Very Computer

by **Dan Min** » Thu, 22 May 1997 04:00:00

I've been a fan of Linux for a long time but I've been having
a recurring problem with hard drives.

In the past 1.5 years, I've had 3 HDs die at about 9 months
from installation date. I bring this up because #4 is about to happen
and I installed it back in August. :)

I've been with Linux for 6 years and now I'm having this problem of
HDs not even making a year. [Before, my old 80 and 420 HDs are still
ticking after 4 years :)]

Has anyone had similar problems? Is today's HDs just not meant for
a multitasking/user system?

For a little background, I've gotten two totally new computers during
this time. I've moved (meaning different power) and still these drive
are dying.

I've favored Conner until recently (two of my drives where Conner 1.2GB)
and now a Western Digital 1.2GB is just* on (installed in August
when my last 1.2 Conner crashed). Another tend: It has always been
my boot (Primary-Master) drive to die. The WB is my boot drive and today I
spend 30 mins trying to get life back into it. It seems to be position
senitive now. :)

TIA,
Dan

by **Deus Ex Machi** » Thu, 22 May 1997 04:00:00

I also have had similar problems and am extreemly glad to hear that I am not the
only one. Lets get together thru email and compare systems and specs and such
and see if we can find points of convergence.

My dying drive isnt my primary/boot (on ide 0) it is whatever the linux drive is
(the / partition particularly)

my dmesg's show drive not ready this occurs about 6-12 months after installing
the drive..

get ahold of me via email and we will try to figure out what it is.

jeff

by **Tim** » Thu, 22 May 1997 04:00:00

> > I've been a fan of Linux for a long time but I've been having
> > a recurring problem with hard drives.

> Odd, that. I've been using Linux (on Quantum and Fujitsu disks) for
> about five years, too. No failures on any disks. The oldest is about 4
> years now, and humming along just fine. I don't power off, except during
> * thunderstorms. We had _lots_ of Maxtor and WD drives fail in the
> field over a one year span some time ago, and have since not used them,
> and (shudder) Conner? ack. bleah.

Been running Linux since Dec. 1991, and have never had a failure. The
oldest drives still in use are also 4 year old Maxtors, along with
Conners, Quantums, WDs and even a Seagate. All machines run 24/7 and all
machines are protected with UPSs.

Keeping my fingers crossed. :)

--
Tim Sweeney Harborhi Consultants Boothbay Harbor, Maine

Not valid in all 50 states. Void where prohibited.
The contents of this post are for entertainment purposes only.

by **dstrit** » Thu, 22 May 1997 04:00:00

> I've been a fan of Linux for a long time but I've been having
> a recurring problem with hard drives.

> In the past 1.5 years, I've had 3 HDs die at about 9 months
> from installation date. I bring this up because #4 is about to happen
> and I installed it back in August. :)

Dan,

This sounds very scary. What kind of usage do your drives typically
get (e.g., single-user vs. server)? Do you leave them on all the time?

Having recently transfered over from Windows, one thing I have noticed
with my two Western Digital drives (850 & 2.1) are that they seem to
"chatter" at a higher frequency than under DOS. I have attributed
this to the smaller inode/block/cluster configuration of the
ext2 filesystem.

When I read about your troubles I started to wonder whether the arm
mechanisms on an ext2 system have to seek clusters that are closer
together and might sustain more wear and tear... You can tell I'm
not an engineer! Does someone out there know enough about drives
to offer an opinion about the relationship between wear and tear
and cluster/size. I suppose memory utilization esp. swap-file usage
must play a role.

A related issue to drive failure which may or may not be relative
to a high frequency of Linux drive failures is ventilation.
I have never been satisfied with the ventilation systems on PCs. With
Pentium chips and minimal ventialation from a single power supply fan, I
know most PCs run hot even in an air-conditioned environment. And those
Pentium-chip fans are a joke. When the cheap fan on my Pentium failed
after 9 months, I bought a 15$ 5-inch cooling fan and ran a hose inside
the case and anchored it over right over the heat sink. It looks ugly
and makes a lot of racket, but my Pentium stays <100 degrees. I also
leave the case cracked open.

To summarize, (sorry for ranting) when you look at at serious server or
a rackmount/hardened PC system, you see a lot of massive and redundant
ventilation that you don't see on your basic PC. And realistically,
many single-users and networked PCs are punished day in and day out.
This has got to affect your drives...

Daniel Strite

by **Jay Thorn** » Fri, 23 May 1997 04:00:00

<snip!>
> Dan,

> This sounds very scary. What kind of usage do your drives typically
> get (e.g., single-user vs. server)? Do you leave them on all the time?

