Re: Re: Compressing DVD ISO Images

["Phil Harris" <phil@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I would have to agree .....

Bloody hell! I thought I was going to get pillaried as a heretic for that
last posting...

> I lost a Raid 5 system which was UPSed with 2 disks failing. Grr.
>
> I now have 3 copies of the family jewels (photos etc) and DVD backups
too.
> I
> still have a raid 5 terrasation and all other pcs are raid1 but I
don't
> have
> too much faith.
>
> The problem with large media arrays is that with say 16 disks you are
> almost
> guarenteed a failure in 1 year (unless you buy the expensive scsi
drives
> which have better mtbf). And there is a real chance that 2 might fail
-
> especially as they are probably all the same make, made at the same
time
> on
> the same production line etc etc etc).

I've had 16 standard Maxtor IDE 540DX series drives running pretty much
constantly for the last 5 years at least and they've been fine - I have
had one "terminal" failure (i.e. one where it hasn't been a
problem with a
RAID 5 implementation that has trashed data) of a drive in that time and
that was *COMPLETELY* my fault - I installed it into an 8 bay firewire to
IDE case *WITHOUT* turning off the power and I touched the drive power
connector to the wrong pins whilst fumbling around for the hole (ooeer).

Having said that I am aware that two of the drives do have rather noisy
bearings in them (but they are still working fine - touch wood) and it is
likely that at that age they will start failing in the near future hence
I'm trying to set myself a goal of replacing the 160Gb drives, 2 per
month, with 300Gb drives which will also free me up some space for extra
storage space. (Of course we all know that the "old" drives won't
be
retired - they'll just get reused but I can at least have the good
intentions can't I?)

Phil