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Maxtor's "Sturdy" Hard Drive
robkill writes "PCWorld has this article on a new drive by Maxtor, using 1 platter, 1 head and
70% fewer moving parts. Using one side of a 30GB platter, the drive
holds 15GB and has a smaller height as well." Well, it's not huge, but it's sufficent size - and with more durability, putting it into mobile devices becomes easier to do.
True NVRAM (no coninuous power supply, even a battery, needed) is only rated good for about 1000-10000 writes to any one cell. So, after only 10000 file overwrites on the same location on the "disk", the "sector" would have to be flagged as bad. In a server or workstation doing grunt computational work, this state can be reached quite quickly (a matter of days).
"Fake" NVRAM - really dynamic ram with a battery (as in most PDAs, which have a few k of "Real" nvram for the firmware and really important user data, and the rest battery-bakced dynamic ram), lasts longer - but then you have to worry about the battery eventually running out...
True NVRAM is also not particularly fast, believe it or not (that's probably just because of less research in the field - in theory it should be faster than HDs)
That's the danger of making cheap crap, especially when people depend on the quality.
See all the people in here declaring how horrible WD hard drives are and how they'll never buy or recommend WD products again? Some will wind up going back on their word, but quite a few will not. Maxtor and WD hurt a lot of people by cutting corners and those people will not forget -- or let the companies forget.
Every Maxtor drive I've seen (admittedly only about 4 or 5) has failed within the warranty period. Maybe they're better now, but all is not forgiven.
This drive will only be marginally more robust than a multiple headed drive. The real reason for designing for one head is cost. The heads and disks are right at the top of the cost of the drive. If you design for one head, you can use disks that have failed verification on one surface reducing cost for both the one headed drive and its multi-headed cousins (of course you have to make sure to use the right side). This could save a few cents per drive for all 30GB/platter drives. If you can market it as a "robust drive" and get a small premium, you can make a decent amout of money. Even if you don't get a premium it could be worth alot of money. This drive is also being used as a technology demo. Ramp load has been used in 2.5" laptop drives for some time. Using it in a desktop drive has the advantage of not needing to create a landing zone on the disk, once again reducing cost of the disk. Of course you have the added cost of the ramp. But its not a slam dunk drop in change. The linear velocity of the disk at the outer diameter is almost 50% greater with a 3.5" disk than a 2.5" disk, ~1107 inch/sec vs 706 inch/sec. So when you load, any impact between the inner rail of the head and the disk is much more damaging on the desktop drive. Using it now when it's not absolutely necessary gives you knowledge to use when ramp load will be necessary.
...single platter, a single read/write head, and a head-latching mechanism that keeps the fragile head firmly locked out of harm's way when you power down the drive.
Isnt' this something any hard drive is supposed to do?
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NT is silly in the way that it doesn't work, and it's sick in the way that it does work. In a way.
Replace your IDE cable with something better. Seriously.
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Unfortunately, Woz didn't create the floppy drive for the Apple II until 1978.
;-)
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Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
Jeez, I've got several old tapes for my Atari 400 in a box in my basement. They /sound/ OK if you play them on a stereo (ok, well maybe they sound rather strange), but the Atari doesn't pick up on them very well. I think the 410 (the tape drive) is shot or something. Who knows.
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Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
It's not like I've owned dozens of hard drives in my life. 8-10 is more like it. It's also not like I actually have my backup matters in order (at home) so, yes, this is an issue.
Even though I know hard drive crashes do happen, I probably won't start backing up the bulk of my data*. Joe sixpack doesn't even know, nor does he do backups or have redundant disks. For people who don't need a lot of storage, these drives are a smart choice (assuming they're actually more robust)
*) I just copy the really important stuff to my machine at work. Losing the not-really-important stuff is still a big hassle though.
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Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Ok Time for a history lesson.
Back in the olden days (say '91-'93) Maxtor made cheap hard drives, and I don't just mean the price. There was somthing wrong with the berrings in the drives. If you mounted them on their side you almost guarenteed failure in 6mths - 1 year. If you mounted it flat it would probably make it a year. Needless to say they developed quite a bad rep.
Things have changed, quite significantly since then. Their quality has gone up tremendiously. But I still hear this every once in a while.
Minne-snow-da: Winter is comming...
Jeez, I had no idea people had such bad luck with their drives. My main Linux box (5 year old PPro) has a 5 year old 2.5G drive, a 3 year old 6.4G drive, and a 2 year old 10G drive, and I've never had any trouble with them. Nor with the 9 year old 80M drive in my Quadra 700, although that doesn't get much use anymore... :/
Just junk food for thought...
more platters = more moving parts
Um, same number of moving parts, only they're bigger. Two platters bolted onto a common spindle = 1 moving part. It's the same with the heads, they all ride on a common armature.
Just junk food for thought...
Solid state drives are the quietest, they really don't make any noise (fan noise) but the cost is ridiculouse.
If ignorance is bliss, the world is full of blissful people
I've had both....the usual one is the armiture failer...clunk...clunk...clunk...cry...
If ignorance is bliss, the world is full of blissful people
Well, Just last night having one of the hd's kick the bucket, I would like to see more reliable storage devices. Its a shame that solid state devices are still so expensive, I'll be curious to see how fast the 10 tera byte credit card sized device is. And whether it will be as cheap as they say.
Reliablility in hardware doesn't seem to be as high of a priority with allot of these companies lately. Its nice to get things cheap but loosing a large hd (whether its backed up or not) is a pain. Its good to see someone thinking about reliability again.
If ignorance is bliss, the world is full of blissful people
Western digital was the best right up to the point they started making 1.6G hd's. After that they changed their manufacturing and they had a very high failure rate. During this time I was building new computer for a small company part time, and its a pain when half the wd drives we put in ended up going back in less than a month. From there we started looking at maxtor and quanum.
