I hate it when hard drives fail.I've never had this happen, like ever. Well, a Crucial M4 SSD did fail
I hate it when hard drives fail.I've never had this happen, like ever. Well, a Crucial M4 SSD did
fail to boot on me once, but that was a known issue that I looked up the semi-scary recovery procedure for (which involved power-cycling and unplugging) and putting on a new firmware for it. But other than that, never.
My only drives now are a 2TB 980pro nvme & 4TB HGST, with a duplicate
4TB HGST in the closet. It takes at least 24hrs, probably longer, to
clone 4TB, which is definitely keeping me from buying anything larger at
the moment (I have zero desire or real need for a NAS). If I keep
ripping movies as I have been I can definitely see needing more; I'm
just hoping giant SSDs get cheaper I guess, shrug! Your post is jolting
me a bit though, I'll likely buy a cheap USB 5TB backup drive.
I hate it when hard drives fail.I've never had this happen, like ever. Well, a Crucial M4 SSD did fail
to boot on me once, but that was a known issue that I looked up the >semi-scary recovery procedure for (which involved power-cycling and >unplugging) and putting on a new firmware for it. But other than that, >never.
I don't think I have ever lost a hard drive Spalls. Maybe back in the
IBM DOS or Win 3.1 but I can't remember.
Pianoman
(A ramble)
I hate it when hard drives fail. It's not just the potential loss of
data - even with the best of backup plans, there's always a risk of
that - but there's the annoying inconvenience of restoring all that
data. Even with SATA3, it takes hours to restore hundreds of gigabytes
of data... and most of the time I'm not restoring from anything as
fast as SATA3.
I didn't think it was a hard-disk failure at first. Or rather, I did,
but all the evidence seemed to suggest otherwise. I wasn't seeing lost
data; rather, I'd get these random temporary lock-ups of one or two >seconds... usually when playing a game, but occasionally while
working. These sort of freeze is indicative of hard-disk problems
(either that or some rogue networking app pinging a dog-slow server)
but I checked the affected drives, and nothing. No SMART errors,
ChkDsk (Windows) and Fsck (Linux) were both happy, and nothing showed
up on more intensive disk-check-up programs.
I checked my main boot SSD drive, my primary "fastgames" SSD where
Steam resides, and the slower HDD where I stash my data and some
legacy games (like "Eurotruck Simulator 2", which was where the
problem was most noticeable, probably because of how it streams in
data). The symptoms screamed "disk problem" but there was no evidence
for it, so I searched in vain for other problems. Some memory-hogging
app? A bad configuration setting? Some spyware that had snuck its way
onto the computer? I was even wondering if I'd somehow managed to get
a UEFI-infecting rootkit.
It wasn't any of these things, of course. It was a bad hard-drive...
but I'd checked for that, right? Well, yes... and no. See, I checked
the drives which were serving up data while I was working or gaming.
But there was a fourth drive in the system too. But I didn't bother to
scan that drive; why should I? All it had on it was old archived data
and some DOS games. I never accessed it except when I wanted to fire
up "Master of Orion" or something, and whenever I did, everything was
fine. If there was a problem, it had to be on one of the drives that
were being actively polled while I was running those programs, and my
old "slowdrives" spinning-rust hard-drive wasn't involved in any of
that.
But it turns out Windows wasn't quite as hands-off (even though the
fact that it was polling the drive almost never showed up in resource >monitor, and the reported response times were nominal. And the SMART >diagnostics showed no problems... which only confirms how useless
SMART diagnostic software built into hard drives really is). But
running a full disk scan found bad clusters... lots and lots of 'em.
I yanked the drive immediately, of course. Fortunately, I have backups
but nothing on that drive was irreplaceable anyway. Rebooting with the
drive unplugged, the PC ran without issue. "Eurotruck Simulator 2"
was buttery smooth once again, hurrah! I pulled out a spare HDD, gave
it a thorough scan for bad clusters, and - even as I type this - am
copying data from the back-up over to it (over USB, <sigh>... it
should be done in another 40 hours :-/). After that, it'll get one
more check-up, and then I'll plug it into the main PC. It's not a
major inconvenience (although no DOS games for me until its done!), >especially since I have the restore running on another computer, but
what an unnecessary and unwanted bother.
