one for the techie's... external hard drives.

[John the Monkey]

420MB, that's massive. My first PC was a 486 with 100mb HD.

A Compaq with 120mb was mine

 

[Drago]

Aren't a lot of these drives now solid state, no moving parts? Makes no difference of they're on or off in terms of data integrity.

 

[fossyant]

Aren't a lot of these drives now solid state, no moving parts? Makes no difference of they're on or off in terms of data integrity.

Most external drives arent SSD.

A 1TB SSD will set you back about £220, but a standard drive about £40. Large storage is still with spinners.

 

[mybike]

My computer is six years old, it has 791GB of the original 914 GB still free on it.
Am I doing something wrong? How do you use up so much space??

Windows updates take quite a bit of room. Music, videos?

420MB, that's massive. My first PC was a 486 with 100mb HD.

My first hard disk was a dodgy 10M drive plugged into my Amsrad 1640. it disliked getting warm.

 

[Broadside]

But, I've heard that not using (or powering) a HD for a long period of time can corrupt the data, rendering the drive more or less useless.

I can't comment on modern usb drives but when I worked in IT support in a 3000 desk office, each time there was a building power down 5% of the desktop PCs would not come back up, usually due to a failed HDD. We found the best reliability by leaving devices switched on as far as possible, the failures tend to occur when switching back on.

I leave them plugged in and switched on in my own house, and also backup to online storage too.

 

[Trickedem]

I have had too many drives fail to know the answer, but I try to keep enough back ups. I have two NAS drives, with 2 hdds in each, plus a back up drive I keep at work. Still hard to keep it all perfectly up to date though.

 

[slowmotion]

When spinning, they turn at about 5000 to 7000 rpm , I think. Even when not being accessed, they often come to life every few seconds. Why wear out the bearings? Also, power supply capacitors have a limited life. I'm a great believer in turning everything off when I'm not using electronics. I think that stories of "turn-on spikes" destroying electronics are largely urban myths that seem to have survived from the Dark Ages. Modern PSUs are really very well behaved.

Edit: Also, electronics get hot when powered up. Heat is really bad news for all components and severely reduces their life.

 

[slowmotion]

[QUOTE 4146737, member: 9609"]they must be very good bearings - we have a PVR thing for the tele and it has a hard drive that runs continuously, it is never switched off. (i no that is not very green of me) Now I have just worked out that over the eight and a bit years we have had it, it will have revolved about 35 billion times - that is a fair bit. (if my bike wheel went round that many times I would have nearly made it to mars)[/QUOTE]
Please don't misunderstand, I'm not having a dig at your BMI, but the disk bearings on a HD are probably relative lightly loaded compared to your wheels.

 

[Deleted member 1258]

My computer is six years old, it has 791GB of the original 914 GB still free on it.
Am I doing something wrong? How do you use up so much space??

Our computers are like our homes, as time passes they collect clutter, like our homes they need decluttering once in a while.

 

[Shut Up Legs]

My PC at home is set to hibernate after 2 hours of no use, which (most of the time) works well enough. I have various external HDDs plugged in, with capacities of 1TB, 2TB and 5TB, and have had no issues with these. Obviously, they're not being used when the PC is hibernating, and generally when the PC is "awake", the external HDDs aren't accessed that much, either.

As others mentioned, though, always back up your data to some alternative source. For me, its DVD backups every few months, while I have an automatic weekly backup to the 5TB external drive.
Just think "redundant backups often", and you should be OK.

 

[Over The Hill]

Our computers are like our homes, as time passes they collect clutter, like our homes they need decluttering once in a while.

My house is quite tidy.

The garage is a different matter!

 

[swee'pea99]

Our computers are like our homes, as time passes they collect clutter, like our homes they need decluttering once in a while.

My problem is my head. God, the crap that builds up in there...

 

[MontyVeda]

My computer is six years old, it has 791GB of the original 914 GB still free on it.
Am I doing something wrong? How do you use up so much space??

by collecting vintage TV shows... why wait for them to never be aired again when i can watch them whenever it suits me?

My brother thinks i've got too much data storage space... i think he's got too many book shelves. At least i re-watch the stuff i keep.

 

[Crackle]

I have had too many drives fail to know the answer, but I try to keep enough back ups. I have two NAS drives, with 2 hdds in each, plus a back up drive I keep at work. Still hard to keep it all perfectly up to date though.

Yes, I would recommend anyone to go NAS with mirrored drives. They are much more affordable now and much more secure from a data integrity point of view, plus they do other stuff too.

 

[MontyVeda]

Aren't a lot of these drives now solid state, no moving parts? Makes no difference of they're on or off in terms of data integrity.

My C drive is an SSD and crikey it's fast... but god knows how much a 5TB SSD would cost.... in a few years not much but currently, too much.