If you look at the low end wd drives they have a strip of tape around the outside of the drive that seals it from dust. I've pulled out allot of these drives where the tape was scrapped partway off just from being inserted in the drive bay. Basicly it is one of the worst hd designs I've seen.
Western digital lost thier reliablilty a long time ago. Basicly wester digital is cheap...in price and quality. You can disagree, but I've had 2 bad maxtor drives, 5 bad wd drives, and 3 bad quantum drives (2 of the quantums were over 3 years old and are still under warrenty). I stopped using wd after having one die hours after getting all my information on it.
Oh, and although I like IBM the only problem with thier hd's are that western digital manufatcures them.
If ignorance is bliss, the world is full of blissful people
do they use some other sort of method to make them tough?
And it has been my experience in the military that most military specific parts are built for reliablily not speed. While allot of stuff breaks pretty regularly (at least most of the stuff I delt with) the specs for it are much higher than the civilian world.
I would suspect that the drive moter is larger than a standard hd. The components on the drive probably are rated for higher power levels than would ever go through it. Sturdier drive arm with more internal parts to help prevent crashes from impact...might even park the drive head(s) regularly when not in use. Basicly things not really needed for normal people.
Also I bet the commercial versions are much faster than the military version.
If ignorance is bliss, the world is full of blissful people
I never said I put the drive in...I was usually the one removing the drive to replace it. Actually quite a few were from gateway.
If ignorance is bliss, the world is full of blissful people
If you notice allot of hd manufactures have gone to air shipping only. Some states have very abusive ground people and I have seen bad baches of hd's due to the box they were in was quite abuse. They didn't put big dents in the box but you could tell it had been dropped on many occasions.
If ignorance is bliss, the world is full of blissful people
8 drives in 11 years. Out of perhaps about 60 drives. Oldest drive I have in use is about 4 years, as I do dump drives that are too small for anything anymore (and in cases where I could do with small drives, I don't trust a 4-year old drive enough).
Hard drives are unreliable. That's why I always have a hot spare even for a mirror set (3 drives, once the capacity, but at least I sleep well) if the system doesn't need more space than that.
This would be very nice for dedicated machines that use hard drives...
Standalone Digital Audio Workstations:
MP3 Players:
These sort of things get knocked around alot. And durability/reliability are doubly important for the multitrack machines. Be a shame to lose a great recording session, just cuz the drummer loses a stick and it whacks the unit halfway across the table.
(Yeah, a screwy example, but you get the point...)
Another issue is that the target for this drive is mainstream consumers. You'd also somehow have to report the failure of the first platter to the user, while failing over to the other platter (assuming that it still works). To report this, it would require some support from the operating system, most likely. You'd also have to kick the user in the rear to replace the drive while it still works (which might be the most difficult part).
OT personal beef: I believe that the market won't allow for a consumer PC which is reliable, like you say. Nobody wants to pay $3000 for an IBM PC anymore (in 1985, sure you'd pay approximately that much for an 8088). You'd get a sturdy case, thick reference manuals (complete with "This page is intentionally left blank" scratch paper) and the klackity keyboard. Even if I knew that I were getting a machine that could fall four stories onto concrete and still look pretty (been there, tried that), I probably wouldn't want to spend the extra money for that. It's unfortunate, but I don't know how I'd solve that problem.
/ \
\ / ASCII ribbon campaign for peace
x
/ \
It's almost like an electronic etch a sketch.
... no data any more!
Just don't shake it up and down when you do flip it over or
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Delphis
Indeed.. following on from the MP3 player idea, people would like that storage built into their cars for MP3s, and there shock is a big problem
.. depending on how you drive, obviously :>
The solutions out there at the moment I think have to really baby the HD so it doesn't get destroyed by the shock and vibration. That is to say putting it in shock-absorbant foam, giving it a suspension of its own etc. A hardier hard drive could lead to cheaper systems that didn't need to worry about it so much.
Sounds like a nice use for a laptop too that you gave: portable MP3 player. Nice.
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Delphis
Buy a different model of drive if the space is what you need. :> .. You have to think of OTHER uses of hard drives to appreciate the market for this drive.
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Delphis
Just because Maxtor "owns" Quantum, doesn't mean that the've interfered with their factories or quality, quantum still pumps out nice hard drives. Everyone has known for, well ever, that maxtor drives are just cheapier in price and quality.
Your Momma's so fat she makes emacs look like nano!
I've seen lots of comments in here about how many disk drives they've got through, and I don't know how they've managed to do it.
I currently have 10 PC systems with about 14 hard drives between them and I have never totally managed to screw a hard drive beyond repair. The only time I have got rid of drives is when I took a look at the drive space required by my next game purchase and decided that the drive wasn't suitable for my capacity requirements.
I'm not particularly good to my PCs - all the cases are unscrewed and you can bet at least one will be running with the hood off. Two of the PCs are Linux boxen up 24/6.5 (too many power failures, still got to buy a UPS).
IMHO, I'm not too impressed by this drive; even I can get rid of 70% of the moving parts by only reading one side of a disk, and as a 3.5" form factor drive it will probably only go in a few laptops/ transportables. My TiVo will be next to get an upgrade; I think I'll stick to the original plan of using 2*80GB Maxtors instead of these babies.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Back about eight or ten years ago at Dartmouth, we had a bunch of external Quantum SCSI disks that were purchased for use with Macs. Of course, several ended up on Unix systems (DEC 5000s). Unfortunately, there were firmware bugs in the drives that caused systems to fail to boot after a power failure until you re-power cycled the drives. (I might have the details of the bug wrong, it was a long time ago.) Anyway, I doubt that there is any company that hasn't had a bad product now and then.
Actually, Maxtor (IIRC) again have features in this area; their recent drives have 3 modes: normal, fast (but noisy) and slow (but quiet).
