Monday, June 29

Rant

I've Got WTF News, And I've Got Burned Too Many Times News

The other serverâ„¢ blew up again.  I was meaning to transfer the two remaining sites on that server to the new system over the weekend, but I ended up having to work Friday night and Saturday, and then I was too tired to focus on server stuff and watched Gurren Lagann instead.

So, naturally, it died the very next day.

That's the WTF part.

On the burned too many times side of things, however, I have a full backup from an hour before the server died.

In fact, I have two full backups from an hour before the server died.  Plus a full backup from the previous day, and another from the day before that, and one from last week, and from the previous week, and...  Yeah.  Burned too many times.

Update: Drive failure.  That makes two in what, three months?  In a server that only has two drives in the first place.

They're 500GB Western Digital drives.  I don't have any 500GB WD drives...   Oh, wait, I do have one, and it sucks, but that's the external enclosure, not the drive itself.  But I have, um, 14 other Western Digital drives in use at home (is that a lot?) bought over the last three years, and not one of them has failed.  So...  Bad batch?  Insufficient airflow?  Cosmic rays?  Evil leprechauns?  Karma?  Or just the hard drive destruction bunny spreading the joy around?  I dunno.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:41 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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1

I was sitting here trying to think of a brand of HD's that I thought highly of. Western Digital? Nope. Seagate? Huh-uh.

IBM. Those were always the best ones. Except that I don't think IBM is in that business any longer.

I guess Toshiba is the only brand of HDs I really trust anymore. And I'm not even sure they are still in that business. (Man, I'm out of touch these days.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Tuesday, June 30 2009 08:57 AM (+rSRq)

2 IBM?  You don't remember the "Deathstar" (Deskstar GXP 75)?

Those things died like flies at a frog farm.  In fact, they're why IBM is no longer in the HD business.

The only redeeming feature was that they made horrible noises when they were on the way out, so you usually had time to rescue your data.

I had, of course, eight of them.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, June 30 2009 11:04 AM (PiXy!)

3

Maxtor.  I have two Maxtor drives, one of them nearing nine years old, and they both work like a charm.

I don't have anything important on the nine-year-old drive, of course.

Posted by: Wonderduck at Tuesday, June 30 2009 11:37 AM (8kQ8M)

4 When I worked at Sun, we shipped a large number of IBM drives in our arrays at one point, after which it turned out that those IBM drives leaked oil from bearings on the surfaces and would die within 18 months. Mind, we're talking expensive as all heck enterprise drives. It was a major undertaking to replace all of them under warranty, and it cost us some (I don't remember what financial arrangements were with IBM, but in any case it was extra work that someone had to do). Fortunately, IBM didn't do any good Fibre Channel drives, so we shipped Seagates in the next generation product.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Tuesday, June 30 2009 02:00 PM (/ppBw)

5 Are you using the 4TB server that you mentioned? (Is that deal still being offered?)

Posted by: Jim Burdo at Thursday, July 02 2009 09:28 PM (2i7ug)

6 Yep and yep.  SoftLayer's specials page.  It's the "BAND" promo code.

If you only wanted one server, though, you could do even better at 10tb.com.  Same datacenter, even more bandwidth (the name is a hint!) but less configurable.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, July 02 2009 11:53 PM (PiXy!)

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