On Fri, 09 Dec 2005 21:14:24 GMT, f/fgeorge <ffgeorge@yourplace.com>
wrote:

On Fri, 09 Dec 2005 12:11:49 GMT, "JacobH"
<Geoff_Hannington@IEE.ORGasm> wrote:

In that case can we not improve our HDDs life expectancy by increasing the write 
rate, by reducing the max disk write time interval? Mine is 'at most every 10Secs' 
so if I make it 5Secs maybe I'll double its lifetime?

NO!

At last count I have about 16 HDs running between 4 computers.  Two
have external USB drives in addition to the internals. One has two
300s and one has three 250s for network backup purposes.  Overall
there is roughly 4.3 Terabytes on the network (give or take a few
hundred megs).  Those drives are only shut down when the system, or a
specific computer goes down for maintenance.  Three of the 4 run seti
on BOINC. All run 24 X 7 although my wife's machine could be shut down
as I don't depend on it as heavily as the others, but it does run
Seti.

Out of those 16 drives I think half have been running basically
continuously for over two years.  The other half are less than two
years old.  Since the late 90's I think I've had three drive failures
and one was due to lightning and another due to a failed power supply.
(trashed the engineering sector)  The machines back each other up as
well as using the external drives for data backup.  Two of the
machines have 400 Gig SATA RAIDS, one of which is this 64 bit system.
One RAID is about a year old and the other was just installed.  

A year or so ago I never figured I'd have this many drives running,
but they became cheap enough to use for "on-line" back ups.

I always leave at least the thickness of one drive as open space
between drives. Extra internal drives are mounted in a separate
enclosure that sits on the base in front of the case fan so it blows
cool air over the drives.  "Drives need to be kept cool or they will
suffer premature failure."

My biggest problem in here is fan noise. It sounds like an industrial
computing center with enough fan noise I can not hear any one outside
of the room.  I'm seriously considering going to liquid cooling, with
closed air circulation inside and the ability to use fans as a backup
if the main cooling fails.  I'm not sure I could stand the silence
though. <:-))

I can guarantee, if I ever get a milling machine these machines *will*
have liquid cooling.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com