So what? Maxtor gets to use stuff they wouldn't be able to sell, giving people a device that has some advantages over existing hard drives. The tone of your post implied that this is somehow dishonest, or bad...I can't figure out why. Maxtor makes more money, we get more useful products...isn't that how capitalism is supposed to work?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
If it has a longer MTBF, it is more reliable. If it does not, it is not. I don't care about the "quality" of the parts...I care about the numbers they generate.
Projecting your negative experiences at one company onto another company is silly and illogical. If the facts bear out, I don't care about the construction. If they don't, these guys are crooks. Since no drives have been manufactured, it's not useful to speculate, is it?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
This drive has 70% fewer parts, not 70% fewer moving parts. With 70% fewer moving parts, you'd have a paperweight.
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Twoflower
You could put it on a tether and use it like a morning star with no need to lose space inside.
Granted you'd be screwed when your weapon got cut off, but it'd still be cool
No, you aren't. I have an external scsi-1 40meg Quantum rebranded with by Apple. The case is about phonebook size, but its not too heavy. I use it for swapspace sometimes.
Remember the Bigfoot? Quantum's bright idea for a new design for a hard drive? 1" height, took up a full 5.25" bay in a computer, and designed so that OEM's could shove them in tight places inside proprietary cases. HP, Compaq and others were all over this drive. Too bad they had so many quality control issues that OEM's that were using them were replacing them with different models of drives (if they fit). Spare parts departments were swamped with orders for these drives because they were so lousy. I was a hardware lackey when these things were out, and I had to replace more of those crappy drives than I'd care to admit. Every one I've ever seen went bad. And they were SLOW! The access times on those drives were insanely slow. It made a P166 run like a 486SX25. I'm not saying that this drive is going to have the same problems, but I still don't trust it. If it isn't broke, why fix it?
Bah! A pair of plain scissors or an exacto knife... non of those high-tech punches. That's what Real Men[TM] use...
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"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
>Rumors say that IBM (whose latest 75gxp series are allready quite silent) are to announce a silent drive.
;-)
They did, you just didn't hear...
>Also to minimize noise you can get rubber suspensions for you desktop drives to mount them in a 5.25" bay. (Allthough watch the temp. rubber isn't a good heat conductor)
Well, if you have decent airflow (most of the whisper drives are 5400rpm, and quite cool anyway) it shouldn't be a problem. Heck, the 10krpm drives now are much cooler than they were just a couple years ago.
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"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
I had a MicroVAX II which used an RA82 in a 19" rack. That is where I learned that you could indeed fix them with a good socket set [2 drives with different problems = 1 good drive]
Fujitsu has recently released out with a series of silent drives. New bearings and a choice of high-performance or silent access patterns (i.e. how the head is moved) makes the difference. They are supposed to keep well below 30dBspl
WD announced their whisperdrives quite a while ago, but seem to mostly push those into OEM channels.
Rumors say that IBM (whose latest 75gxp series are allready quite silent) are to announce a silent drive.
Also to minimize noise you can get rubber suspensions for you desktop drives to mount them in a 5.25" bay. (Allthough watch the temp. rubber isn't a good heat conductor)
I think I'll go do a long-postponed backup. Heh...hehe. heh.
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CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Now that they are more "durable" they may last as long as other hard drives on the market. I have had a lot of Maxtor drives crap out on me and so have friends of mine.
really?
Any thoughts about what G forces the drive would be under? You gotta figure that the case is going to absorb a lot of the initial shock. I guess the impulse would be quite high, but IIRC some drives can withstand 60 odd G while reading and I don't even want to think about what they'd withstand while parked. I f my math is right, it takes 2.5 odd seconds to fall 30 meters, so the drives would be unpowered at least that long -- plenty of time to park the heads.
i bought some double sided cdr's from a dude on Ebay... they were bright orange on one side and silver on the other. They weren't advertised as such, but they burned just fine on either side. I tend to still use only one side of them though, since if you burn on both sides you have no clue what's on them when they sit on your desk unlabeled.
... and there is no doubt, that one day he will be
where the eye of his telescope has already been
One platter, one head, 2 platters, 2 heads. Yes, one platter is better, fewer parts, fewer manufacturing defects to worry about. It might even be cheaper to design and produce, who knows?
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I've been using Maxtor drives for the past 4 years now. I have never had a failure, not even an error! I've used their 2, 5, 15, 17, and 27gb size hard disks, and all are still going strong. My current computer has the 17 and 27 in it, so I have 44gb on line. My wife's computer has the 15gb (compusa branded, but made by Maxtor). I've bought all of them (except the 27, which came from computer geeks bulk packed) at the local compusa in the retail boxes. I would buy another Maxtor when I need more storage, or build another computer. OTH I have had LOT's of problems just getting Seagate and WD drives to fdisk and format!
You've confused shock forces with sustained forces.
A sustained force of 1G is what keeps you on the ground. A sustained force of 9G will put your blood in your feet and you will black out after half a minute.
A shock force of 30G means that your soon-to-be-stubbed toe goes from regular swing velocity to zero in the space of the spongy thickness of the flesh over your toe's bone. This compresses your spongy tissue to almost nil, making a sharp pain. If you sustained that rate of backward acceleration, your body couldn't recover. But you don't sustain that, it's just a shock effect, and your body recovers just fine. Same goes for something rigid dropped on a carpet: it has to go from its normal velocity to its altered velocity (zero or bounced) in the span of distance of the spongy carpeting.
[
IBM 3380s had blast shields around their platters, one of which is a brake.
So you can store the souls of the vanquished.
Nice guess, but I've been all through that. Latest drivers, good 80-pin cable. The fact is that the drive I replaced it with does ata66 just fine with the same drivers and cable. I even ran maxtors program to set the max udma and forced it to be 33, still no go.
Not to mention that when the first drive went I actually heard it through the floor. Sounded like my ols POS pontiac did when it threw a rod. Problem being, I spent more on the drive!
I think for most of us, the value of information depends on how much time we spent customizing or creating it.