It could have been worse, of course. I might have had to replace a
system drive; that's always annoying (so many apps to reinstall! so
many tweaks to get the PC running just how I like it!). Restoring an
old data drive is nothing in comparison.
And, anyway, I get some joy in knowing my original instincts as to the
source of the problem were correct... even if I did go about proving
them right in an ass-backwards way that caused me more frustration
than needed. So there's that.
But at least it wasn't a UEFI bootkit ;-)
Things I've had die on me.
- A PSU which made a large pooping sound and a cloud of acrid smoke
appeared.
- A harddrive that really was long past its sell by date and was slowing
my system down. It produced a sound like metal on metal and promptly died.
- Graphics card, stated producing horribly screen fragments.
- PSU, that one just became unreliable and it would have been nicer if
it actually just died as I ended up replacing the MB + CPU + RAM.
- Yet another PSU but that was my own fault. I disconnected the
displayport cable only to realise that I hadn't screwed in the GPU.
Luckily nothing else was damaged.
Things I've had die on me.
- A PSU which made a large pooping sound and a cloud of acrid smoke
appeared.
- A harddrive that really was long past its sell by date and was slowing
my system down. It produced a sound like metal on metal and promptly died.
- Graphics card, stated producing horribly screen fragments.
- PSU, that one just became unreliable and it would have been nicer if
it actually just died as I ended up replacing the MB + CPU + RAM.
- Yet another PSU but that was my own fault. I disconnected the
displayport cable only to realise that I hadn't screwed in the GPU.
Luckily nothing else was damaged.
But it turns out Windows wasn't quite as hands-off (even though the
fact that it was polling the drive almost never showed up in resource >monitor, and the reported response times were nominal. And the SMART >diagnostics showed no problems... which only confirms how useless
SMART diagnostic software built into hard drives really is). But
running a full disk scan found bad clusters... lots and lots of 'em.
On Sun, 31 Jul 2022 11:37:46 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:
Things I've had die on me.
- A PSU which made a large pooping sound and a cloud of acrid smoke
appeared.
- A harddrive that really was long past its sell by date and was slowing
my system down. It produced a sound like metal on metal and promptly died. >> - Graphics card, stated producing horribly screen fragments.
- PSU, that one just became unreliable and it would have been nicer if
it actually just died as I ended up replacing the MB + CPU + RAM.
- Yet another PSU but that was my own fault. I disconnected the
displayport cable only to realise that I hadn't screwed in the GPU.
Luckily nothing else was damaged.
That is a lot of power supply deaths.
Your post reminded me that I need to add a PSU to my deaths. It was
actually the very last thing that died on me about three years ago.
That is when I finally got a new computer. That PSU (and computer)
worked for over 11 years though so I am not complaining. I needed a
faster computer anyway. Replacing the PSU in the old computer was not
worth it.
Things I've had die on me.
- A PSU which made a large pooping sound and a cloud of acrid smoke
appeared.
- A harddrive that really was long past its sell by date and was slowing
my system down. It produced a sound like metal on metal and promptly died.
- Graphics card, stated producing horribly screen fragments.
- PSU, that one just became unreliable and it would have been nicer if
it actually just died as I ended up replacing the MB + CPU + RAM.
- Yet another PSU but that was my own fault. I disconnected the
displayport cable only to realise that I hadn't screwed in the GPU.
Luckily nothing else was damaged.
On 31/07/2022 11:53, Mike S. wrote:
On Sun, 31 Jul 2022 11:37:46 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:
Things I've had die on me.
- A PSU which made a large pooping sound and a cloud of acrid smoke
appeared.
- A harddrive that really was long past its sell by date and was slowing >> my system down. It produced a sound like metal on metal and promptly died. >> - Graphics card, stated producing horribly screen fragments.
- PSU, that one just became unreliable and it would have been nicer if
it actually just died as I ended up replacing the MB + CPU + RAM.
- Yet another PSU but that was my own fault. I disconnected the
displayport cable only to realise that I hadn't screwed in the GPU.
Luckily nothing else was damaged.
That is a lot of power supply deaths.
Your post reminded me that I need to add a PSU to my deaths. It was actually the very last thing that died on me about three years ago.
That is when I finally got a new computer. That PSU (and computer)
worked for over 11 years though so I am not complaining. I needed a
faster computer anyway. Replacing the PSU in the old computer was not
worth it.
