Raptor Failure

Has anyone had their 36gb WD Raptor fail? One of my 14 month old
Raptors has just died. Click Zing, Click Zing six times and then spin
down, even with the data cable disconnected. With a quoted
"Unsurpassed Reliability: 5-year warranty and 1.2 million hours MTBF",
I am a little surprised it went after ~ 5000 hours (425 days * 12
Hours). My box is well ventilated and the drive stack runs cool to the
touch and this is the first drive failure I have had since the IBM
DeskStar days.
I did a Google search for other Raptor failures but did not find any.
WD gave me a hard time about warranty replacement, said it was an OEM
drive and to go back to the vender. Newegg.com clearly states warranty
by manufacture and WD finally relented and sent me a replacement (
still waiting to arrive, shipped in two days but still waiting for UPS
ground for a week). Just wondering if I should consider RAID 1 even
though I ghost every other day.

"dh" wrote in message
...
Has anyone had their 36gb WD Raptor fail? One of my 14 month old
Raptors has just died. Click Zing, Click Zing six times and then spin
down, even with the data cable disconnected. With a quoted
"Unsurpassed Reliability: 5-year warranty and 1.2 million hours MTBF",
I am a little surprised it went after ~ 5000 hours (425 days * 12
Hours). My box is well ventilated and the drive stack runs cool to the
touch and this is the first drive failure I have had since the IBM
DeskStar days.
I did a Google search for other Raptor failures but did not find any.
WD gave me a hard time about warranty replacement, said it was an OEM
drive and to go back to the vender. Newegg.com clearly states warranty
by manufacture and WD finally relented and sent me a replacement (
still waiting to arrive, shipped in two days but still waiting for UPS
ground for a week). Just wondering if I should consider RAID 1 even
though I ghost every other day.

I dont see the problem! It has a 5 yr warranty and you got a new drive. Did
you expect the drive to die at 1.2milliion hours + 1 second. The MT of MTBF
is Mean Time between failure.
I think that drives suffer from the "bath tub" failure curve ie lots at the
start (we hope the manufactures catch these, and lots at the end (old age)
in between there will be a small number that will die every so often. I have
said before that there are only two types of disk those that have died and
those that will! the trick is to pass on the disk / system to someone else
before it dies!!

Other people (in mags) have said that any RAID with less than 3 disks is not
worth having (in RAID1 how do you know which disk has the good data and
which the bad if things start to go wrong? ie not a total loss of a disk and
if it starts to rebuild the array with the duff data!!).

Me I go with RAID 5 on 4 disks. So I now have four dsiks that can fail
:-( ( and backup to other media) it all depends on how much you "need" the
data and when! Can you do without it for hours, days, weeks. If the PC gets
stolen can you still recover from this? Only you know how much the cost of
time and effort as well as money is required to make "you" happy.
regards
ted

"ted msn" wrote in message
...
Other people (in mags) have said that any RAID with less than 3 disks is
not
worth having

That's nonsense. Two drive RAID 1 is very effective.

(in RAID1 how do you know which disk has the good data and
which the bad if things start to go wrong? ie not a total loss of a disk
and
if it starts to rebuild the array with the duff data!!).

Huh, one drive will be reporting read and/or SMART failures and the other
wont. The non-failing drive becomes the dominant.

Me I go with RAID 5 on 4 disks. So I now have four dsiks that can fail

Yep, if two drives fail then you've lost it all.

On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 09:51:15 -0400, dh wrote:

Has anyone had their 36gb WD Raptor fail? One of my 14 month old
Raptors has just died. Click Zing, Click Zing six times and then spin
down, even with the data cable disconnected. With a quoted
"Unsurpassed Reliability: 5-year warranty and 1.2 million hours MTBF",
I am a little surprised it went after ~ 5000 hours (425 days * 12
Hours). My box is well ventilated and the drive stack runs cool to the
touch and this is the first drive failure I have had since the IBM
DeskStar days.

I've had it with hard disks failing - hardly any make past the end of the warranty! Tried all the makes, they all get really hot and wear out. Got myself four of em now - a stripe/mirror set, each with cooler fins attached.

I did a Google search for other Raptor failures but did not find any.
WD gave me a hard time about warranty replacement, said it was an OEM
drive and to go back to the vender. Newegg.com clearly states warranty
by manufacture and WD finally relented and sent me a replacement (
still waiting to arrive, shipped in two days but still waiting for UPS
ground for a week).

