Lost 1500 gigs - Thanks Seagate!

On Tue, 19 May 2009 13:25:48 +0100, Conor wrote:

| In article 7c1e8f60-c5b5-42ee-861f-
| ,
| says...
|
| "backing up that much stuff was not an option financially."
|
| Neither is losing it.
|
| Read before you state the obvious please. Sometimes you have so much
| data it's just not possible to back it all up.
|
| Bull****.

Agreed! Nobody can afford to own a drive that holds more data than they can
back up. That's like paying so much for a car that you no longer have the money
to maintain it.

Larc

In message

was claimed to have wrote:

On May 17, 2:22*pm, Conor wrote:
In article cd6612d4-8e0c-4999-9953-1a0bf9c80b42
@r34g2000vbi.googlegroups.com, says...

...my brain hurts, thanks Seagate

Suggestions welcomed

Yeah...back up next time.

--
Conor

I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't
looking good either. - Scott Adams

"backing up that much stuff was not an option financially."

Read before you state the obvious please. Sometimes you have so much
data it's just not possible to back it all up. Back to the point of
the thread - any suggestions?

There is no volume of data that is impossible to backup or store
redundantly, The amount of data isn't even particularly important, all
that matters is the value of said data to you.

If the value of the data is worth less than $150 then you made the
correct choice to not backup, and you're only out less-than-$150, which
isn't bad.

If the data was worth more then $150 to you, then you should have found
a way to backup or otherwise survive a drive failure.

I'm a SOHO user, probably similar to yourself. I do it with ~5-6TB
here, with more important data stored both on RAID as well as
redundantly on separate machines ensuring that I can survive a drive
failure, controller failure, power supply failure shorting out all
drives, etc. Less important data is stored on RAID-1 (again, across
multiple machines). Finally, unimportant data is kept on local PCs and
will be lost when a drive fails.

How many petabytes do you think Google has? Do you think they have too
much data to store and forego redundancy or do you think they're fault
tolerant?

Going forward, I actually wouldn't suggest RAID at all in most cases,
RAID isolates you from a single drive failure, but not from user error.
Conversely, a backup isolates you from both (unless you make a mistake
during or immediately prior to a non-incremental backup), but risks data
that was written more recently then your most recent backup.

I would definitely not recommend RAID-5 if you're risk-adverse, but
rather, if three drives are in your budget, I'd recommend two drives in
RAID-1 to give you fault tolerance, and one drive as a dedicated backup
to cover you in the event of user error.

In all cases you should keep your backup drive disconnected when not in
use, preferably off-site if feasible, so that whatever event wipes out
your data won't take out the backup drive too.

Don't get me wrong, having a drive die sucks, but as you said in your
first message, you know it happens, it's just a matter of when.

In message "Mike Painter"
was claimed to have wrote:

If Seagate or any other drive manufacturer only put out bad product with
long warranties they would have been gone years ago.

In principle, Seagate dropping from 5 to 3 year warranties doesn't
inspire confidence. In practice, mine either die within the first 6
months, or are depreciated and pulled out of service due to need for
more capacity before they die.

That being said, I do take care to buy drives in small batches and stage
them into service so that should I get a batch that all decides to die
after 4-6 months in service, I'll have enough time to get one RMA back
before the next craps out.

OTOH, I've got 10 Seagate drives sitting in customs right now waiting
for clearance, and another couple on order from a local supplier, so
it's not like I'm ditching Seagate despite the 3-year warranty, they're
still on-par or better then the competition, and cheaper too.

Seagate has treated me well, both in terms of drive priceerformance
and lifespan, as well as the lack of hassle when I have had a drive die.
No begging or pleading or digging up years old invoices, just 5 minutes
on a web form, ship it out and get a return shipped out a week later (so
far always within 15 business days round trip)

"DevilsPGD" wrote in message ...
In message "Mike Painter"
was claimed to have wrote:

If Seagate or any other drive manufacturer only put out bad product with
long warranties they would have been gone years ago.

In principle, Seagate dropping from 5 to 3 year warranties doesn't
inspire confidence. In practice, mine either die within the first 6
months, or are depreciated and pulled out of service due to need for
more capacity before they die.

That being said, I do take care to buy drives in small batches and stage
them into service so that should I get a batch that all decides to die
after 4-6 months in service, I'll have enough time to get one RMA back
before the next craps out.

OTOH, I've got 10 Seagate drives sitting in customs right now waiting
for clearance, and another couple on order from a local supplier, so
it's not like I'm ditching Seagate despite the 3-year warranty, they're
still on-par or better then the competition, and cheaper too.

Seagate has treated me well, both in terms of drive priceerformance
and lifespan, as well as the lack of hassle when I have had a drive die.
No begging or pleading or digging up years old invoices, just 5 minutes
on a web form, ship it out and get a return shipped out a week later (so
far always within 15 business days round trip)

Seagate and other drive manufacturers have (at least) two separate
production lines: one for junk (home/soho users) and the other for
corporate/server use. This latter production line has much higher
quality standards and uses much better components.

Long story short, don't even consider drives with 1-3 year
warranties. Seagate's higher-end server drives still come with a
five year warranty, for good reason.

In article , DevilsPGD
says...

