My Computer Fried!!!!!!!! (Philly)

[Max Murdoc]

You have to be kidding me!

My Western Digital 500gig external hard drive crashed Friday night. They come with a motherboard which I have since found out, have a tendency to fail. I removed the casing and popped out the hard drive to connect right up to my base motherboard but found out that I need a SATA data cable. I can power up the drive (It turns into a cool little gyroscope which means it's turning which is good). I also found out that during a routine maintenance check about 3 months ago, my son disabled the backup we have setup and forgot to restart it. So, if the hard drive doesn't work I have lost close to 100gig of tunes.

I guess now is a good time to update the whole system. New motherboard, new dual core processor, new power supply, new DVD/CD burner, 2 500 gig Hitachi internal hard drives along with the 120 gig internal drive that is already in there and switch from Win 2000 to Vista. My X-Treme soundcard and video card are still pretty new so no need to replace. I have a Hanns-G 19" LCD monitor that is a year old so it stays too.

I prefer to build my own systems ever since I had a really bad experience with a Gateway I bought quite awhile back. It may cost me a little bit more to custom build a system but I have found that they last longer than a brand name. The system I'm using now is almost 5 years old and the only problem I had with it was the power supply.

I guess my $600 bucks from George will come in handy now.

[Frau_Blucher]

This came in the mail today - 1 Terabyte of RAID'd and Mirror'd goodness. I'm done fucking around.

<img src="http://www.3dnews.ru/_imgdata/img/2007/09/13/59517.jpg">

[MikeP]

[quote][i]Originally posted by Blir[/i]
<br>This came in the mail today - 1 Terabyte of RAID'd and Mirror'd goodness. I'm done fucking around.

<img src="http://www.3dnews.ru/_imgdata/img/2007/09/13/59517.jpg">
[/quote]
At least until that solar/EM storm of armageddon proportions comes along![;)]

Seriously though, that's a pretty kewl rig![8D]

[Jefe]

[quote][i]Originally posted by Blir[/i]
<br>This came in the mail today - 1 Terabyte of RAID'd and Mirror'd goodness. I'm done fucking around.

<img src="http://www.3dnews.ru/_imgdata/img/2007/09/13/59517.jpg">
[/quote]
Blir, if you'd be so kind...Who makes that and why is it better than any alternative. I have yet to have a Western Digital My Book crash, but I am running out of room.

[coop41]

[quote][i]Originally posted by Jefe[/i]
<br>[quote][i]Originally posted by Blir[/i]
<br>This came in the mail today - 1 Terabyte of RAID'd and Mirror'd goodness. I'm done fucking around.

<img src="http://www.3dnews.ru/_imgdata/img/2007/09/13/59517.jpg">
[/quote]
Blir, if you'd be so kind...Who makes that and why is it better than any alternative. I have yet to have a Western Digital My Book crash, but I am running out of room.
[/quote]


My WD My Book crashed in less than 5 months [:(][xx(]

[Frau_Blucher]

[quote][i]Originally posted by Jefe[/i]
<br>Blir, if you'd be so kind...Who makes that and why is it better than any alternative. I have yet to have a Western Digital My Book crash, but I am running out of room.
[/quote]
I have a feeling that it's all a random crapshoot. I have a WD 80gig that's been around for 3 years with no problems. I also have a tiny 250gig WD pocket drive that's been perfect too. But all my other drives going back about 15 years have been LaCie's. I have a 10 year old 20gig SCSI drive that still works great. My buddies in the sports photography and video business all use LaCie's and beat the tar out of them. To date, this is the first LaCie that any of us can think of that's gone bad.

The downside is that they come at a premium. The bigger downside for this one is that it's an over-engineered configurable RAID (level 0, 1, JBOD), so probably way overkill for storing music. If I take this 1TB drive and mirror it, it gives me 500GB of effective storage for over twice the price of a regular 500GB drive.

[Frau_Blucher]

Late-breaking - and possibly embarrassing - news. After some trouble-shooting, LaCie tech support sent over a new power brick saying they'd had a rash of issues with their (stupid) proprietary connection. That's all it was. The drive wasn't bad after all...not even after I shook it several times to see if that would make it better. LaCie's still got a perfect track record with me...but I just dropped a load of cash on a RAID for nothing! [B)]

Well, not totally for nothing - it was an excuse to splurge on the cool RAID. [:p]

[Jefe]

[quote][i]Originally posted by Blir[/i]
<br>[quote][i]Originally posted by Jefe[/i]
<br>Blir, if you'd be so kind...Who makes that and why is it better than any alternative. I have yet to have a Western Digital My Book crash, but I am running out of room.
[/quote]
I have a feeling that it's all a random crapshoot. I have a WD 80gig that's been around for 3 years with no problems. I also have a tiny 250gig WD pocket drive that's been perfect too. But all my other drives going back about 15 years have been LaCie's. I have a 10 year old 20gig SCSI drive that still works great. My buddies in the sports photography and video business all use LaCie's and beat the tar out of them. To date, this is the first LaCie that any of us can think of that's gone bad.
[/quote]

Thanks, the LaCie site has a lot of cool products to choose from.

