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Chuck Wintle
08-09-2011, 8:42 AM
I just purchased a 2 TB drive to augment my current computer and before committing data to this drive is it a good idea to "burn-in" the drive for a few weeks?

Ken Fitzgerald
08-09-2011, 8:45 AM
Chuck,

I've never heard that "burning" in a drive is a practice or necessary. Over 35 years I replaced hundreds of drives or repaired them in CT and MR scanners. I have a 1TB external drive I use with this computer.

Bill Huber
08-09-2011, 8:53 AM
I agree with Ken, I have been working on computers for many years and have never done anything but put them in, format them and fill them up.

Chuck Wintle
08-09-2011, 9:29 AM
Chuck,

I've never heard that "burning" in a drive is a practice or necessary. Over 35 years I replaced hundreds of drives or repaired them in CT and MR scanners. I have a 1TB external drive I use with this computer.


I agree with Ken, I have been working on computers for many years and have never done anything but put them in, format them and fill them up.

in your experience what has been the failure rate for those years? Have you noticed any brand a little better or worse in this regard?

Kevin W Johnson
08-09-2011, 11:56 AM
I may be wrong, but it sounds as though your wanting to commit your data solely to that one external drive.... am i right?

There's no "burn in" for a HDD per say, simply copy your data to the new drive. But at any rate, you should never have your data saved to only one drive, be it internal or external.

As for brand.... you'll get many opinions, however for me, Western Digital has always been tops, and has given me good service over years. Seagate used to be a good second, but as of late their quality and subsequent failure rate has me avoiding them nowadays. They even recently announced they were shortening their warranty period on their drives in a cost cutting move. That sure inspires confidence in their products, doesn't it?

Bryan Morgan
08-09-2011, 12:34 PM
I just purchased a 2 TB drive to augment my current computer and before committing data to this drive is it a good idea to "burn-in" the drive for a few weeks?

Hard drives either work or they don't. Sometimes they give indications of emending failure, sometimes not. There isn't really anything to "burn in" per se. I wouldn't ever rely on a single drive to store important data. Either double up with a mirrored RAID or simply add another one of the same drive and make two backups or clones or however you want to do it.

Bryan Morgan
08-09-2011, 12:36 PM
As for brand.... you'll get many opinions, however for me, Western Digital has always been tops, and has given me good service over years. Seagate used to be a good second, but as of late their quality and subsequent failure rate has me avoiding them nowadays. They even recently announced they were shortening their warranty period on their drives in a cost cutting move. That sure inspires confidence in their products, doesn't it?

I agree with this. We've had good luck with WD over the years and Seagate/Maxtor has never really been reliable for us. For the higher capacity (1 TB+) drives, Samsung has been remarkably reliable.

Greg Portland
08-09-2011, 12:51 PM
in your experience what has been the failure rate for those years? Have you noticed any brand a little better or worse in this regard?Running disc maintenance and monitoring tools is IMO the best method for not losing data. It is rare to have a drive completely die out of the blue. Typically there are failures of multiple sectors before the drive becomes unusable. If you keep track of the disc's health you can swap in a new drive before there is data loss. With Vista or Win7 you want to run check disc (My computer, right click on drive, select properties->tools & then "check for errors").

For consumer data storage (family photos, music, etc.) I'd recommend Western Digital's "Green" line of drives.

Bill Huber
08-09-2011, 6:55 PM
in your experience what has been the failure rate for those years? Have you noticed any brand a little better or worse in this regard?

Very small, I have had no more then 10 or 15 drives go bad in the last 15 or so years. I would say in that time I have worked on 3 or 4 hundred PCs.

Burning in was something we did a long time ago with building PC, you built the PC and then burnt it in. This was because they were just not built like they are now, the mother boards are much better and are checked much better then they used to be.

Chuck Wintle
08-10-2011, 11:11 AM
Very small, I have had no more then 10 or 15 drives go bad in the last 15 or so years. I would say in that time I have worked on 3 or 4 hundred PCs.

Burning in was something we did a long time ago with building PC, you built the PC and then burnt it in. This was because they were just not built like they are now, the mother boards are much better and are checked much better then they used to be.
The seagate 2 TB i just bought was manufactured in Thailand.

Ken Fitzgerald
08-10-2011, 11:25 AM
Chuck.....the place of manufacture has little to do with it. My Western Digital 1TB was made in Thailand too. It's well over a year old......maybe two years old. I bought it when they first became available at Costco.

Mike Henderson
08-10-2011, 11:27 AM
For backup, look into off site backup. There are several companies who provide this service, with connection through the web. Your data is encrypted during transmission and storage. Backup is immediate (assuming access to the Internet) - it's not a system where some program runs at night.

I've been using Carbonite but other companies also offer the service. It's about $50/year, less on a multi-year contract.

Mike

David Hostetler
08-10-2011, 11:48 AM
15+ years as a computer technician and systems administrator, and growing up with my Dad in the same field, and I have never heard of such a thing. A HDD is either going to work or it won't. Burn in time doesn't help in the slightest. IF you are terribly concerned with your data, your best bet is to protect the data through a RAID array in the computer you are working on, preferrably a RAID 5 array of at least 3 disks, the more the better. And back that up with some sort of tape drive, external HDD, or offsite backup service.

Matt Meiser
08-10-2011, 11:51 AM
In general they seem to be getting less reliable as the density and price has gone down. Anymore when I upgrade an OS, I just buy a new drive, swap it in and start from scratch. The side benefit is that all the old stuff is still on the old drive and you can pop it in at any time to get something you forgot.

I don't trust USB drives at all. I've had enough of them fail with no recovery. I still use them, just make sure that's not the only copy of your data even moreso than an internal drive.

Andrew Pitonyak
08-10-2011, 1:47 PM
Most items have a failure distribution curve. There is usually a higher failure rate during the first few weeks of use than in say a few weeks later.

That said, backup your data, all of your data.

Bryan Morgan
08-10-2011, 3:38 PM
For backup, look into off site backup. There are several companies who provide this service, with connection through the web. Your data is encrypted during transmission and storage. Backup is immediate (assuming access to the Internet) - it's not a system where some program runs at night.

I've been using Carbonite but other companies also offer the service. It's about $50/year, less on a multi-year contract.

Mike

The only drawback to this is you need to have a fast internet connection... and if you are on metered bandwidth like all these broadband providers are starting to do this type of back up is going to eat into that. I have a related conspiracy theory about this cloud push and metered bandwidth... :)