Even the first one was kinda my fault as I didn't follow my rule of it
seems to cheap there's a reason for that and the reason is probably it's
crap my next one I thought lets go back to get something that's at least decent and that lasted probably eight years before finally failing.
I read your post, and looked at my 7 installed external drives.
I have more than that but these 7 are on my USB hub..although
two were not turned on.
I did lose a WD external drive years ago, but none since, so after
I read your post I turned on my smaller WD external drive.
Nothing happened.
The power light lit, but the drive would not spin up. And
I tried tapping it on the side, but nothing. After many attempts, it's
now in the trashcan with the cables.
I think it was on the way out, or had already died, as the
power light started to flicker when I turned on my computer,
although the drive was not powered up.
It was old, and fairly small...just several hundred megs..
but like an idiot I hadn't backed it up! And I got tons of
blank double layer DVDs sitting right next to me.
Was just music on there...probably most of it
from Napster.
Next step is to get a blu-ray burner.
I learned my lesson after decades of not using
any backups.
Were those PSU cheap brands or good brands like SeaSonic? I have had
cheap PSUs go bad and killing my hardwares. :( I have had good brands
blow up, but didn't kill my hardwares.
(A ramble)
Even with SATA3, it takes hours to restore hundreds of gigabytes
of data... and most of the time I'm not restoring from anything as
fast as SATA3.
On 31/07/2022 17:26, Ant wrote:
Were those PSU cheap brands or good brands like SeaSonic? I have had
cheap PSUs go bad and killing my hardwares. :( I have had good brands
blow up, but didn't kill my hardwares.
The first one that died in less than a year, haven't got a clue what the >brand was. The next one that lasted eight years on so, X power or
something possibly, can't remember. The last one, which I killed, that
was an EVGA.
Remember that dead hard drive I had a few weeks back? Yeah, me
neither. I replaced it, restored the backup, and went on to do more 'productive' things with my life. The end, case closed, everybody
lives happily ever after.
Except then, for shits-n-giggles, I decided to look at the drive again (virtually) and... well, have you ever seen a hard-drive with 99% fragmentation? (do you even remember how old hard drives need to be defragmented?). Neither have I until yesterday. Every file (minus the invisible stuff Windows puts onto the drive) managed to splinter
itself into multiple parts across the drive. /EVERY SINGLE ONE/. Many
with more than 100,000 fragments. I dunno, I found that a bit
impressive.
(I know why it happened. The restore used multiple streams to copy the
data over. It's faster but stupidly just drops the data into the next available cluster rather than first claiming a bunch of consecutive
sectors and filling those in. Use a stupid tool, get a stupid result).
The drive itself is only used for storing data and really old DOS
games; any slow-downs caused by the fragmented file structure will be inconsequential in actual use. And while the files /are/ fragmented,
those clusters used in each individual file tend to be fragmented
close together, so it's not like the head will be skidding all over
the drive trying to read the data. There's really no need to
defragment this drive...
... not that it will stop me. All those blocks showing up in
'red=fragmented' on my disk tool? We can't have that!
<two days later>
Ah. Totally worth it. ;-)
Except now I sorta miss having a drive with an impressive 99%
fragmentation.
On 8/13/2022 8:31 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
Except now I sorta miss having a drive with an impressive 99%
fragmentation.
You could always "restore" it again on another physical drive. Then you >would have a clean drive and a dirty drive to feel warm and fuzzy about. :)
On Sat, 13 Aug 2022 09:42:23 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
<dtravel@sonic.net> wrote:
On 8/13/2022 8:31 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
Except now I sorta miss having a drive with an impressive 99%
fragmentation.
You could always "restore" it again on another physical drive. Then you
would have a clean drive and a dirty drive to feel warm and fuzzy about. :)
It says something about me that I'm actually tempted by that option.
It says something entirely different about me that I have enough spare hardware lying about I could actually /do/ what you suggest.
;-)
| Sysop: | Keyop |
|---|---|
| Location: | Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK |
| Users: | 297 |
| Nodes: | 16 (0 / 16) |
| Uptime: | 117:25:32 |
| Calls: | 6,662 |
| Files: | 12,209 |
| Messages: | 5,334,238 |