Hard drive failiures

dan1987 · 1 Aug 2007 at 20:34

I am thinking of trying out RAID for the first time when I order some more hard drives and from my research I keep reading about the risks of when a hard drive fails.

How many of you have had a hard drive fail? I have never had a hard drive fail on me and was wondering how common an occurence it was.

semi-pro waster · 1 Aug 2007 at 20:44

If you do a quick search for an old thread called "First Hard Drive Failure" then that might give you a few ideas.

I've never had a drive fail properly but I have had a couple drop out of a Raid array and not work in it again unless I reformatted.

Greenlizard0 · 1 Aug 2007 at 21:23

I've always been curious about that.

I'm about to setup a RAID 1 to add to me RAID 0, and the thought has just occured to me - if one disk does fail - how do you know which one it is? :confused:

dan1987 · 1 Aug 2007 at 21:24

Had a look through that thread and it seems to be quite rare.

I think I just need to decide wheather I would care if I lost everything!

dan1987 · 1 Aug 2007 at 21:28

Greenlizard0 said:
if one disk does fail - how do you know which one it is?

Good point, I have never even thought about that!

semi-pro waster · 1 Aug 2007 at 21:46

The Raid controller can tell you as far as I am aware, SMART reporting (Speedfan is one program that does this) will probably also tell you.

Greenlizard0 · 1 Aug 2007 at 22:58

semi-pro waster said:
The Raid controller can tell you as far as I am aware, SMART reporting (Speedfan is one program that does this) will probably also tell you.

What if a failed disk is part of an operating system e.g. RAID 0 - how you would you be able to tell then? I really should have thought about that haha.

SMART reporting, some bios can give you a low down on these can't they? :confused:

fobose · 1 Aug 2007 at 23:03

Greenlizard0 said:
how do you know which one it is?

Most raid controller software will say what "port" the hard drive is on, so you just need to look at your motherboard for the same port number.

how random · 1 Aug 2007 at 23:58

dan1987 said:
How many of you have had a hard drive fail? I have never had a hard drive fail on me and was wondering how common an occurence it was.

It will happen to you one day, i have had 3 hdds fail on me in 1 year, just unlucky i guess

Has tought be the value of back ups though, as i never used to before the first one failed

Jokester · 2 Aug 2007 at 00:01

dan1987 said:
I think I just need to decide wheather I would care if I lost everything!

If you care about losing stuff you should be backing it up regardless of it being a single drive or a RAID 0 array, the difference in reliability isn't that big considering how small the chance of one disk failing.

Jokester

dan1987 · 2 Aug 2007 at 06:34

Jokester said:
If you care about losing stuff you should be backing it up regardless of it being a single drive or a RAID 0 array, the difference in reliability isn't that big considering how small the chance of one disk failing.

Jokester

This is why I am considering going for RAID 0 as I know all the data wouldnt be important enough for me to bother to back up anyway wheather it is on a single disc or a RAID 0 set up.