Exactly. RAID is irrelevant. An ipod doesn't need RAID to make use of multiple 32GB chips. For example, I believe the 4GB Nano was orginally 2x2GB.
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Originally Posted by shamino
Why would anybody RAID together multiple 32G flash drives intead of simply hanging 128G worth of flash memory chips off of a single flash file system controller?
I think the 32G "limit" described is a limit only in terms of price and physical space within an iPod's shell.
Translation: "I don't need one, so everybody who thinks they do is insane, stupid, or in dire need of re-education".
Well thank you very much. Remind me to vote for someone else when the ballot goes around to elect a god.
wow, a bit touchy are we? I didn't realize it was a crime to post an opinion on the matter.
Obviously a person can't carry their entire CD or DVD collection with them (unless it's very small), so I'm just wondering why people expect to do it with their digital media collection once it grows beyond a certain size? In that case, no matter how much storage a portable media player has, it'll never be big enough because you'll just keep amassing more media to fill it and go beyond it's capacity.
I mean, is your solution to only having so much space in your house for your possessions to just buy a bigger house when you buy more stuff? If so, good luck with that strategy if you live in a large city.
So my point is, part of having a large collection of digital media is learning to manage it. Just as part of having a lot of furniture, clothes, devices, etc is learning to organize it. When you buy new stuff, you recycle, donate, put into external storage, or (as a last resort) throw out the old stuff. If you don't want to deal with the chore of doing that, then don't buy/download new stuff.
So yes, I do think people whose solution to having too much media to fit on their portable music player is to get a larger one are in dire need of re-education.
As a god I would decree, "You want to go home and re-think your file management strategy".
Obviously a person can't carry their entire CD or DVD collection with them (unless it's very small), so I'm just wondering why people expect to do it with their digital media collection once it grows beyond a certain size? In that case, no matter how much storage a portable media player has, it'll never be big enough because you'll just keep amassing more media to fill it and go beyond it's capacity.
Nobody is saying iPods require infinite capacity.
But there are tons of people who currently carry all their music on the device. My collection is 40GB, which fits very nicely on the 80GB iPod. But now you come along and say "Apple should discontinue that model, and everybody who wants it is an idiot for wanting it."
You're being incredibly arrogant when you tell everybody else that they have no right to want what they want, simply because you personally don't agree with them.
You're being incredibly arrogant when you tell everybody else that they have no right to want what they want, simply because you personally don't agree with them.
I think it's one thing to want something, often, it's another thing to be realistic about it. 200+ GB suggested by at least one is plain unrealistic.
If I wanted to, I can fill an 80GB a few times over, but I don't. I just know that after putting 160+ hours of media on it, the incremental value of putting more on it decreases.
But there are tons of people who currently carry all their music on the device. My collection is 40GB, which fits very nicely on the 80GB iPod. But now you come along and say "Apple should discontinue that model, and everybody who wants it is an idiot for wanting it."
Not at all. I'm simply pointing out the flaws in the rationale behind thinking that bigger and bigger hard drive based iPods will solve the problem of a growing digital media collection. I much prefer rational argument to name-calling.
And I don't think Apple should completely discontinue the hard drive based iPod line. I simply think they should put more focus on the flash-based line until such time as they can replace the existing hard drive based line with equivalently sized flash-based players. Rather than spending time on designing bigger and bigger hard-drive based models.
That way, flash prices will eventually come down due to increased market size and greater influx of money. Which will then help fund more R&D and optimization of the production chain. That will enable flash-based storage to replace hard drive storage in the long run. Which is what my end desire out of all this is.
Eventually, you should be able to get flash based media players which are as big as the hard-drive based ones you want. And on top of that give you 3 times as much battery life plus be resistant to drops.
But I understand that the average consumer has no idea about the underlying technology and why one is superior to another, and so they simply will buy based on numbers. Which is why I'm being so arrogant about it. Flash memory is simply a better storage medium.
I write this as one of the hard drives in my RAID array just stopped working a couple days ago. That's hard drive number 7 which has failed on me in the past 10 years or so. What a great technology!
Eventually, you should be able to get flash based media players which are as big as the hard-drive based ones you want. And on top of that give you 3 times as much battery life plus be resistant to drops.
Everything has a cost. I've heard people say that they want to replace desktop hard drives with flash as well. Which sounds great until you consider what the cost of a 300GB flash drive would cost, the fact that it will be much slower than a modern hard drive, and that things like swap files will rapidly go through all of its write-cycles, leading to premature failure.
There are plusses and minusses to every device. I don't think you can simply say "this one is better". You always have to qualify it with what you mean by "better" and what the intended application is.
