a failing fan, Schlepp, but behave as though it's your HD--it very well could be.

Jerry

winston · Post by **winston** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 12:18 pm

Lew · Post by **Lew** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 12:18 pm

cc_tuba_guy wrote:You know, I've never heard of a HD going berzerk on an Apple. ...

Now you have. My daughter was an art student (now BFA graduate) and uses an Apple G4. Her hard drive crapped out completely last year and she lost a significant amount of work, at least that which she had not yet written to her backup DVD. Hard drives on Apples use the same technology as those on PCs, and are just as prone to physical failure.

It's like so many things in life, the first time someone usually buys insurance is AFTER they have had a loss. The first time most people backup their systems is usually after losing all of their data. Install a good backup solution and make sure that it runs regularly.

Chuck(G) · Post by **Chuck(G)** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 1:30 pm

gwwilk wrote: I'm betting on a failing fan, Schlepp, but behave as though it's your HD--it very well could be.

Easy enough to figure out without even opening the box. Go to "power" on the control panel and open "Power Options" or "Power" (I don't know which OS you're using) and make sure you've got something set for "Turn off hard disks after xxx minutes".

Then, go have a cup of coffee for xxx minutes, come back and see if your system is still whinin'. If it is, it's probably the fan--either on the CPU or on the power supply (you'll need to open the box to see which).

The nice thing about the commercial HP systems is that there's only one fan--and it's a big slow one that just about never fails. Some of the high-end Compaq systems are that way too.

Whatever, if it's the PS fan, you can just replace the power supply; if it's the CPU, you can get replacement fans. Mostly, these things start squealing when the grease dries out. It's possible to re-lube them, but I wouldn't bother. Or you can just get a new box and make your own contribution to the trade deficit.

Chuck(G) · Post by **Chuck(G)** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 6:42 pm

Doc wrote:If you're going to go all out, you owe it to yourself to get at least a 35" TV for the bedroom, and a 72" for the living room. You need to get a 20Mhz computer with dvd/cd burner (566x speed), 1200 ram, 27" flat screen plasma monitor, Windows ZT Home Edition, Dolby theater surround sound speaker system, and a micron laser printer/fax/copier/scanner/butt wiper/diaper changer/coffe maker. Don't forget to include new broadband service - 20,000Mpbs.

Aw, now you're going to get me to start pitchin' an' moanin' about the sad state of modern PC production.

I've yet to find a PC with one of them fancy auctomatic slide-out cupholders that'll hold a full cuppa joe without breakin' off...

TubeNet

Hard Drive Life Span

Re: Hard Drive Life Span