Re: building on your own a large data storage ...

lbrtchx@xxxxxxxxxxx coughed up some electrons that declared:

You need to configure it right. Don;t use the full sector count of each
disk, back off by about 0.5% - the 500GB disk you but next year to
replace
your 500GB from this year when it blows may be 100 sectors less - I've
been
caught out like that once.
~
Aren't there any preferable regions in the disk? Should people leave
them at the beginning, middle or end of it

No, just leave them at the end, which is the natural thing to do if
allocating from the start of the disk.

~
I recall from when I used to see running scandisc that bad sectors
tend to appear in clusters
~

The may tend too, but they could appear anywhere.

Also I have heard people say that Western Digital drives tend to die
slowly, while Maxtor ones die fast. To which extent are these
differences between hard drives facts or myths?

Personally I wouldn't touch Maxtor with a bargepole, but they were bought
out by Seagate, who apparently are closing the Maxtor factories.

Good readings on hard disk failures are:
~
// __ http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf
~
// __ http://www.cs.duke.edu/~justin/papers/tacs04going.pdf
~
// __

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Monitoring,_Analysis,_and_Reporting_Technology
~ // __

http://www.usenix.org/events/fast07/tech/schroeder/schroeder_html/index.html
~ // __ http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070225-8917.html
~
// __ http://www.gcn.com/print/26_10/44242-1.html
~
Thanks
lbrtchx

.

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