[ILUG] Why RAID

[Timothy Murphy]

On Tuesday 13 July 2004 13:33, Paul Jakma wrote:

> > The chances of a total disk failure  are negligible in my experience
> > (especially with SCSI disks).
>
> Your experience is lacking then. :)

Well, it;s quite lengthy, at any rate.

I've been running computers at home for about 20 years,
and in that time I have never had a total hard disk failure,
by which I mean a hard disk failure without warning
in which it was impossible to recover the data (or 99% of it).

I've had plenty of disk failures, but there has always been a warning,
eg odd noise, bad blocks, etc.
At the moment I have two sick disks.
One is almost dead
(I thought it was dead,
but it awoke yesterday for 15 minutes).
This disk gave plenty of warning,
as it slowly developed a kind of clicking disease.

Talking of gurus, if anyone is willing to change this disk 
(for love or real money) please let me know.
It is quite tricky, as it is in a Sony Picturebook
(possibly the best laptop ever,
almost worthy of a place by the pdp-11).

The other sick disk is a SCSI disk that has developed
a rather nasty scream.
I've copied everything of interest off it,
and if it doesn't stop screaming soon
I shall give it the usual torture treatment -
a short sharp knock, turning it upside down, etc.
Actually I would have thrown it out years ago
but SCSI disks seem the only computing item
that have increased in price in the last few years.



-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland