Hard Drives

I frequently hear from customers who have purchased tools from me online, only to lose their only copy a few months later when their hard drive dies. The problem is growing. As hard drive innovation reaches new heights, reliability and data integrity decline. A few percent of hard drives don't survive the first year; in the second year, without exaggeration, failure rates reach epidemic proportions.

I recommend using at least two hard drives. A new hard drive will be larger and faster than its predecessor, so it will become the main drive, and the best of the previous two drives will become the secondary drive (it's likely that one of the previous drives is dead, which is why you got a new drive).

Follow a philosophy of "Theirs" and "Mine," so your data is separate from their software. With two hard drives, the first partition on the second drive is usually D:, which we use as the main data drive. Create a separate partition on the primary drive that is larger than the D: drive, to be used as a backup copy of the D: drive, and use a batch file or a backup program at the end of the day to copy changed files to the backup drive. This will ensure that you have two copies of everything on two separate physical drives; it also means that you can easily revert to the previous day's work anytime before the end of the day.

Performance improves with multiple drives. The slowest thing a hard drive does is position the read/write heads, called seeking. If you have two drives, each can have heads positioned at a different place; while one drive is reading from the swap file, the other can be ready to read from a data file.

Do your backup at the end of the day, not at the beginning of the following day, since many hard disk failures occur when they are started.

Whenever you feel nervous, create a backup of the data drive on removable media, and store it in a different room or a different building. If you store important disks in a fire-proof safe, make sure it's heat-rated for disk storage.

Here is a direct quote from the IBM Hard Disk Drive handling Guide:

"Great care should be taken when handling disk drives - particularly when carrying two (or more!!) drives together. It is VERY EASY to introduce shocks which exceed the specification. ... Damage might not be immediately evident!. Typically unrecoverable data errors may occur - but these would not be seen until a particular data set were being accessed. ... 1. It is recommended NEVER to carry more than ONE drive in each hand at a time."

Back-up Batch file

Here is a simple DOS batch file that copies files from the data drive to the back-up drive. Unless you need to restore from the back-up drive, just forget that it exists. Contents of D: drive, the data drive, are copied to the F: drive (which should be a partition on a separate hard drive):

@echo off
f:
cd \
d:
cd \
c:\windows\command\xcopy32 d: f: /s /e /q /d

If you want to copy a whole drive without any questions asked, try this command line:

 c:\windows\command\xcopy32 D:\ F:\ /s/h/e/c/k/y

Yes, the switches really are /s/h/e/c/k/y.

A Hard Drive History

In the 1980s, hard drives lasted perhaps 18-months; in the mid-'90s, they lasted 2-3 years; today, life-expectancy is again unsettled. Here is the progression of hard drive combinations used at one desk. Any data loss has been my fault, even when hardware failed prematurely.

20 MB Seagate. 1986.
20 MB Seagate + 20 MB Seagate (failed after a year). 1988.
30 MB Seagate (failed within a year) + 20 MB Seagate. 1990.
105 MB Toshiba. 1990.
120 MB Conner + 105 MB Toshiba. 1991.
210 MB Maxtor + 120 MB Conner. 1993.
540 MB Conner + 210 MB Maxtor. 1994.
540 MB NEC (failed within a year) + 540 MB Conner. 1995.
2.7 GB Maxtor + 540 MB Conner. 1996.
6.4 GB IBM + 2.7 GB Maxtor. 1998.
20.5 GB IBM (failed within 6 weeks) + 6.4 GB IBM. 2000.
10.2 GB Maxtor + 6.4 GB IBM. 2000.
20.5 GB IBM (failed within 6 months) + 10.2 GB Maxtor. 2000.
30 GB Quantum + 10.2 GB Maxtor. 2000.
30 GB Quantum + 20.5 GB IBM. 2001.
40 GB Maxtor + 10.2 GB Maxtor. 2005.
80 GB Toshiba. 2007 laptop.

The 2.7 GB hard drive was used for 40 months; the 30GB Quantum + 20.5 GB IBM are still in service in 2007, after more than six years. Drives not listed as failed were replaced while they still worked.

Note: the two identical IBM hard drives failed prematurely in 2000, while the older 6.4 GB IBM is still in service in a different computer. The failed drives were Deskstar model 34GXP DPTA-372050, 7200 RPM, with 2MB buffers (these problems may have been exacerbated by a failing power supply); a warranty replacement drive served well and long.

The amount of disk space available on this computer is simply excessive, the result of ever-escalating drive sizes, not need. Applications on this computer use approximately 6.5GB of storage, not counting data or backups. There are lots of huge applications (multiple versions of several) installed on this computer, but no games; software selections for most business users are much smaller.