/,/etc, and /usr/local, etc. Those of us who run default distro setups will be more defensive of /home and other directory archives (MP3 dir's, /usr/local/games, etc.) becausing a simple reinstall of ./ or /usr directory is easy with an install CD
Someone who has spent years customizing their system will put more value in
To each his own
- Sig
> Each switch to a smaller form factor (8 inch, 5 1/4 inch, 3.5 inch, etc) actually LOWERED the
> price/performance ratio
I bet you ment price/capacity ratio. The price/performance ratio skyrocked. Think about more RPMs-> lower rotational latency.
For this device
http://www.carplayer.com/cpm25/hddunit.html
-Lou
I have one of their new 75gxp drives. The thing is great. Fast (ATA100, 7200rpm) and silent. I powered it up in my hand. It doesn't vibrate like my older drive, which is a year old Western Digital.
more platters = more moving parts, and thats exactly what they were trying to eliminate. By adding more platters you also need more drive heads, more sensitive electronics and moters, and more fragile stuff in general.
Check out this link When the drive powers down the heads are also taken off the surface of the platters.
A great many people would argue about LP's being "obsolete". They certainly are less convenient, and easier to damage, but many believe they offer superior reproduction of music.
Of course, a $100 cd player will sound better than a $100 stereo with turntable, but if you don't mind parting with your kid's inheritance (to hell with the kids), LP's really do sound better.
Or, depending on where you drive. There are some states (cough, cough, Michigan, cough, cough) that are pretty well known for their potholes (well, potheads too, but that's a whole 'nother story)
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Rated for five years? Am I the only one that still has a 40MB hard drive that still works? What did they do that was so special?
Oh yes. Moving parts, but made out of really thick metal, instead of plastic. Good call.
I've got a SUN external disk enclosure made of cast-iron plates beneath the SUN plastic-looking thing. It is about as big as a shoebox and it is half-full of one 700-meg SUN scsi drive, and sounds like a damned torpedo when it turns on. It is a heavy mother, but supposedly with the cast-iron plates it can withstand EMP.
The REAL sam_at_caveman_dot_org is user ID 13833.
Why don't we have TRUE Solid State drives yet? One solution that someone could use could be with NVRAM. What's wrong with that? Is NVRAM a slow technology? Is it expensive? Does it have a bottlenecking problem? No matter the cost, if it was a good product with no moving parts and doesn't require electricity to keep the data intact it would sell great!
I've seen those "Solid State" drives that are PCI Cards full of memory that require a power source. They're only as reliable as your battery backup is. If you battery backup fails, you loose all your data. They suggest the use of those drives for proxies, swap drives, caches of any sort. Not reliable data.
Ryan
Now when I get the blue screen o death and decide to chuck the box out a 10 story window, the hardrive might still work
Not really. I realize this is a lame-duck attempt at humor, but Maxtor's HD wouldn't survive such abuse. A more practical use for a reliable drive like this would be with machines that have to be moved around a lot. If they could bring down the size a bit, this would be great for laptops.
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
Though that reason helps, the real reason is to avoid headstack skew which is the #1 technical difficulty in 4+ platter drives. It is also why almost no drive companies make the 4+ platter products anymore.
More data, damnit!
Non-System Disk or Disk Error
Replace and strike any key
Heh. Gotta laugh. Just booted up Dexter, the world's weirdest Pentium-class computer (K5-166, Amptron PC Chips mobo, Bigfoot CY 4.3 HD, system built 9/1997) and that Bigfoot HD is still alive and kicking.
Have to agree that Quantum has taken a dive over the years though...the "lct" line is crap. They used to be the Gold Standard though...Fireballs were kick-ass drives.
The best right now IMNSHO is IBM. The recent news about their complicity in the Holocaust upsets me, but won't scare me away from their drives. Best bang/buck ratio too: the 40GV 20GB HD is still being sold for $99 direct through IBM...nice for just about everything except video capture due to its 5400RPM rotational speed. UATA-100, cool as a cucumber, and it has the same lock-away head mechanism as the Maxtor "Sturdy" drive. I wouldn't be surprised if this new drive Maxtor's putting out is based on the 40GV. Anyone with a clue knows that IBM has been selling designs to Maxtor for years.
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http://www.msgeek.org/ -- All your estrogen are belong to us!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Now the new "lct" series...your comment about "FireBomb" applies. They only give a 1 year warranty on those drives...I wonder why? ;-)
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http://www.msgeek.org/ -- All your estrogen are belong to us!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Maxtor of all companies boasting a more durable hard drive! Has the world gone backwards! What next, Bill gates giving away money on the street© All I have to say is, I'll believe it when I see it©
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Adobe's anti-counterfeiting softw
i've had nothing but bad luck with maxtor drives... there are about 3 or 4 sitting around my house that have failed beyond repair. hopefully this new approach will yield different results, but i'll stick with western digital anyway (never had a WD fail).
As in Western Digital?!?! lmao!!! If you could only see the insane quantity of failing Western Digital hdds here.....
I'm sure you won't elminiate all platter loss even if one side is guaranteed to be perfect every time. Assuming that both sides end up perfectly flat, but not parallel, then you have a weight problem where one side is heavier than another. Get that spinning pretty damn fast and things could get ugly. You'd have a hard drive that vibrates badly and that is subject to extreme failure due to metal fatigue.
The problem comes later.
"just connect this to..."
BZZT.
Liberty.
http://www.dmusic.com/news/news.php?id=2735
Thanks Google
101010b 2Ah 52o
Dumb Ass! Did I say there wasn't? my comment was about "Double Sided CDs "! What are you stupid?
101010b 2Ah 52o
Here's some annoyance for that whiz-bang "sturdy" laptop : blue screens!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Now that Maxtor is using that many less parts does that mean that they might last longer then a few power on cycles?
