The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

Used Raid 0 for a while but an MFT issue on one drive caused the whole thing to go kaput. Since then I've been just using single, separate drives. The ones I use most for storage are my secondary 7200.12 in my main rig and the two WD 1TB 5400RPM Green drives and I set the WDs to spin down after like 30 minutes of idle.

Oh yeah also have my WD MyBook 500GB USB and that usually stays plugged in as a permanent storage drive on my server unless I'm using it to move stuff.

 

Jeff, you leave the mybook plugged in? My brother and I find the 160gb model quite irritating. If windows has to query the drive, it usally takes ~5seconds to spin up, in which the system hangs. Though he's running windows 7 now. XP was worse. I suggested he only plug it in when he needs to transfer files. Because windows seems to query the drive in the oddest instances LOL!

 

That's only if the drive is set to spin down after a period of inactivity. That is true of internal hard drives as well.

 

Yeah it seems to spin up at odd times but I don't like to leave it running because it's tucked into a bookshelf It can be annoying at times but because the PC is mainly a file server with medium-ish gaming use I'm not too worried about it. Certainly wouldn't leave it running on my main rig.

 

Oman7,
I use Raid 1 quite frequently, since the majority of my customers are Accountants, Doctors and other professional people. The only down side is that when one drive fails, you really need the same size drive to clone the drive from the good one. A smaller one won't work, and a larger one will wind up only having usable space equal to the drive you clone. You can't clone to a partition either. Still, it's almost foolproof, and the likelihood of two drives going out at the same time, is pretty remote.

Russ

 

Almost all the times I've lost a drive I've lost two at once, so RAID1 and RAID5 offer little comfort to me.

 

Yes, internal drives do it to. But windows allows one to deny that function I don't allow it, because I use my drives frequently. Spinning up 4 drives, each one one at a time is quite irritating. Since my oldest drive has logged well over 10,000 hrs non stop, and is still strong, it has paid for itself Just trust me on that

Sam, two drives at once? Thats pretty unfortunate indeed! The odds of that are next to none. Wow...

 

No, the odds are pretty high, since they're caused by power failures, rather than drive failures themselves.

 

Mmmm Hmm, power failures. And since they're interconnected, there you have it. What kind of PSU were you running at that time? I've never heard of reputable brands taking components with them. I suppose it has happened though I wonder if circuitry can be designed, for in such instances, to shunt the surge to say a fuse, or other stress buffering device. It's quite unfortunate when an entire component goes needlessly...

 

Well, it was a dodgy PSU on one occasion, and a dodgy PSU cable on another.

 

You sound like a dodgy sort of fella!! hehehee.

 

LOL! I think we've all bought some dodgy components one time or another I just hope my next purchases are not. I plan on dropping several bones

 

heh I guess it's just us. Hopefully it will go away soon.

 

Well I'm totally AMAZED AT THE Samsung 2 T HDD. I've never had a Drive run so cool . When I say cool I mean cool to the touch , WDs run warm , Seagate run hot , Samsung run cool

 

Wd's run warm? Huh. Well, that does depend on the cases cooling all of my drives are in the 28-32C range

 

Hmm Seagates run hot? Both of mine are currently at 29 and 30 respectively. Doesn't hurt that I have a HAF LOL. AFAIK drive temps are almost entirely down to how well they are cooled. I've not seen much variation between different brands in the same case.

 

Ha ha! Gotta love those HAF932 cases. Best purchase decision I've made yet. I now am fairly convinced, that optical drives that have failed me, was due to heat. And since the HAF932 keeps literally everything cool, the optical drives longevity is not a question. Every current optical drive in the HAF932 has seen twice as many discs as I expected them to see. People, technology loves to be cooled And the HAF932 is far from slouch!

 

I agree. Not only is the HAF great for performance, it's almost a kind of insurance policy

 

I watched a few AVCHD discs in the BD player tonight. The first one stuttered like crazy. I knew the disc burner was good though. I approached the bd player, and smelled heat. The damn vents are on the bottom of the player! I stuck two sharpie pens under it temporarily to allow air flow. It worked The heat seems to be generating around the optical drive. Go figure...

Cooling is highly important. Sometimes we don't realize just how important, until our devices smack us in the face