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Number   :  4946
Date     :  2003-07-04
Author   :  james sadler
Subject  :  Re: Backup and Disk replacement --- just a thought
Size(KB) :  2


 Because of the speed at which the industry
has increased drive size and decreased prices the
thought of replacing hard drives sooner is more
acceptable. Right now life seems to start with a 100
gigabyte drive. In a years time I suppose that 200
Gigabytes will be about as small as one would get on a
new PC purchase. Most people don't want to be on the
bleeding edge when it comes to new gear but they do
want to stay in the ball park. To me that means buying
a new drive at about the two year mark unless the
trend increases. It would mean very little to buy at
18 months instead of 24 months.
--- Bob Weir  wrote:
> Kan said: -
> 
> > Most of us in computer management business, try to
> set up
> > and carry out a periodic backup regimen to avoid
> catastrophic
> > disk failures that we all know happens with rather
> almost
> > predictable fashion.
> 
> Yes, but the normal failure pattern is a "bathtub"
> shape with
> a modest number of early failures followed by a long
> stable
> period with few failures before the terminal
> failure. SMART
> should predict most failures and trigger replacement
> at a cost
> effective time. With hardware, "If it ain't bust
> don't fix
> it" is a good motto. There may be apparent merit in
> replacing
> one of a pair of disks used in an "XX cloned array"
> half way
> through it's expected life but replacing the pair
> when the
> first fails achieves the same result with less
> intervention.
> 
> > 1. If we accept the notion that wear-and-tear is
> somewhat
> > proportional to the amount of usage, then,
> it leads to
> > a conclusion that a daily-backup operation
> actually
> > increases the likelihood of failure.
> 
> I think this will be a marginal effect. Unlike
> other schemes
> the great (unsung) advantage for xxcopy is the
> incremental
> nature of /CLONE (or similar xxcopy switch
> groupings) that
> minimise disk activity during routine holistic
> backup. The
> decision to backup after certain periods or tasks is
> based on
> the value of the disk contents and the probability
> of that
> content becoming corrupted (more often by software
> than from
> breakdowns or cosmic rays?).
> I'm not in computer management but, for me,
> protecting the
> disk contents from corruption by software (e.g. by
> the use of
> routine XX cloning to a second disk) far outweighs
> any modest
> increase in the overall cost of ownership caused by
> increased
> wear and tear on the disks.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Bob Weir
> 
> 


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