:)
I hope I don't have to change the use of their drives from door stops to something productive
If you note I said carry around all day. Nobody has battery power to go all day unless you shut it off when you move from class to class or meeting to meeting. I'm not that dumb.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
Well maybe this is a step in the right direction.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
Yeah, heat prolbems make sense. Think I'll pass on futzing around with the board, though... faster to slap a spare drive in and return the bad one under warranty.
No relation to Happy Monkey
If it's that catastrophic for you, consider planning adequately for the event in the future. I lose drives too, but it's not a big deal, because either A) They're in someone's crappy desktop which doesn't have anything besides the OS and applications on it, which I just swap out with a spare desktop box, kept on hand for just such contingencies or B) They're in a server and have adequate RAID protection to allow me to replace them at my leisure--with no lost data.
If we're talking about your box at home, keep backups, or better, implement some simple RAID 1 protection. Hard drives aren't that expensive, and any OS worth it's salt has some sort of software RAID implementation that is easy to set up.
No relation to Happy Monkey
That's odd. Usually, pretty much the only thing that goes wrong in our boxes is because of moving parts--power supply fan, or drive arm, platter, or motor. It always made sense to me--solid state components just don't have as much that can go wrong with them as any component that has friction involved.
No relation to Happy Monkey
Sorry man, Murphy's law: Dropped HD's always land data-side down.
From hell's heart I fstab at /dev/hdc
I'm proud to see Maxtor learning from the mistakes made by the company they just bought out. Maybe they can teach a lesson to Creative, which is in a similar position.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Western digital manufactures IBM drives? Care to back that up with a link?
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
Thats not really true, every solid state drive I have seen includes a regular hard drive for power-off storage. So it's just as noisy as a normal drive.
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
If the head on the on side crashs, it is very likely that the other head crashes too.
If only on head crashs, the head will slow down the platter because he is scratching on the side.
I think Raid 5 without a spare, is a way that maybe must be done to increase the memory density even more. Look at the Caches of the CPUs, they are using ECC there, because they couldn't build SRAM that works reliable at these speeds.
Jan
I've lost serveral hard drives. And each time, it was catastrophic (and at least a royal pain in the ass). Losing a few hard drives is the same as losing a "few" passenger jets a year. Any number greater than zero is unacceptable due to the massive consequences of even one going down.
If this drive is supposed to last longer than other drives, does this mean that other drives are designed to last LESS THAN 5 years? Shouldn't we be warned about this when we buy drives, so that we can worry about replacing them after a few years, instead of losing all of our data?
Maxtor used to be pretty horrible in the days of 120 meg drives, but the big ones I've been using for the last couple years (two 17 gigs and two 36 gigs) have been running 24/7 with no problems. I'm looking to pick up one of those 80 giggers soon.
I think Maxtor has improved the quality of their drives a lot, but their reputation still suffers from the old days. FWIW, I also had a 3 gig WD Caviar that died within a year of purchase and an IBM Deskstar 6.4 gig that lasted a little over two years.
Is it the size of a credit card with no moving parts?
I have a fairly old IBM laptop, and the HD is a little larger than a credit card, with the usual 17mm height. I've seen several more of these, so I know they're very popyular, even though my particular and higly specific model only existed for about a year. And I really want more data capacity on it! When is somebody going to engineer a "bigger" HD for that?
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"Every man, without exception, is full of it." -- Athanasius
IF you read the press release they claim that this drive will run for a good 5 years.
How many of us remember when drives were Garanteeded for 5 years. It was not that long ago. I was shocked to see that drive garantees had droped to only 1 year. See why they are getting cheaper.... it's because they are getting cheaper.
You had your desktop for over a week? Throw that junk away man, it's an antique.
Weird Al Yankovic, It's all about the Pentiums.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Mine sounded ten times better after I cracked the hard drive open, and drew a ring around the outside of the platter with my green magic marker.
This rating is Unfair ( ) ( ) Fair (*) Funny
Sigh... If only. Modding would be so much more fun.
Well, I don't know about you, but a laptop is much smaller/lighter than most of those 'portable' radio thingies. And as far as the time consideration, I don't know what type of laptop you are using. When using mine for only MP3 playback I get about four hours on one battery. But that tends to shorten up if I'm doing major program compiles or something. But on my old beater, all it gets used for is MP3 playback (with a nice little tape adapter for use in the car). It's worked pretty good so far.
I agree that we need shock proof hard drives while they are running though. I would kill for a really, REALLY solid hard drive for portables. Even though mine has worked good so far, I haven't travelled any really rough roads with it powered up. I really doubt it would last long at all if I was off-roading with it.
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Sorry, I should have specified, when I said portable radio I was talking boom-box style portables. Something that more than one person can listen to comfortably.
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My formula for that went along these lines:
Old, basically useless laptop (as far as day to day work).
New, very big portable hard drive that would fit in the old system.
Linux with MP3 blaster (command line MP3 player with playlist capability).
Avoid buying a 200-300 dollar MP3 player that had 32 MB storage (that money went into the large hard drive in the old throw away system).
Most of my music collection goes on the road with me.
I guess I'm one of those people that never wants to throw stuff out. I just happened to come up with a use for this one.
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...how nice it would be if instead of "70% fewer moving parts" they just didn't bother with "conventional moving parts" at all! Boy would that be cool.
I guess I should be happy with the pace of technology advances, but instead I just look at my humble little PC that wa l33t 11 months ago when I bought it...O! What brave new world that debases my system and devours my coin...
There is no guarantee that the content has been read or understood.
Soo... The real advantage is a bigger profit margin for Maxtor...
Nice.
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The (Hopefully) Great Slashdot Blackout
It is dishonest. They use poorer quality parts, and tout it as a more reliable product. Why not market it as a more affordable product, instead of puffing it up as reliable, when it's just a way of short changing the consumer?