You say "425 days" - that's over a year - never heard of a retailer doing over 1 year! 1 year - end of warranty it's up to the manufacturer surely?

Just wondering if I should consider RAID 1 even
though I ghost every other day.




--
FOURTEEN - CHECK OUT THE BABY! parrots and rising http://www.petersparrots.com
93 silly video clips http://www.insanevideoclips.com
1259 digital photos http://www.petersphotos.com
Served from a pentawatercooled dual 2.8GHz silent Athlon with half TB RAID.

I got the strangest recording when I called the phone company the other day.
It said, "You have been connected to the correct department on the first try. This is against company policy. Please hang up and redial."

On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 17:27:27 +0000 (UTC), ted msn wrote:


"dh" wrote in message
...
Has anyone had their 36gb WD Raptor fail? One of my 14 month old
Raptors has just died. Click Zing, Click Zing six times and then spin
down, even with the data cable disconnected. With a quoted
"Unsurpassed Reliability: 5-year warranty and 1.2 million hours MTBF",
I am a little surprised it went after ~ 5000 hours (425 days * 12
Hours). My box is well ventilated and the drive stack runs cool to the
touch and this is the first drive failure I have had since the IBM
DeskStar days.
I did a Google search for other Raptor failures but did not find any.
WD gave me a hard time about warranty replacement, said it was an OEM
drive and to go back to the vender. Newegg.com clearly states warranty
by manufacture and WD finally relented and sent me a replacement (
still waiting to arrive, shipped in two days but still waiting for UPS
ground for a week). Just wondering if I should consider RAID 1 even
though I ghost every other day.

I dont see the problem! It has a 5 yr warranty and you got a new drive. Did
you expect the drive to die at 1.2milliion hours + 1 second. The MT of MTBF
is Mean Time between failure.
I think that drives suffer from the "bath tub" failure curve ie lots at the
start (we hope the manufactures catch these, and lots at the end (old age)
in between there will be a small number that will die every so often. I have
said before that there are only two types of disk those that have died and
those that will! the trick is to pass on the disk / system to someone else
before it dies!!

Bath tub indeed. I could draw the curve I've experienced, and it would not be a curve! They fail at 1 month, 2 months, ........, all the way to a few years!

Other people (in mags) have said that any RAID with less than 3 disks is not
worth having (in RAID1 how do you know which disk has the good data and
which the bad if things start to go wrong? ie not a total loss of a disk and
if it starts to rebuild the array with the duff data!!).

Doesn't the OS know when the data is wrong? CRC, parity, whatever it does? With one disk, you get a report of a disk error. With 2, you'd get a report of a filure on drive 1, so it would use the data on drive 2, ansd you'd change drive 1.

--
FOURTEEN - CHECK OUT THE BABY! parrots and rising http://www.petersparrots.com
93 silly video clips http://www.insanevideoclips.com
1259 digital photos http://www.petersphotos.com
Served from a pentawatercooled dual 2.8GHz silent Athlon with half TB RAID.

"I wonder who discovered we could get milk from cows and what the **** did he think he was doing?!" -- Billy Connolly

On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 19:21:21 GMT, Ron Reaugh wrote:


"ted msn" wrote in message
...
Other people (in mags) have said that any RAID with less than 3 disks is
not
worth having

That's nonsense. Two drive RAID 1 is very effective.

(in RAID1 how do you know which disk has the good data and
which the bad if things start to go wrong? ie not a total loss of a disk
and
if it starts to rebuild the array with the duff data!!).

Huh, one drive will be reporting read and/or SMART failures and the other
wont. The non-failing drive becomes the dominant.

[smacks self in face]

I just wrote that. Again.



--
FOURTEEN - CHECK OUT THE BABY! parrots and rising http://www.petersparrots.com
93 silly video clips http://www.insanevideoclips.com
1259 digital photos http://www.petersphotos.com
Served from a pentawatercooled dual 2.8GHz silent Athlon with half TB RAID.

Why isn't 11 pronounced onety one?

On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 17:27:27 +0000 (UTC), "ted msn"
wrote:




Other people (in mags) have said that any RAID with less than 3 disks is not
worth having (in RAID1 how do you know which disk has the good data and
which the bad if things start to go wrong? ie not a total loss of a disk and
if it starts to rebuild the array with the duff data!!).

Any raid controller worty of the name will tell you which disk is
failing. Even the Promise controllers on motherboards tell you that
much. Leastways the ones in the two machines I built for the office
have done so when a disk when tits up in both of them recently.