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Originally Posted by auxio
But I understand that the average consumer has no idea about the underlying technology and why one is superior to another, and so they simply will buy based on numbers. Which is why I'm being so arrogant about it.
But the "average consumer" is not generally going to be found posting on an AppleInsider forum. Probably not many reading this forum either.
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Originally Posted by auxio
I write this as one of the hard drives in my RAID array just stopped working a couple days ago. That's hard drive number 7 which has failed on me in the past 10 years or so. What a great technology!
You've had some incredibly bad luck. You may want to look into the brand/model you're buying, and possible power problems at your location.
I've also been using computers with hard drives for a long time (approaching 20 years now), and I think only one (out of about 15-20) of the drives I've purchased has actually failed. Most of them are either still in use or have been retired for other reasons (e.g. need more capacity, or no longer have a need for the computer they're mounted in.)
Some of this is good luck, some is due to the fact that my primary systems are never powered off, and some is due to the fact that all of my computers have line conditioners and/or UPS's.
I see similar reliability in my office, where there are a few dozen PCs, a handful of UNIX servers, and a few standalone high-capacity file servers. Some drives have failed, but most get retired for other reasons before that.
Maybe if 70% of my drives failed (if that's what you were reporting), I'd feel differently, but I really see no reason to write off the entire concept as a bad idea.
then tell me, where are you going to buy this data from with the attribution that is needed? TIGER does not have appropriate accuracy for the USA. That is the only other continious data provider in the US, not to mention the globe. All mapping portals on the intnernet get there data from one or both of these firms, as well as personal navigation devises & auto firms. check your facts.
You don't have to buy any of this data. this isn't a mapping function. It's locating a device that's putting out a signal. If location finding was added to these, or to the laptops (a much better idea), a signal could be broadcast, receivable by whatever method required, GPS or otherwise. It could broadcast its serial number with it. Finding it would simply follow from that.
For some reason, people here seem to think that "turn left at this corner" is required for this. It isn't. Broadcasting latitude and longitude is enough. That ability is inherent within the device itself.
It could be turned on if a password wasn't supplied, or by some other less annoying method that could be user defines. Or it could be done by the user giving the serial number to the authorities tracking the device. Broadcasting a query for that serial number would elicit a reply from the proper device if it is turned on. The rest would take seconds. The device would then send it's L&L, and it would be found.
Let's not make more of this than it is. This is already old technology. It's in use.
There are plusses and minusses to every device. I don't think you can simply say "this one is better". You always have to qualify it with what you mean by "better" and what the intended application is.
I agree. There is no adequate replacement for the desktop hard drive on the desktop, unless you are willing to make very drastic changes. Even the 2.5" notebook hard drives are still generally far better than its existing flash counterparts. The HDDs aren't that bad on power consumption, and current ones are very quiet too.
Drives fail, but not that often unless they are abused or poorly made. I had maybe three in three dozen drives fail in the past decade, one was in an overly abusive environment. Even now, I'm not seeing a better alternative for what I do with them. Duplicate sets of hard drives is still about 10x cheaper or 10x more manageable than the alternatives.
I agree. There is no adequate replacement for the desktop hard drive on the desktop, unless you are willing to make very drastic changes. Even the 2.5" notebook hard drives are still generally far better than its existing flash counterparts. The HDDs aren't that bad on power consumption, and current ones are very quiet too.
Drives fail, but not that often unless they are abused or poorly made. I had maybe one in twelve drives fail in the past decade or two and even now, I'm not seeing a better alternative for what I do with them.
We are beginning to see 3.5" drives being moved out of the desktop space as well. 2.5" drives will take over there. Seagate has announced a high speed 2.5" drive, and others will follow.
The question in any of this is just how much storage does anyone really need?
Do we really need multiple terabyte drives in our desktops?
Do we need 500 GB in our phones or music players?
The high end iPods have always been the slowest sellers. No doubt, that will continue.
With all the talk here of 120 Gb iPods, people are forgetting that Apple could have gone to 100 GB a year ago, if they felt the need. They could go to 120 now.
I think that price is more important to most people, otherwise, they would buy the device with the largest storage in each category in overwhelming numbers. That hasn't been the case, just the opposite.
Apple would have to tread a fine line if they discontinued HD's in the larger models.
We are beginning to see 3.5" drives being moved out of the desktop space as well. 2.5" drives will take over there. Seagate has announced a high speed 2.5" drive, and others will follow.
The question in any of this is just how much storage does anyone really need?
Do we really need multiple terabyte drives in our desktops?
Do we need 500 GB in our phones or music players?
I will say that people have always been wondering why such large drives were necessary, I remember comments like that as far back as when the 300MB drives were introduced, and I think I've read accounts of people saying that about 5MB computer drives.