Also -- I used to work for a company that was concerned more about the amount spent on the product rather than the end quality of a product. Generally, these are the kinds of people that try to "sell" something, rather than produce something halfway decent. I quit because of the rampant lying to employees, tax collectors, etc...
So, maybe it's just my jaded outlook on things.
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The (Hopefully) Great Slashdot Blackout
OK they need to replicate this and put 4 platters in there.. with still 70% less moving parts. I need the space more than anything (unless napster goes down)
Go see ramdac
Ehehe, I remember SoftPC, a completely software PC emulator that ran on the Mac. When you started your "PC" by double-clicking the icon, it emitted the familiar PC dual floppy drive "graaaaank, groooonk" tinny sheet-metal vibration sounds.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
The Battlebot field is wide open, crying for a champion, which is to say, for the first robot maker who actually practices controlling his robot for more than 15 minutes.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
The low gigage of the drive isn't really that much of a problem given it's (Relatively) small price.. It could be used as "Ye ol' OS drive with m4d Mp3z," as it were.. and your other, bigger drive could be used for all that porn.
- http://pakman.sytes.net/
All this talk about mobile devices.
I would be nervous shaking even a "sturdy" hard drive while it was spinning. These things aren't gyro-stabilised or anything like that. From the article:
"The 531DX uses a technology called ramp loading that locks the head in a plastic latch above the drive surface when you power it down."
This means that when it's still powered up, the heads can still hit the platter, if (say) you brought your MP3 player to aerobics class. Still, it's a step in the right direction. If someone sold a hard drive that they were willing to guarantee to be shock-resistant *while in use*, I would snap it up for my laptop. No more sleep mode! Hell, I could use it as an MP3 player... um, for two hours. A giant, heavy, short-lived MP3 player.
I'd probably still stick it in my backpack and walk around wired to any anyway. Heh.
Everything above may well be poorly-thought out / spelled. Blame the beer, not me.
Friction is involved here too. Friction generates heat, heat causes component failure on the IDE board. Next time you think your hard drive is bad because it goes "klunk" and sounds "bzzzt" try replacing the IDE board first.
What is pirate software? Software for inventory of stolen treasure?
I've found that most of my drives fail because the IDE board fails not because of the moving parts.
What is pirate software? Software for inventory of stolen treasure?
over the life of my 5-year-old 100MHz pc, i have replaced the hard drive twice. just count yourself lucky. or maybe count me unlucky.
I can second that. I have a Maxtor 2.1 gig drive that not long ago just decided to quit working. I pulled it out of the PC case and powered it up to see what might be wrong. One of the largest chips on the control logic board gets too hot to touch after a few seconds.
No amount of mechanical durability is going to bring back a drive with substandard circuitry. And no amount of hype about 'sturdy' drives will bring back Maxtor's reputation.
Quantum drives have a far, far lower quality record than Western Digital or Maxtor. It's surprising to find someone actually touting one of those 'FireBomb' drives here in the name of reliability.
The early Macintosh machines (before hard drives) were nearly silent. Except when you accessed a floppy disk, when they would emit that nasal grunting sound everybody came to associate with the Macintosh.
This would be beneficial to the hardcore engineers like architects in construction sites, auto engineers, or even the not so hardcore geek whose laptop takes a battering.
Although its smaller in space than what we normally hear a late break news story about, I personally don't see the hooplah on this story. Panasonic has a harcore laptop which is capable of being run over by an SUV without being affected, although I wouldn't benchmark my own Panasonic with those tests if I had that model, its really not such new news after all.
It is better to be feared than loved
Now if that isn't a nitpick, I don't know what is! :)
Maybe I can back up a 1977 claim by bringing in audio cassettes, which were definitely in use with the earliest Apple II. (I've still got 2 tapes with BASIC programs on it for my Atari--need to get some more permament storage for those.)
Yeah, sure. If I had to pick one of a) my root filesystem, b) my /home drive, or c) my MP3 collection to save when the shit hit the fan, it sure as heck wouldn't be c).
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Anonymous Cowards: Proving daily that human beings are innately jerks.
If you are losing EVERY drive you buy for lab machines, you might want to take a good look at your lab. Does it shoot up to 200 degrees at night? Frequent earthquakes? Really bad power? Do you buy your drives from the back of a pickup truck? If you just had a whole batch of drives go bad on you (I've seen a whole department of Maxtors come in more or less DOA) then I could belive it, but if you're spreading out your drive vendors, then I have trouble beliveing it is the drives fault.
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
I read the internet for the articles.
Real Men use a plain old hole-punch, and eyeball the placement.
Trends like this are the reason SMP officially ended in 2001. Computer parts are getting simpler and smaller.
On-disk mirroring?
You have only one side being used in this situation, why not a system that writes the same data to both sides? If a head dies or side of the platter goes bad you still could have access to your data.
I really do appreciate any effort towards reliability. Most companies seem to treat it as last priority behind 'paper' performance, price and time to market, leaving people that can't tolerate down time out in the cold.
Dammit! And just a few days after I threw out my 5.25" floppy notcher!
--
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
Maybe my experience was unusual but I've only had two hard drives fail in the 20 years I've been using computers -- and both were Maxtors. Needless to say, I'm leery about ever buying one again.
Keep It Simple Stupid.
I am glad that some companies are tring to take away complexity instead of adding it to thier products. Sometimes less is more
Unlikely. Such reliable technology will *HAVE* to be used with reliable software, the kind that does not gratify you with a blue screen of death (tm).
--
You don't understand it correctly. 30 Gs is enough to make a human body look like it has been through an industrial meat-grinder. Jet fighter pilots are not capable to stand more than 9 Gs in steep turns and these guys and girls are specially trained and selected. Stubbing your toe against a table leg is more in the order of 1 G or even less.
-- Spelling and grammar errors tend to be a sign of erroneous thinking.
"Considering that hustle and bustle that most laptops get at the typical airport, this is going to become more and more important."