Me I go with RAID 5 on 4 disks. So I now have four dsiks that can fail
:-( ( and backup to other media) it all depends on how much you "need" the
data and when! Can you do without it for hours, days, weeks. If the PC gets
stolen can you still recover from this? Only you know how much the cost of
time and effort as well as money is required to make "you" happy.
regards
ted


Very good point ted These are the sort of calls people should make
when deciding Backup/redundancy stratagies It's fat too easy to spend
serious bucks on this sort of thing when in reality the value of the
data held is in the cold light of day not really that "vital" after
all.

"Andy Lee" wrote in message
news
On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 17:27:27 +0000 (UTC), "ted msn"
wrote:




Other people (in mags) have said that any RAID with less than 3 disks is
not
worth having (in RAID1 how do you know which disk has the good data and
which the bad if things start to go wrong? ie not a total loss of a disk
and
if it starts to rebuild the array with the duff data!!).

Any raid controller worty of the name will tell you which disk is
failing. Even the Promise controllers on motherboards tell you that
much. Leastways the ones in the two machines I built for the office
have done so when a disk when tits up in both of them recently.

I agree that the theory says you "should know" but if I can quote in part
from an item in PC Pro (UK) nov 2003 by Steve Cassidy, in talking about
RAID failures...
"I have never, ever, encountered a mirrored RAID setup that worked as
advertised"
"The gotcha isn't in the theoretical design, but rather in the failure mode"

He goes onto say that while the systems might say they are working OK behind
in the background they can be writing all sorts of duff data to the mirror
before they fail.

He says that in effect you get what you pay for, big expesive RAID cards are
"good" if you need data 24/7 and simple on motherboard systems/cards are
good if you wish to feel good at being with the "big boys" but dont think
you will get the same level of service from the system if things go AWOL.

As a caution, in the company I worked for a few years ago (no names!) "we"
had a system with an expensive RAID setup but the email notification of
errors was not set up no-one had any idea that the RAID 5 had lost one of 4
disks until the second died, ho hum! (backups are great when they work!!)
regards
ted

Me I go with RAID 5 on 4 disks. So I now have four dsiks that can fail
:-( ( and backup to other media) it all depends on how much you "need"
the
data and when! Can you do without it for hours, days, weeks. If the PC
gets
stolen can you still recover from this? Only you know how much the cost
of
time and effort as well as money is required to make "you" happy.
regards
ted


Very good point ted These are the sort of calls people should make
when deciding Backup/redundancy stratagies It's fat too easy to spend
serious bucks on this sort of thing when in reality the value of the
data held is in the cold light of day not really that "vital" after
all.

"ted msn" wrote in message
...
As a caution, in the company I worked for a few years ago (no names!) "we"
had a system with an expensive RAID setup but the email notification of
errors was not set up no-one had any idea that the RAID 5 had lost one of
4
disks until the second died, ho hum! (backups are great when they work!!)

My dad worked for a company that had major data loss. They didn't verify
the tape backup and it turns out the tape drive hadn't made a valid backup
in months or years-didn't throw an error message either. As far as raid
working or not, I try not to consider raid a backup solution, just a more
robust storage method.

--Dan

"ted msn" wrote in message
...

"Andy Lee" wrote in message
news
On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 17:27:27 +0000 (UTC), "ted msn"
wrote:




Other people (in mags) have said that any RAID with less than 3 disks
is
not
worth having (in RAID1 how do you know which disk has the good data and
which the bad if things start to go wrong? ie not a total loss of a
disk
and
if it starts to rebuild the array with the duff data!!).

Any raid controller worty of the name will tell you which disk is
failing. Even the Promise controllers on motherboards tell you that
much. Leastways the ones in the two machines I built for the office
have done so when a disk when tits up in both of them recently.

I agree that the theory says you "should know" but if I can quote in part
from an item in PC Pro (UK) nov 2003 by Steve Cassidy, in talking about
RAID failures...
"I have never, ever, encountered a mirrored RAID setup that worked as
advertised"
"The gotcha isn't in the theoretical design, but rather in the failure
mode"

He goes onto say that while the systems might say they are working OK
behind
in the background they can be writing all sorts of duff data to the mirror
before they fail.

That's pure crap by some wacko you found somewhere.

He says that in effect you get what you pay for, big expesive RAID cards
are
"good" if you need data 24/7 and simple on motherboard systems/cards are
good if you wish to feel good at being with the "big boys" but dont think
you will get the same level of service from the system if things go AWOL.

BULL!