Quote:> Daniel Strite

Guys, hold your horses. No need to get alarmed. Yes Dan M has a
problem, but it is very likely not Linux. Its probably his
power supply.

What, you say? But I moved.... I mean inside the unit. Ac to DC
conversion/ regulation. They output +5, +12 and (I think) -12V. An
extra hot or weak +12V line (meaning its outputting 10 or 14 volts) can
fry the motor on a disk drive reeeeallly easy given 6 months to work.
Extra heat and all that stuff too. Heat can degrade the motor speed
regulating components really easy and make them more sensitive. You need
a constant HD speed to get a 'ready' signal on an IDE bus.

If you can, try a new PS. No need for a new motherboard, probably. A
220W PS in a mid-tower case was about $120 last time I checked. Try
that before you spend too much money. You may need a new HD too,
because the old one might be damaged, but try a PS first (and get a
backup, pronto!)

When you moved, you didn't change your power supply unit did you? Didn't
think so.

A It would never show up as cpu errors because the cpu uses the +5 and
(sometimes) +3.3 Volts.

by **Lee Mais** » Fri, 23 May 1997 04:00:00

Hmmm Very strange.... I thought it was just me.

I have had this happen to both IDE and SCSI drives. I wonder if the quality of consumer
drives has gone way down. I don't think Linux is directly doing it, but I think that it
may put more demands on the equipment than a DOG/WinHoze box.

BTW: I love your Tagline.

END THE SPAM!!!
BTW2: If all of us "spam Haters" would get together and make it really hard physically
for the major (Spamford wallace of *Promotions to name one) to conduct their
spam business, they would quit.

There should be a National SPAM Floodping Day, in which we get tens of thousands of
anti-spam ppl to nail *Promo's boxen. :) Naaaahh.

>> I've been a fan of Linux for a long time but I've been having
>> a recurring problem with hard drives.

>> In the past 1.5 years, I've had 3 HDs die at about 9 months
>> from installation date. I bring this up because #4 is about to happen
>> and I installed it back in August. :)

>> I've been with Linux for 6 years and now I'm having this problem of
>> HDs not even making a year. [Before, my old 80 and 420 HDs are still
>> ticking after 4 years :)]

>> Has anyone had similar problems? Is today's HDs just not meant for
>> a multitasking/user system?

by **Dan Min** » Sat, 24 May 1997 04:00:00

: >

: > >
: <snip!>
: > Dan,
: >
: > This sounds very scary. What kind of usage do your drives typically
: > get (e.g., single-user vs. server)? Do you leave them on all the time?

No, I don't typically leave it on for long streches of time. Two weeks
max.

: Guys, hold your horses. No need to get alarmed. Yes Dan M has a
: problem, but it is very likely not Linux. Its probably his
: power supply.

: What, you say? But I moved.... I mean inside the unit. Ac to DC
: conversion/ regulation. They output +5, +12 and (I think) -12V. An
: extra hot or weak +12V line (meaning its outputting 10 or 14 volts) can
: fry the motor on a disk drive reeeeallly easy given 6 months to work.
: Extra heat and all that stuff too. Heat can degrade the motor speed
: regulating components really easy and make them more sensitive. You need
: a constant HD speed to get a 'ready' signal on an IDE bus.

Nope. In my original post, I stated I've had many computers (three to
be exact) with this re-occuring problem.

I agree about not getting alarmed. I beginning to think it's WD, Seagate, etc.
justing making bad assumptions (about access patterns and such).
For example, Seagate's auto-powerdown stuff can kill the drive in a
Linux system as the root partition. It's the spin-up--spin-down--spin-up
pattern that blows the motor.

: If you can, try a new PS. No need for a new motherboard, probably. A
: 220W PS in a mid-tower case was about $120 last time I checked. Try
: that before you spend too much money. You may need a new HD too,
: because the old one might be damaged, but try a PS first (and get a
: backup, pronto!)

: When you moved, you didn't change your power supply unit did you? Didn't
: think so.

Yes.. I did.

The reason I don't this is my problem is simply that fact that I have
multiple drives of similar age. It's the boot/root drive that dies.

I'm seriously considering getting a Quantum Fireball for my boot drive
and see what happens.

Later,
Dan

BTW, I'm not completely alone in this situation. Others have commented
of having a problem like this recently too.

by **Steve J. Earenfig** » Sun, 25 May 1997 04:00:00

><snip!>
>> Dan,

>> This sounds very scary. What kind of usage do your drives typically
>> get (e.g., single-user vs. server)? Do you leave them on all the time?

{sbip}
> Its probably his
>power supply.