This is a 3.5" drive. You can't fit it into portable devices who use 2.5" drives pretty much universally.
2.5" drives are allready designed to tolerate large shocks.
Where can I get one of these? I would like to collect things like that.
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
Stupid opera made that anonymous...
The cake is a pie
See my previous post about droptesting.
3' operating, 5' non-operating.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Operating Mechanical Shock 30 Gs, 2 ms, no errors Non-operating Mechanical Shock 300 Gs, 2 ms, no damage
If I understand correctly, a shock of 30 Gs is roughly equivalent to the impact after a straight fall from a desktop to a carpeted floor. (It's also akin to the force your toe receives if you stub it hard against a table leg.) That's not really a lot of shock padding in industrial settings.
I would say that the shocks encountered by battlebots would be a LOT higher, unless you put your computing unit inside a shock isolation system. Rigid metal banging against rigid metal at moderate speeds is an almost entirely elastic collision (almost a pure velocity bounce). Hundreds of Gs of shock force.
[
Too bad Maxtor has owned Quantum outright for awhile now.
http://www.quantum.com/quantum/pc/pr/pr00100401.h
The only hard drive I've ever had fail so abruptly, and with so little warning, that I lost every bit of data on it was your treasured DiamondMax Plus. The replacement they sent me? well, it works fine in PIO mode, but enable uDMA and it locks the machine, and yes I've tried it with two different motherboards and an add-in udma controller. it wont even do 33 much less 66. After the hassle I had getting the first drive replaced, I'm not even going to bother trying to get this one replaced. I'll just never buy another Maxtor and never recommend them. I wouldn't even try one of these 'sturdy' ones even if they sold them 2-for-one with a bundled raid1 card.
This could be good for Maxtor, because I've found that their drives have a nasty tendancy to fail. With fewer moving parts they might actually become dependable.
This new drive: 15GB, $90
If this is as sturdy as they say, with the head locked at power-off and all, then this drive should be about as durable as a Jaz drive. Probably more durable.
You could afford to buy a kit to mount this drive in a pull-out drawer ($30 or so) and still be way ahead on GB per dollar.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I know it doesn't make too much sense to do this, because a single point of failure on the HDD hardware or some other thing like that will make it useless anyway...
But, if instead of using only one side of the HDD, why not use both sides, as mirrored sets? So instead of 30GB on both sides of the platter, you'd have 15GB on both sides of the platter, possibly with better throughput and some more reliability, if the hardware is done properly. A mirrored set within a drive! The only thing is, it won't be better performance, because the HDDs are already reading and writing with both heads simultaneously now.
Or, if you have 3 platters and 6 sides, you could just do a raid 5 with 4 platters, one parity, and one spare. So instead of 90GB, you'd have 60GB capacity, and you'd have better reliability in terms of the heads and the sides...the performance still won't be much better than if it was just a regular 6 head HDD...
But then, how often do you have a HDD failure simply because one of the drive heads or one of the sides of the platter was bad? Do you even know? I guess this, plus the drives are getting cheaper, and that performance won't necessarily be better, makes my scheme kind of worthless. Damn! I though I was onto something with that Raid5-in-an-HDD thing.
When you have a sturdy hard drive your mp3s sound better.
Je t'aime Stéphanie
You'd think this would increase the MTBF for drives in heavy usage situations, like web servers, compute servers, TiVo ("always recording"), etc. Statistically speaking, dumping 70% of moving (and therefore more-fragile) parts, you MTBF should increase as well.
From the article: The drive has an UltraDMA/100 interface... The drive is also compatible with the earlier UltraDMA/66 and UltraDMA/33 interfaces, albeit with reduced performance. /100 makes a difference is on burst, which rarely happens with a modern OS that keeps its own cache. UDMA/100 will be marketing hype for a couple more years
Drives do not max out the UltraDMA/66 interface as it is, so the only time the
Maxtor didn't design the 531DX for use in applications--such as video editing--that demand the highest performance, but the company did include a 2MB data buffer.
The 2MB data buffer is also rather meaningless. It gives improvement, by about half a percent on average. The spindle speed and access time is much more important. Maxtor's spindle speed for this drive is a low 5400RPM and the access time is a high 15 milliseconds.
But the 531DX uses a technology called ramp loading that locks the head in a plastic latch above the drive surface when you power it down.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but IBM drives could be purchased with this feature for over a year. And they do it with more than one read/write head.
Let's not kid ourselves. This is a value market drive, and though it has a nice areal density (30GB a platter), it won't be fast, and even though it uses the IBM head rest technology, it won't be that much more reliable. Everything else is PR fluffery.
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It is easy to control all that you see,
Ok, why would you put a 15Gb HD in a battle bot?
Real Men(tm) would open the drive (scoffing at the warranty seals) and remove the write-protect detection sensor because real men don't use write-protect!
How much longer can this go on for?
I donate all spillover Karma to the charity of my choice... Ada was still a babe despite what people may say...
WTF? IMHO, Maxtor makes the best IDE hard drives available right now. This article on Tom's Hardware rates the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus at the top of the list!
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
SHOCK
Operating Mechanical Shock 30 Gs, 2 ms, no errors Non-operating Mechanical Shock 300 Gs, 2 ms, no damage
This could be pretty usefull for a lot of industries like robotics (esp battlebots!), mobile research stations, and my favorite, space exploration.
"Me Ted"
BOSTON SUCKS!
Other companies have been making HDDs that are bad-ass sturdy for years, they're used by the USAF in warplanes (I believe that Seagate makes most of them).
I'm afraid to ask what the USAF pays for those drives. I would guess it's at least as much as a P4 would cost you now. The "news" factor IMO is the fact that it's cheap. I get to picturing where this could used and I think of all those scientist types that camp out in Antarctica in tents the size of catering halls. I hope it's only a matter of time before maxtor applies this technique to laptop drives.
Cheaper equals more gooder!