In principle, Seagate dropping from 5 to 3 year warranties doesn't
inspire confidence. In practice, mine either die within the first 6
months, or are depreciated and pulled out of service due to need for
more capacity before they die.

So you've just countered your own statement. A 5 year warranty is
pointless because they either die in the first 6 months or go on for
years.

--
Conor

I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't
looking good either. - Scott Adams

In message was
claimed to have wrote:

"DevilsPGD" wrote in message ...
In message "Mike Painter"
was claimed to have wrote:

If Seagate or any other drive manufacturer only put out bad product with
long warranties they would have been gone years ago.

In principle, Seagate dropping from 5 to 3 year warranties doesn't
inspire confidence. In practice, mine either die within the first 6
months, or are depreciated and pulled out of service due to need for
more capacity before they die.

That being said, I do take care to buy drives in small batches and stage
them into service so that should I get a batch that all decides to die
after 4-6 months in service, I'll have enough time to get one RMA back
before the next craps out.

OTOH, I've got 10 Seagate drives sitting in customs right now waiting
for clearance, and another couple on order from a local supplier, so
it's not like I'm ditching Seagate despite the 3-year warranty, they're
still on-par or better then the competition, and cheaper too.

Seagate has treated me well, both in terms of drive priceerformance
and lifespan, as well as the lack of hassle when I have had a drive die.
No begging or pleading or digging up years old invoices, just 5 minutes
on a web form, ship it out and get a return shipped out a week later (so
far always within 15 business days round trip)

Seagate and other drive manufacturers have (at least) two separate
production lines: one for junk (home/soho users) and the other for
corporate/server use. This latter production line has much higher
quality standards and uses much better components.

Long story short, don't even consider drives with 1-3 year
warranties. Seagate's higher-end server drives still come with a
five year warranty, for good reason.

I am aware that the consumer grade drives tend to be cheaper and more
likely to die, and I agree. However, I disagree completely about buying
more expensive drives.

You must proceed under the assumption that you *will* experience a drive
failure, the only question is one of *when*.

If you're storing 5-6TB of data redundantly (9-12TB typical raw storage
needed), all other things being equal, you're better off buying cheap
drives and having more hot-spares on hand, then shipping off dead drives
for RMA as needed.

Now all other things are not equal if you're looking at drives with
different performance characteristics, different interfaces, etc, but if
you're looking at the "RAID edition" or "enterprise edition" version of
consumer 7200.11 type drives, go cheap and have hot spares (and possibly
cold spares too) so that when a failure occurs, you're closer to
recovering.

In message Conor
was claimed to have wrote:

In article , DevilsPGD
says...

In principle, Seagate dropping from 5 to 3 year warranties doesn't
inspire confidence. In practice, mine either die within the first 6
months, or are depreciated and pulled out of service due to need for
more capacity before they die.

So you've just countered your own statement.

Not at all.

A 5 year warranty is
pointless because they either die in the first 6 months or go on for
years.

Bingo -- I was pointing out that although a warranty decrease doesn't
fill me with a warm and fuzzy feeling about their product, recent
experience does, so as a result I'm still buying Seagate.

In article , DevilsPGD
says...

In message Conor
was claimed to have wrote:

In article , DevilsPGD
says...

In principle, Seagate dropping from 5 to 3 year warranties doesn't
inspire confidence. In practice, mine either die within the first 6
months, or are depreciated and pulled out of service due to need for
more capacity before they die.

So you've just countered your own statement.

Not at all.

Yes you have.

Bingo -- I was pointing out that although a warranty decrease doesn't
fill me with a warm and fuzzy feeling about their product, recent
experience does, so as a result I'm still buying Seagate.

So to sum up, **** all has changed so what was the point again?


--
Conor

I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't
looking good either. - Scott Adams

DevilsPGD wrote:
In message Conor
was claimed to have wrote:

In article , DevilsPGD
says...

In principle, Seagate dropping from 5 to 3 year warranties doesn't
inspire confidence. In practice, mine either die within the first 6
months, or are depreciated and pulled out of service due to need for
more capacity before they die.

So you've just countered your own statement.

Not at all.

A 5 year warranty is
pointless because they either die in the first 6 months or go on for
years.

Bingo -- I was pointing out that although a warranty decrease doesn't
fill me with a warm and fuzzy feeling about their product, recent
experience does, so as a result I'm still buying Seagate.

All solid state devices are known to fit this profile to a limited extent.
The problem is not nearly as bad as in the early days when the difference
between a new computer (64k CP/M running at 4.77 MHz) and one burned in for
48 hours might be as much as $1,000.00.

In message Conor
was claimed to have wrote:

In article , DevilsPGD
says...

In message Conor
was claimed to have wrote:

In article , DevilsPGD
says...

In principle, Seagate dropping from 5 to 3 year warranties doesn't
inspire confidence. In practice, mine either die within the first 6
months, or are depreciated and pulled out of service due to need for
more capacity before they die.

So you've just countered your own statement.

Not at all.

Yes you have.

Bingo -- I was pointing out that although a warranty decrease doesn't
fill me with a warm and fuzzy feeling about their product, recent
experience does, so as a result I'm still buying Seagate.

So to sum up, **** all has changed so what was the point again?

Seagate is sending a bad message... That's significant.