>What, you say? But I moved.... I mean inside the unit. Ac to DC
>conversion/ regulation.

I have found out that if the power supply was from a old machine to drive
some MFM drives, it needs a load and the newer HD take very little of a
load. I put in a NEW 1.2 Gig HD and was shutting down after a minute. The
voltage creeped up to 14+ Volts and thank goodness the HD had some
protective circuits to SHORT out the 12Volt line, resetting everything,
only to happen all over again a few minutes later.

by **roo** » Tue, 27 May 1997 04:00:00

: I've been a fan of Linux for a long time but I've been having
: a recurring problem with hard drives.
:
: In the past 1.5 years, I've had 3 HDs die at about 9 months
: from installation date. I bring this up because #4 is about to happen
: and I installed it back in August. :)
:
: I've been with Linux for 6 years and now I'm having this problem of
: HDs not even making a year. [Before, my old 80 and 420 HDs are still
: ticking after 4 years :)]
:
: Has anyone had similar problems? Is today's HDs just not meant for
: a multitasking/user system?
Well, the WD Caviar 420 wasn't 8-). I went through 5. Boy, they must
have loved me.. each would get a new warrantee and die just before it ran
out (except the 5th.) I went through 2 or 3 then got a new primary drive
and used them as just spare storage.. and they still died.
On the other hand I have a Gateway 2000 with a WD that is about 800
megs, and about the same age as the 1st WD 420 and is just fine. Different
machine though *shrug*.

: For a little background, I've gotten two totally new computers during
: this time. I've moved (meaning different power) and still these drive
: are dying.
:
: I've favored Conner until recently (two of my drives where Conner 1.2GB)
: and now a Western Digital 1.2GB is just* on (installed in August
: when my last 1.2 Conner crashed). Another tend: It has always been
: my boot (Primary-Master) drive to die. The WB is my boot drive and today I
: spend 30 mins trying to get life back into it. It seems to be position
: senitive now. :)
Fujitsus seem to be good, mine is going fine. Also IBM drives.. I have
a 1.6gig Fujitsu (IDE) and a 1.0gig IBM (SCSI) and both are all good. The
only "problem" I had was a scare when I thought the IBM failed completely...
the SCSI cable had worked loose 8-).

by **David Suga** » Tue, 27 May 1997 04:00:00

> : I've been a fan of Linux for a long time but I've been having
> : a recurring problem with hard drives.
> :
> : In the past 1.5 years, I've had 3 HDs die at about 9 months
> : from installation date. I bring this up because #4 is about to happen
> : and I installed it back in August. :)
> :

I generally run a 24-7 Linux Server, and, over the years, I have had two
drives fail completely and one have a bad sector occur. This does not
surprise me, as the 'mean' life expectancy for most drives commonly out on
the market is based on 'normal' use, and that machines is busy ALL THE TIME
:). I run SCSI exclusively.

In this time, I had two drives fail completely (unformattable, maybe a head
broke loose??!). The first drive to fail on me was an old Baracuda drive.
The other was a recent HP 2gig drive, and it happened the time I powered
the server down (properly), moved it 10 feet across the room, and then
powered it back up, only to have it die an hour later! The 'replacement'
drive developed a bad sector a few months later, but apparently in a place
fsck was not prepared to deal with it, as a fsck would always lock the
kernel up when it hit that spot (Adaptec 2940 driver bug). All other files
on the drive could be copied off. I only once had a file system become
corrupt in any way on a running system without any apparent hardware
failure in all this time, (and I have 'improperly' powered down and have
had unexpected power loss. fsck always fixed this during boot without data
loss. I once saw a Win95 system go down unexpectedly, come up, and then
systematically scandisk itself into filesystem oblivion - systematically
expanding many files by several megabytes and removing others :), and,
oddly enough, that happened only recently, and on a recent kernel (2.0.18).

I would be interested in knowing if you keep replacing the 'dead' drive
with the same brand or mfg. Since one can actually do concurrent work on a
Linux machine, drive utilization can potentially be considerably higher
than under Windows, depending on how it's being used. Right now, I have a
different problem; my mice keep dying! I have quite a collection of dead
mice. A mouse lasts about 9 months, at most, here!

by **Deus Ex Machi** » Wed, 28 May 1997 04:00:00

[snip]

Quote:> I would be interested in knowing if you keep replacing the 'dead' drive
> with the same brand or mfg. Since one can actually do concurrent work on a
> Linux machine, drive utilization can potentially be considerably higher
> than under Windows, depending on how it's being used. Right now, I have a
> different problem; my mice keep dying! I have quite a collection of dead
> mice. A mouse lasts about 9 months, at most, here!

