I murdered my hard drives!
Ron Knights
Posts: 2,112
Over the past 19 years, I've dragged millions of files around in order to setup my Poser and DAZ Studio files the way I wanted them. I'm convinced that all that file moving killed several of my hard drives.
I watched as the hard drives shuddered, "screamed," and often threatened to crash. The last of my desktop hard drives shows signs that it too is dying. I plan to start replacing my hard drive with 8TB desktop hard drives. It will take a few months.
I won't drag my files around any more. I'll rely on "DIM" to install the files!
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19 years? I don't think I have had one more than 5 or 6, LOL. I have started swapping mine out every 2-3 years and starting fresh with a fresh install of Windows also. This makes sense to me since I usually upgrade some parts at the same time, so it's like having a new PC, LOL
Honestly I don't think it makes much difference how much you move files, all hard drives will die it's a matter of when not if.
You did well I have several some not used much that died convieniently after the warranties ran out.
My oldert one is still going.
Moving files around on the same drive should be a relatively lightweight action, find the directory file it is in now delete the entry, find the new directory and add the entry for the new file.
Moving a file to a new drive is a much heavier operation as the data needs to be written to the other drive.
Drives can last for years in normal use. And what is described in the op is normal use. Things that tend to actually kill drives: running them hot, buying cheap ones, having too little RAM (swapping memory into the swapfile always involves a write operation so when you have maxed out your RAM and the activity light is going full blast that is very bad), having malware and/or viruses and failing to keep the drive defragmented (if the data contained in one file is all over the disk it will require a lot more spinning of the platters and a lot more moving the read head to get the data.).
Have you considered raiding a whole bunch of El'Cheapo drives? I think the sweet spot for spindle drives is about 3TB now, you could get 3 of the cheapest you can find and use them in a raid 5 config. Gives you double the bandwidth and if any 1 drive fails you're still good.
I've had many different computers since I started with a home-built PC and Poser in 1999. (I switched to DAZ Studio a few years later.) I'm now on my 3rd Macintosh computer. I normally drag and drop files. I sometimes use Forklift, a Mac file manager. Sometimes I just open two windows and drag and drop between them. On average, my hard drives last somewhere between 3-5 years. In the past, each "data" drive had another hard drive, with a clone backup of the original drive. Over the recent year it's been hard to maintain that ratio since some original desktop hard drives died.
Now, I'm quickly running out of hard drive space in my 3TB hard drives. That's why I'll go to a new 8TB hard drive later this month.
3 to 5 years is not an unusually short lifespan for drives that see regular use. BackBlaze is a major cloud storage provider and publishes failure rates for the enterprise drives they deploy. Those drives fail at between 1.6% and 1.8% per year. That does not mean drives should be expected to last 50 years. The failure rate goes up as drives age. BackBlaze retires their drives at around 50 months of deployment. Now these are enterprise grade drives, which in theory have significantly better reliability, but they are spinning 24/7 so things should sort of average out in regards to consumer drives. I'd guess that a lifespan of around 4 years is what to expect from consumer drives HDD's in normal, 8 hours (roughly) up time per day, usage.
It also really doesn't matter how you do the moves. All that really matters is if you're moving the file from one drive to another or doing a copy rather than a move or if you're simply moving it to a new directory on the same drive. A move on the same drive is very low impact. The other operations are much higher impact but still shouldn't seriously impact lifespan. I really doubt the way you handle files is leading to unusually short lifespans for your drives.
My personal solution for production is to keep the current project on ssd, and everything else on external backup. This works fast and keeps your data safe.
The only thing I can suggest: External drives, and using a strict system system for deciding what files go on which drive.
It's a long-term wish, but I'd totally love to have an external drive sometime dedicated to DAZ assets, and absolutely nothing else, so effectively, the contents of that drive would rarely change, except for occasionally adding new stuff and updates to the installed assets. In theory, such a drive should last quite a while.