[Frau_Blucher]

Okay, I hope this doesn't come off as bragging by any stretch. I just wanted to illustrate the extent of the paranoia that my latest hard drive troubles have taken me to. My drive stack as of today:

<img src="http://www.pbase.com/myirwin/image/95382484/original.jpg">

A: Secondary CD/DVD burner for archiving the critical stuff
B: Lacie 1TB Primary Music and Video RAID (it is large)
C: Lacie 250GB Backup drive to my internal 250G drive
D: Lacie 500GB Backup drive to the Music drive
E: Lacie 500GB drive for video and archival projects

Counting the 250GB pocket drive I have and the kids'/wifey's 320GB backup drive for their computers, it's kinda crazy that I have over 3 terabytes of storage in my home that are really nothing more than suburban accessory.

Shit, they're all in one location though. I'm off to look for offsite storage! [B)]

[eight6]

[quote][i]Originally posted by Blir[/i]
<br>Okay, I hope this doesn't come off as bragging by any stretch. I just wanted to illustrate the extent of the paranoia that my latest hard drive troubles have taken me to. My drive stack as of today:

<img src="http://www.pbase.com/myirwin/image/95382484/original.jpg">

A: Secondary CD/DVD burner for archiving the critical stuff
B: Lacie 1TB Primary Music and Video RAID (it is large)
C: Lacie 250GB Backup drive to my internal 250G drive
D: Lacie 500GB Backup drive to the Music drive
E: Lacie 500GB drive for video and archival projects

Counting the 250GB pocket drive I have and the kids'/wifey's 320GB backup drive for their computers, it's kinda crazy that I have over 3 terabytes of storage in my home that are really nothing more than suburban accessory.

Shit, they're all in one location though. I'm off to look for offsite storage! [B)]
[/quote]


I've been thinking that one possible reason for my ext. HD crash was that I had them stacked like you do. I had a 500 GB drive for music, and a 250 GB drive for other files. The 500 GB drive was the lower of the two, and was only about 18 months old when it failed. It was, unfortunately, about 75% full. Any thoughts on whether that caused your failure?

With 3 TB, instead of looking for offsite storage, you should be offering the service to people like me.

<a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z302/eight6pics/letmein7-1.jpg" border="0" alt="Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket"></a>

[Frau_Blucher]

[quote][i]Originally posted by eight6[/i]
<br>I've been thinking that one possible reason for my ext. HD crash was that I had them stacked like you do. I had a 500 GB drive for music, and a 250 GB drive for other files. The 500 GB drive was the lower of the two, and was only about 18 months old when it failed. It was, unfortunately, about 75% full. Any thoughts on whether that caused your failure?

With 3 TB, instead of looking for offsite storage, you should be offering the service to people like me.[/quote]
No can do eight6 - I've got a stack of Ethel Merman records to rip and won't have a byte to spare.

I don't know about the stacking. And for me, it turned out that the drive merely had a bad connection - mechanism was fine. It might be different for other drives, but these D2 enclosures are heavy metal affairs with little feet that are designed for stacking. Who knows though...all that constant resonance vibration when spinning up and down.

[Jefe]

You know, not to try to add to your paranoia, but what if any of those devices caught fire? In your current arrangement you might lose all (Ever since my furnace caught fire several years ago I think of things like this). I have actually contemplated buying an extra 1 terabyte external and keeping it at a friend's.

[Frau_Blucher]

[quote][i]Originally posted by Jefe[/i]
<br>You know, not to try to add to your paranoia, but what if any of those devices caught fire? In your current arrangement you might lose all (Ever since my furnace caught fire several years ago I think of things like this). I have actually contemplated buying an extra 1 terabyte external and keeping it at a friend's.
[/quote]
Damn you.

[eight6]

[quote][i]Originally posted by Blir[/i]
<br>[quote][i]Originally posted by Jefe[/i]
<br>You know, not to try to add to your paranoia, but what if any of those devices caught fire? In your current arrangement you might lose all (Ever since my furnace caught fire several years ago I think of things like this). I have actually contemplated buying an extra 1 terabyte external and keeping it at a friend's.
[/quote]
Damn you.
[/quote]

LOL...just install a sprinkler system over the stack of HDs.

<a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z302/eight6pics/letmein7-1.jpg" border="0" alt="Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket"></a>

[Jefe]

A sprinkler system would work, but think of the mess if it goes off. A better solution would be to store your data off site. But not too far off site.
The west coast is definitely out. Somewhere on the east coast would do nicely, but be careful. Another terrorist strike at the financial district of New York could also wipe out your music what if they got a suitcase nuke or other such device. You probably need to store it much further south, somewhere where there is a constant controlled temperature and humidity, say Florida for example.
Not south Florida though, that's too crowded & too much crime. Not west Florida either, too low lying and prone to flooding. What you need is to do is to store your music in a concrete block constructed building in the middle of Florida, somewhere around Melbourne. Yeah that's it, Melbourne.[8D]