Guest ThunderRiver Posted March 27, 2003 Share Posted March 27, 2003 I recently came across with this topic from SlashDot, and it raises up a very interesting point regarding the heat versus vibration that can cause hard drive damage.Since I am a mobile user, I would say that heat is the death enemy for the laptop, especially for very long sustained amount of time. I have 3 IBM TravelStar replaced because of that.As for my new laptop, after only less than 4 months, my Fujitsu 40 gig 4200 RPM has hard drive controller error and have read problem as well. What do you guys think? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted March 27, 2003 Share Posted March 27, 2003 Heat? Vibration? .... Vibration? Heat? Tough question :)I choose both...because it depends on the circumstances; * Type of hard drive (one year buy only IBM drives, two years later they are dogs)* What type of computer (notebook or desktop)* The care an individual takes of their computer (maintenance, protection) However, I do somewhat lean toward the heat side overall, at least with today's hard drives.Of course it all starts with our need for speed. Particularly as the hard drive technologies try to keep up with our bloated OSes, programs and huge file manipulations needs in order to do just about anything on a computer these days.Here are a few articles for consideration:Spindle Motor OperationHard Disk DrivesSystem and Drive Cooling AND Noise and Vibration Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stryder Posted March 27, 2003 Share Posted March 27, 2003 As far as which one is worse, I would say heat. Unless your hard drive is being treated like a baby's rattle. But under normal operations, I would say the heat. Although they both can bring about the death of a drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ThunderRiver Posted March 27, 2003 Share Posted March 27, 2003 Well, for laptop hard drive, I seem to find they need more gentle care than desktop hard drives mainly because they can't take a lot of shock and vibration. On the other hand, if the hard drive gets too hot, hard drives tend to refuse to boot in the long run. 3 IBM TravelStar went down just because of that.ThunderRIver Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jomama Posted March 29, 2003 Share Posted March 29, 2003 It is hard to generalize because laptops are subjected to both and desktops are not usually subjected to vibration.But Heat is the biggest killer I think. Todays machines have 2 or more drives in the 5" bays and when the HD is put in there too, it doenst leave much room for cooling.Also it brings to mind the old question of whether or not to let the HD run all the time or use the Turn off HD in Power Management mode. I have less trouble never turning them off and all three on this NW run 24-7. My theory is that the turning off and on is more damaging than letting them run.Just my $.02 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ThunderRiver Posted March 30, 2003 Share Posted March 30, 2003 agreed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
muckshifter Posted March 30, 2003 Share Posted March 30, 2003 None of the above … wear-n-tear is the most common factor of HD failure.For what it’s worth Fujitsu no longer make HD’s … It may be due to the fact, as far as I am concerned, that they made crap HD’s. I had nine, within two months, returned to me faulty or dead. I could only replace two under warrantee. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted March 30, 2003 Share Posted March 30, 2003 We still have working MFM and RLL drives! Shame they don't make drives like they used to .... course we don't have computers that will make use of them anymore ... they died before the drives Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Posted March 31, 2003 Share Posted March 31, 2003 Thunder...Glad to see more than me reading Slashdot.org (it's my homepage)...LilBambi...Yeah too bad I really miss their full height size and their teeth rattling reads and writes... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted March 31, 2003 Share Posted March 31, 2003 Excellent point Mike ...They were quite noisy...shame they couldn't get rid of the noise and keep the reliability though Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ThunderRiver Posted March 31, 2003 Share Posted March 31, 2003 Thunder...Glad to see more than me reading Slashdot.org (it's my homepage)...LilBambi...Yeah too bad I really miss their full height size and their teeth rattling reads and writes... haha, SlashDot is my favorite place to go besides betanews.com ;)ThunderRiver Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colin.p Posted April 3, 2003 Share Posted April 3, 2003 None of the above … wear-n-tear is the most common factor of HD failure.For what it’s worth Fujitsu no longer make HD’s … It may be due to the fact, as far as I am concerned, that they made crap HD’s. I had nine, within two months, returned to me faulty or dead. I could only replace two under warrantee. There was a recent discussion in one of the alt.comp newsgroups ( I can't remember which) that said it was a common problem with the newer Fujitsu 20 - 60 gig drives that the controller cards literally burnt out on them. I have an old 8.4 gig Fujitsu that has performed flawlessly (so far).If I was in my windows partition, I would look up the archived article with the models involved ( I'm pretty sure I did save it)One of the posters said that whatever HD he was using he would install it upside down to let the heat from the board go up. I guess it ran alot cooler and more than likely lasts longer.I don't know about that, but I still have old an 1.2 gig Conner and a 1 gig Quantum that are noisey as **** but still keep on ticking. I'm going to set them up as Free BSD servers (if and whenever I get around to it). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ThunderRiver Posted April 3, 2003 Share Posted April 3, 2003 One of the posters said that whatever HD he was using he would install it upside down to let the heat from the board go up. I guess it ran alot cooler and more than likely lasts longer.That's a very very very bad thing to do. Hard drive needs to be flat horizontally in order to have sufficient amount of lubrication. It is sooner to say good bye to it than feeling it cooler.Yes, my fujitsu hard drive controller burnt out, and sometimes read doesn't work heh. It is the 2.5" 40 gig 4200 RPM one. Wish I still remember the model number heh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ThunderRiver Posted April 9, 2003 Share Posted April 9, 2003 heat - which is why pc's have cooling fans.the warmer an electrical component gets, the harder it is to conduct electricity (resistance), that in turn makes the component hotter. kinda like a space heater, at some point.stuff can only get so warm before it comes apart.Sounds good to me. I know how much heat is bad for electronics, but my laptop cooler (Bytecc one) seems to be vibrating real hard. You can even feel it. I leave the cooler on a flat surface, but these two fans does cause a tons of vibration. Or perhaps, my laptop is too light for it? only 4.8 lb here Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buster2058 Posted April 10, 2003 Share Posted April 10, 2003 heat - which is why pc's have cooling fans.the warmer an electrical component gets, the harder it is to conduct electricity (resistance), that in turn makes the component hotter. kinda like a space heater, at some point.stuff can only get so warm before it comes apart.I would like to expand on your post by adding heating and cooling both contribute to a electrical components life span. This is thru both expansion and contraction. The same could be said for the mechanical components. Since both heat and vibration occur in a hardrive, both are working together to wear out the drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeber Posted April 11, 2003 Share Posted April 11, 2003 Which one causes hard drive damage the most? The most? I'd have to say both, at the same time. Say, like a nuclear blast. Yes, I feel it's safe to say the most damaging event to a hard drive would be a nuclear explosion. Inside the case. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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