Good reminder for everyone to back up your files.. ideally in two locations too. Also, actually check your back ups are working.. :)
There's little excuse these days not to, and it's a good habit to get into. For me, when I'm done for the day, I run KLS Backup, it backs up all the work folders onto my NAS, then turns the machine off.. so literally its a couple of clicks and it's done. Each work machine automatically images itself onto the NAS too once a week so I have a means to get a machine back up and running if something goes awry.
This is the most common-sense approach, but dragging files around has zero to do with hard drive wear and tear. And the same applies to SSDs too.
Agreed.
1. "new drive" meaning a different physical drive or a different drive partition on the samne physical drive.
2. But I disagree with the term "much heavier operation". Come on. I've got 8 and 10 TB backup hard drives that get 100% rewritten over the course or 3 or 4 backup cycles. Ever since my first backups taken with Acronis True Image in the 1990s (later changed to Macrium:Reflect), I've never had a backup drive fail due to "overuse", so I completely disagree with the implication of the words "much heavier operation" in the context of wear and tear. I've replaced my backup drives due to lack of capacity as my data content has grown over time, but never due to wear and tear.
I agree with the heat comment above. Heat kills everything.
RAIDing drives for what is mostly static data (such as your DAZ content library) is a wasteful and time-consuming use of RAID, and it's even less of a good idea to use cheap drives crammed into a small space that will undoubtedly generate significant heat.
RAID your database drives. Raid your NAS. I wouldn't bother setting up a RAID just for Victoria and all of her Gucci clothing.
8TB is a good choice. But are you ALSO planning to buy a couple of 12TB backup drives? Please do it right and budget for your backups ALONG WITH your new drive expansion plans.
This is very common-sense. The OP should stop worrying about this.
Also very common-sense.
Even this is too fussy for me. That's why I have all big SSDs and even bigger HDDs for the backups.
External drives can be very handy in certain situations, but they're not necessarily the Golden Ark of data strategies. Drive enclosures require more cables, sometimes a power supply, and space on your desk. They make noise, aren't always good at eliminating heat, and have to be kept track of, especially if you're on travel. For these reasons, I prefer larger INTERNAL SSD drives, with external drives only for backups or for temporary expansion (you know, until I can afford to enlarge the internal drives).
It's MUCH simpler to travel if I can throw my laptop into my backpack and one single external drive into my checked luggage. This allows me to have one or more recent backup cycles with me while on travel while also being able to keep taking backups over the course of a longer trip.
You could have been reading my signature!
But he's right, folks! 3 backups on 2 mediums with at least 1 copy stored offsite from the computer. This is called "321" backups. My backups have saved me from my own foolishness several times. And my foolishness has been the cause of data loss far more often than a hard drive failure. Since my first PC in the Gateway 486 days, I think I've had only 2 hard drive failures. One was new, the other was a couple years old. Neither was likelly due to "overuse" or "wear and tear".
In BOTH cases, my backups got me back to business.
In several OTHER cases, I deleted a data or program folder. In ALL of those cases, my backups got me back to business.
Amen..!
Thank you, everyone for your information. Just for the record, I have Macintosh computers. Most of my data is stored on external hard drives. One reason is the sheer amount of data that I use. I haven't done much work with DAZ Studio in the past year or so, but I do intend to get back into doing art. My main pursuit now is Genealogy (the family tree!)
1 exabyte = 1 Million Terrabytes.
Currently the largest single hard drive capacity is 3TB. They cost $200 each
1,000,000TB / 3TB per drive = You would need 333,334 of these hard drives.
333,334 * $200 each = A total cost of $66,666,800
So a 1 Exabyte hard drive would cost roughly $70 Million dollars.
I don't want to be that guy, but drives are bigger than 3Tb..I think its about 15 now.
the bigggest i haz is 5 gb
Are you running '98 or ME on it?
My datacenter has a lot of 14Tb's. Seagate just released 16Tb drives (at $550 each IIRC).
But tbh for home use, if I had enough data to warrant it, I'd get 10Tb drives. They're less than half what the 16's cost. 3Tb drives are not $200 you can get them for around $50 each on NewEgg.