I have had a similar problem and it is with various drives and with various mfg's
(seagate, wd, maxtor and connor.) It is not the power supply (as another helpful
person mentioned) as I have 4 drives hooked to that power supply. It just kills
the / partition (and others but the / partition is the one that will hurt the
sytstem.) about every 9 months to a year. I haven't moved the system or
anything. This is a problem that I have heard of from about 4 other people and I
believe that it needs to be addressed.

by **David E. F** » Sun, 01 Jun 1997 04:00:00

>I generally run a 24-7 Linux Server, and, over the years, I have had two
>drives fail completely and one have a bad sector occur. This does not
>surprise me, as the 'mean' life expectancy for most drives commonly out on
>the market is based on 'normal' use, and that machines is busy ALL THE TIME
>:). I run SCSI exclusively.

Well, I have yet to have a drive fail on me, apart from that old
Seagate 1144A I originally used (that only lasted 18 months or so). My
twin Maxtors (one purchased only last November, and my other one I
got in September 1993) still are working as well as they did when I
first bought them. The drives do get rather heavy use, as now I have
a slrnpull session twice a day, and I've run a small newsfeed on the
older Maxtor drive for over half of its life. That's in addition to
all the extra stuff, kernel compiling, mail, swapping, upgrading stuff,
which all tend to contribute to the ever-changing magnetic patterns
on the drives. :)

Quote:>different problem; my mice keep dying! I have quite a collection of dead
>mice. A mouse lasts about 9 months, at most, here!

My mice don't die, but since I smoke, they aren't nearly as responsive
as in my work environment. I'm often been agressively pushing the mouse
around just to get something done. That's one reason I like keyboards
better - less strenuous effort required. And of course, the one thing
here that goes dead every once in a while is the keyboard.

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
David E. Fox Tax Thanks for letting me

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

by **David E. F** » Sun, 01 Jun 1997 04:00:00

>I generally run a 24-7 Linux Server, and, over the years, I have had two
>drives fail completely and one have a bad sector occur. This does not
>surprise me, as the 'mean' life expectancy for most drives commonly out on
>the market is based on 'normal' use, and that machines is busy ALL THE TIME
>:). I run SCSI exclusively.

Well, I have yet to have a drive fail on me, apart from that old
Seagate 1144A I originally used (that only lasted 18 months or so). My
twin Maxtors (one purchased only last November, and my other one I
got in September 1993) still are working as well as they did when I
first bought them. The drives do get rather heavy use, as now I have
a slrnpull session twice a day, and I've run a small newsfeed on the
older Maxtor drive for over half of its life. That's in addition to
all the extra stuff, kernel compiling, mail, swapping, upgrading stuff,
which all tend to contribute to the ever-changing magnetic patterns
on the drives. :)

Quote:>different problem; my mice keep dying! I have quite a collection of dead
>mice. A mouse lasts about 9 months, at most, here!

My mice don't die, but since I smoke, they aren't nearly as responsive
as in my work environment. I'm often been agressively pushing the mouse
around just to get something done. That's one reason I like keyboards
better - less strenuous effort required. And of course, the one thing
here that goes dead every once in a while is the keyboard.

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
David E. Fox Tax Thanks for letting me

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

by **Andre van Eyss** » Tue, 03 Jun 1997 04:00:00

>> : I've been a fan of Linux for a long time but I've been having
>> : a recurring problem with hard drives.
>> :
>> : In the past 1.5 years, I've had 3 HDs die at about 9 months
>> : from installation date. I bring this up because #4 is about to happen
>> : and I installed it back in August. :)
>> :
>than under Windows, depending on how it's being used. Right now, I have a
>different problem; my mice keep dying! I have quite a collection of dead
>mice. A mouse lasts about 9 months, at most, here!

I went through 6 cheapo mice in 8 months - all under warranty. Finally, I bit the bullet and
bought a logitech that has lasted years. I sacrificed 4 of those mice in one month - the time
it took to finish Ultima Underworld :-)

--
Andre van Eyssen,
Kaelos Computing. (T4216908)

"One who is not wise himself cannot be well advised"
---Machiavelli
The Prince s23

Very Computer

Could Linux be killing HDs?

Could Linux be killing HDs?

Could Linux be killing HDs?

Could Linux be killing HDs?

Could Linux be killing HDs?

Could Linux be killing HDs?

Could Linux be killing HDs?

Could Linux be killing HDs?

Could Linux be killing HDs?

Could Linux be killing HDs?

Could Linux be killing HDs?

Could Linux be killing HDs?

Could Linux be killing HDs?

Could Linux be killing HDs?

Could Linux be killing HDs?