Tim Hughes wrote:
> Here is an interesting discussion on hard disk drive longevity, with more
> links.
>
> http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2099467,00.asp?kc=EWEWEMNL030207EP34A
>
> I know people here often use there HD for longish term storage, so this is
> interesting if not very
> definitive.
>
Not quite on point, either, for the backup solutions some of us are
running. My external backup drives are only turned on and attached to
the computer long enough to do the backup maintenance.
This has two advantages. First, the drive is hardly broken in, let alone
worn out, by the time it is technologically obsolete.
Second, the drives are not vulnerable to attack by any form of malware
that may sneak through the multiple levels of protection. The window of
risk is very small.
> Clearly there are a few early signs of disk failure from increased read etry
> rates but
> unfortunately this is not reported normally in anyway on consumer gear. It
> seems that somebody
> could fairly easily write some utilities to give you an alert when at least
> that starts to happen.
> Good addon for Norton Utilities or similar HD utils.
>
Spinrite <http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm>. It does much more than just
warning, will move data to safe areas, and all kinds of other stuff to
keep HDs running right and protect the data on them.
For a simple, freeware window into much more about your HD than I
understand, try HDTune <http://www.hdtune.com/>. Among other useful
things, it keeps track of all sorts of performance items and gives you a
quick idea if anything is going south.
Moose
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