Re: Serious problem with Linux on an old PC

Matt Giwer wrote:
Alan Adams wrote:

Replace them!

Retail IDE disks seem to have a life of around 3 years. (Older ones, e.g. <1GByte lasted longer, because when they were made they were expensive, premium items.)

Although the original report does suggest hardware failure including on-board HD electronics not just the mechanical/magentic parts I have never seen one with a 3 year life at 24/7.

I have.

A lot depends on the amount of RW its doing. I have a friend who evaluates extremely large mathematical matrices on a 24x7 basis..each one is many times too large for physical memory, and the disk activity has to be seen to be believed.

He gets about 18 months out of an IDE disk.

When running big SCSI equipped RAIDED mail servers, we had failures after about three years.

OTOH or public DNS servers lasted forever..far less activity, nice cool machine room etc. etc..

Constant seeks and headup/headdown seem to be worse than just spinning away..
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