Last time I ran the numbers my datacenter had roughly 25 petabytes of storage capacity.
Hmm , I've never murdered a hard drive with a hammer or bleach bit. like some folks have. . But do seem to use them up pretty fast. i just had to replace a 2TB storage drive that was going bad this week . it was 4 years old and my HD analyzer was showing a major slow down in the write speed that was my single to back up and replace it I have the NTI SSD performance analyzer, that comes with the plextor hard drives , it saved me a lot of heart ache over the last few years.
most SSD &HDD come with some type of hd analyzer
description below for those who don't know
http://windowsbulletin.com/files/exe/nti-corporation/performance-analyzer/ssd-performance-analyzer-exe#download
I found a box with 6 discarded drives in it last week
3 that caused Event Bluescreens
I am using 2 of those on my new Windows 10 machine no problems
I did run checkdisk and repairs on them and reformatted both to NTFS were FAT
but are working fine now
I guess it keeps things interesting.. :)
unfortunately win10, totally sux. i woulda stayed on winxp foreva
for win98, 5gb would prolly need to be partitioned to 2gb logical drives.
My problem is that external hdds always become extension for my pc hdds so in the end i need to back up BOTH pc drives and external drives..
madness
I had a HDD start to go bad and though I had backups (I do incremental to a external daily, merge those and store on NAS weekly).
But with re-installing applications and what have you, I was still "down" for a few days.
I'm wondering what the more experienced users than me here recommend as far as their back up regimen to reduce time to get back to work. I've seen recommendations of mirroring drives, but I would think that would not help if the drive had bad sectors type fail? Wouldn't the mirror copy the bad sectors? Do you make images of your disks to copy everything?
Avoiding a near-miss of data catastrophe has made me try to be more prudent. I thought my backup regimen was pretty good. I mean it worked.
But I have to wonder if I have holes (After the 3-2-1 talk, I'm looking into cloud storage options)
If you're concerned with downtime of that sort you have relatively few options.
1) You could acquire an identical drive to your boot drive/drive where you install most of your programs and mirror your in use drive to it on a regular schedule. This would be the likely most expensive but least downtime option.
2) Get a backup application that backs up your OS, registry and program files and do a full restore unattended. You'd still be down for a while but you could get the restore started and let it run overnight if needed.
Yea, in addition to what I said above, I use Acronis, to take weekly snapshots, and keep about 4 of them at a time (it does automatic verification etc too). You create recovery media, like a USB drive, and then it's simply a case of reimaging back to a good drive (doesnt need to be exact, just the same size or bigger).
Acronis does automatic verification too? I'll have to check that out.
That's the other paranoia I have, besides regularly doing a restore, how do you "know" your back up is good.
Yea.. I had it once where an image was bad, and ever since I've allways set it to verify each time. That, in addition to keeping a few copies should get you out of trouble.
It can also automatically copy the image to another location as well, but thats kinda redundant if you include it in your daily backups.. but options are good!
TerabyteUnlimited's Image for DOS does verify too (don't know about their Windows version). Been using it for many years and made hundreds of images on different computers, never had a corrupted image or other problems. All their disk tools are awesome.
At least the LaCie brand of RAIDs now use up to 14 TB drives.
Regarding backups... yes, yes and yes! For Mac users, I strongly suggest using Time Machine as that backs up hourly for the past 24 hours, then daily for x days, etc. Apple no longer sells their dedicated Time Capsule product, but that was limited to I think 3 TB and was insanely slow. These days I use a RAID 1 two drive unit, so my backups are mirroed for extra protection.
For mission-critical files, I spend 99 cents per month to get Apple's 50 GB iCloud storage and copy them there each week. That's more than enough space for my needs. But for offsite backups for larger sets of files (currently around 1 TB), I have two USB 3 external drives. One is always in a safety deposit box at our bank. Each month I back up to the drive in the house, then swap with the one at the bank. Solely having cloud backups are not possible for me as 1 TB would eat up the entire monthy internet quota of my provider and also cost a fortune.
I have had several die but I had dropped them on several occassions