[wplug] OT - word of warning on Maxtor 250GB drives

[Vanco, Don]

Drew from Zhrodague [drew at zhrodague.net] <theoretically > put forth the
following electrons on :

> > Fair enough.  How's this:
> > Of the Seagate drives I've owned in the past 12 months, 50% have
> > failed, of the Maxtor, 25% of the 250's and 50% of the 120s.  Of the
> > Hitachi 250's I've had (4) none have even hiccupped (now I've likely
> > jinxed myself).  Seagate SATAs seem to suck it exceptionally hard.
> > Drive quality waxes and wanes with manufacturers - but IMO both
> > Seagate and Maxtor are at an all-time low.
> 
>  	Wow, dude, I'd say you got some bad power, or you have
> cheap-ass power supplies. I don't have anywhere near that
> failure rate, and I am pretty hard on my disks.

Actually - I do have lousy power here in Hooterville - so every PC and
laptop (and TiVo) are on a conditioned UPS.  As far as power supplies -
nope, every machine I have runs an Antec.  Of course, I have no control
over the quality of the power in the little USB housings that I have, so
that's certainly a point of possible contention, and something I've
discussed with my coworkers.  I'm now switching to a standard PC power
supply and one of the little USB "cable heads" that allows for USB
connection of IDE drives.  We'll see how that works.  However I have
already learned that if you connect one of those little things and are
off by one pin on the edge connector you will smoke both the adapter and
the USB port it's plugged into..... in quite spectacular fashion I might
add....

The systems in question are:
Dell Dimension 8500 (P4)
Home built Intel MoBo based server (P-III)
Shuttle XPC (P4, SATA)
Dell 5100 Laptop
IBM T41 Laptop

What I do to these drives to kill them:
Install in a PeeCee, "long" format as NTFS with 4096k block size
	(please don't give me any grief over using Windoze - it's where
all tools work the best)
Insert in USB housing, attach to laptop, blast with data from 2 TiVos
via proprietary TiVo x-fer protocol (modified FTP I'm sure) Write
intensive.
Generate a GOP editing file (essentially a group of JPEGs taken every 50
frames or so) Read and Write intensive.  I try to read from one and
write to another (as it's much faster) but do not always have that
luxury
Edit the file using the GOP (read intensive)
Compile the video from TiVo proprietary to MPEG or MJPEG (Read and Write
intensive)
Once full with compiled video the devices are installed in a server, and
typically I will need to x-fer shows back & forth across them to
maintain some semblance of order.
>From this point on they are pretty much just read-only.  I will have one
or two USB drives set aside that I compile DVDs on.  This again is
incredibly Read & Write intensive as the files are de-muxed to elemental
streams then recompiled to DVD-compliant VOBs.
As the drives full in this process I defrag them, generally once they
hit aboot 60% capacity.

All my drives are kept in open air where possible as they all get
cooking hot during this process.  Those that are in PeeCees are cooled
adequately.  The Seagates aren't bad, but the Maxtors get SMOKIN' hot.


Oh - and (no lie) - I went to boot my Dell laptop last night and the
Hitachi drive in it is going bad.  I knew I'd jinx myself....