"Me Ted"
BOSTON SUCKS!
>As a result, when you turn the drive on and off regularly, it should last much longer and wear less, according to Maxtor. The company rates the drive for at least 50,000 on/off cycles with a component design life of at least five year.
So if you use windows and you set your sleep cycles and you don't get blue screen of death the drive should last about 50000 / (((3 crashes * 2 reboots) + 4 sleeps )* 365.25 days ) which is 13.689 years or long enough to see it make it till your next upgrade.
I found this very interesting, because the drive no longer uses a landing area in the platter. It has a ramp feature. Now also it has less moving parts, that's the best thing i could hear. I have an old system that I have to whack every time to boot it up (kicking does not work, only a good slap). yes I should replace the drive but I'm to lazy. I use it for booting up old dos games that i like.
ONEPOINT
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if you see me, smile and say hello.
Tim
I don't see how this is breaking news, except for the fact that it's Maxtor doing it and not some other company.
Other companies have been making HDDs that are bad-ass sturdy for years, they're used by the USAF in warplanes (I believe that Seagate makes most of them).
Tangentially, does anyone know how the sturdy drives that are used for military applications differ from this one? Are the military drives one side, one platter, too, or do they use some other sort of method to make them tough?
Brant
Brant
Argle. Bargle.
but:
> putting it into mobile devices becomes easier to do.
is not really a good thing.
Mobile devices translate to
* more work for someone. They mean that people will never be free from work wherever they go.
This is not a good thing.
I can't see anywhere where this is going to have positive benefits in human terms - more wives separated from their husbands, more stress, less time spent by parents with their children, etc.
Since when has Maxtor been fit for normal PC's? This would only make Maxtors on par with "real" HardDrives (WD, IBM...)
I wish they made beds like this. 50,000 on-off operations before mechanical failure would be lovely.
(damn I miss Deja)
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
I used to work at a computer store that custom built computers to specifications. I ended up testing returned merchandise. In my experience, Maxtors and Western Digital drives have had time frames and models that weren't as good as the rest. There was a time I wouldn't have bought a Seagate IDE drive of less than 4Gb because the smaller ones died way too quick but I would have bought any of their SCSI drives. The only brand I have seen that has been consistently good over the years is Quantum drives. They usually are a few dollars more but I have seen far fewer bad ones. I bought my last one before the merger so I can't comment on current models.
Finally! A Slashdot article on storage technology with a believable figure. 15GB is reasonable, and Maxtor is a real company.
Even more amazing, I can actually buy one of these. Even more more amazing, I might actually want to buy one of these.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Maybe it's just my lack of experince in the real world, but how many times, in all honesty, have you had a hard drive crash on you? With today's technology in back-ups and the such, it just doesn't seem to me that this needs to be an issue. I have been in the Computer/Network racket for about 3 years now, and I have only had two hard drives crash hard on me. One was on a RAID 5 server, so it didn't matter. I just think that this is a waste of time for the "Unsinkable Hardrive". Let's call it Titantic and watch her dive on her maiden voyage. Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. (copyright Dennis Miller)
Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
I've been bitching about this for years. Ever since the density explosion began (~95-96), RPMs have gone up, and MTBF has gone waaaay down. In the lab I work in, we have to buy drives by the dozens. I was surprised to find that the mortality rate of our stock skyrocketed during the 97-98 timeframe. Every 4+ GB drive we bought (western digital, maxtor, ibm) would fail after a week or so of constant operation. That's why I at home I only use ancient 1.2GB Fireballs from six years ago.
But is one platter better? It seems like the heads would have to move more for just one platter. Fragmentation would make the problem even worse. But if it is as realiable as they claim, I can finally get rid of the noisy and oh-so manful 6 GB RAID array of Quantum FBs that I've been using...
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https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
That way you could get 30 gigs.
This would be a lot like LP's, an obsolete form of analog music reproduction. Ask your mom or dad about them.
Now when I get the blue screen o death and decide to chuck the box out a 10 story window, the hardrive might still work.
Patrick C. Lamoreux lamoreux@iastate.edu
It's nice to see some effort being put into durability rather than increasing data density. While high-density is great for certain apps, the idea of drop-testing an IDE or SCSI hd is a joke. Considering that hustle and bustle that most laptops get at the typical airport, this is going to become more and more important.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
- 622M capacity using 14" platters
- weighs 163 lbs
- can be used as a bench or footstool
- has a locking air-cylinder to hold up the 'hood'
- Can be repaired using tools from your garage.
- Sounds very much like a radial arm saw
3/4" high disk considered sturdy? What is the world coming to?Back in '83 I was outside a computer room when a large drive like that had a head crash. The platter (still spinning) got ejected through the side of the case and embedded into the wall. Sounded like a bomb went off.
Best Slashdot Co
With it using only 1 side, I'll just break out my trusty old nibble-notcher and get me a dual-sided drive! Wooooooo!
I donate all spillover Karma to the charity of my choice... Ada was still a babe despite what people may say...
*looks in computer case*
*looks at sawzall*
Well shit, I can do that!
-Caino
Dont't touch my .sig there!
Each switch to a smaller form factor (8 inch, 5 1/4 inch, 3.5 inch, etc) actually LOWERED the price/performance ratio and didn't seem to make sense, but it allowed the drive to be used in new situations (minicomputers for 8 inch, desktops for 5 1/4, early laptops for 3.5, modern laptops for 2.5.)
Who cares if the drive only has 5 gigs if it'll fit in your palm pilot?
Rob
I work in the hard drive industry (scary) and there are a few monetary benefits to the company, hopefully passed on to the consumer...
Basically platter yield goes up. HD companies lose a certain % of platters when the two sides aren't parallel to each other within spec. With a one sided setup this doesn't matter and won't cut into yield. Also, since Si defects will always be there, you can gain some yield back when the defects are only on one side, and simply use the other side.