Seagate did announce the 2.5" server drives last year or the year before. The latest do have an IO advantage at a very high cost. Outside of the Savvios, 2.5" drives are still noticibly slower, much slower, than the same capacity desktop drive, and they are all still more expensive than the 3.5" drives. Even if I only needed 10GB, I still wouldn't go with a 2.5" drive for non-mobile use if I can reasonably avoid it. I know the shift is starting, but I think it will be a while before it becomes sigificant.
I will say that people have always been wondering why such large drives were necessary, I remember comments like that as far back as when the 300MB drives were introduced, and I think I've read accounts of people saying that about 5MB computer drives.
Seagate did announce the 2.5" server drives last year or the year before. The latest do have an IO advantage at a very high cost. Outside of the Savvios, 2.5" drives are still noticibly slower, much slower, than the same capacity desktop drive, and they are all still more expensive than the 3.5" drives. Even if I only needed 10GB, I still wouldn't go with a 2.5" drive for non-mobile use if I can reasonably avoid it. I know the shift is starting, but I think it will be a while before it becomes sigificant.
It will take another 18 months, or so, before it becomes significant.
But, I heard the same thing about going from 5.25" drives to 3.5".
If we still had 5.25" drives, we would have 2 TB drives running at 150 MB/s. But, we don't.
The 3.5" will go the same way. Computer manufacturers have been talking about ridding themselves of the 3.5" models for the past two years. The Mini is just the most prominent of those so far.
The truth is that most people don't need fast drives. 5,400 rpm models are more than fast enough for most purposes, including Dv editing.
It's the same as always, people LIKE to think they need more than they do, and they can give (incorrect) reasons why.
Everything has a cost. I've heard people say that they want to replace desktop hard drives with flash as well. Which sounds great until you consider what the cost of a 300GB flash drive would cost, the fact that it will be much slower than a modern hard drive, and that things like swap files will rapidly go through all of its write-cycles, leading to premature failure.
And a 300GB hard drive cost a fortune 3 years ago as well. Times change very quickly once there's enough demand, money and engineering behind a technology.
Problems can be worked around. Put the swap file on a small hard drive. Since it's not as critical to lose a swap file (might cause the computer to crash, but at least a whole data store isn't lost), it wouldn't be as big a deal.
And I'm assuming there are materials engineers working on the limitation of how many times you can write to flash memory. Obviously every storage solution has some drawbacks, but at least with flash memory, it's less about human error (a spec of dirt got in, or a drive arm measurement was a couple of nanometers off causing more wear than expected) and more about material properties (for which there is a more accurate measurement of failure point).
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Some of this is good luck, some is due to the fact that my primary systems are never powered off, and some is due to the fact that all of my computers have line conditioners and/or UPS's.
I've actually lived in 3 different locations and have had my server running almost 24/7 for the past 8 or so years. I've had a UPS for the past 2 years, but I haven't bought a power conditioner yet. That'll be my next upgrade.
And I guess you could say that I've been using hard drive technology for about 15 years now. I'm just counting the last 10 or so where I've been running a server and not just a desktop PC.
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Maybe if 70% of my drives failed (if that's what you were reporting), I'd feel differently, but I really see no reason to write off the entire concept as a bad idea.
It's a bit less than 70%. I've probably owned about 20 hard drives from various manufacturers over those 10 years. And yes, some actually made it to retirement, but the majority failed in some way. Many of them I was able to catch before complete failure by watching for I/O errors in the system log, but a couple of them caught me by surprise (the recent one included). The one which failed before this was the one which prompted me to create a RAID.
It will take another 18 months, or so, before it becomes significant.
But, I heard the same thing about going from 5.25" drives to 3.5".
If we still had 5.25" drives, we would have 2 TB drives running at 150 MB/s. But, we don't.
The 3.5" will go the same way. Computer manufacturers have been talking about ridding themselves of the 3.5" models for the past two years. The Mini is just the most prominent of those so far.
I think the 5" drives went away when the performance and cost difference was small. I haven't seen that yet with the 2.5" drives yet. The max RPM was limited by platter diameter. The current useful max for the 3.5" platters is 7200RPM, all the 10k and higher drives that I've seen have smaller platters.
And a 300GB hard drive cost a fortune 5 years ago as well. Times change very quickly once there's enough demand, money and engineering behind a technology.
That's true. But 5 years is a long time. Hd tech will keep up in the larger sizes. As cost is even more important than other qualities in the desktop space, we won't seen Hd's replaced on any large scale for even longer time scales.
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Problems can be worked around. Put the swap file on a small hard drive. Since it's not as critical to lose a swap file (might cause the computer to crash, but at least a whole data store isn't lost), it wouldn't be as big a deal.
Interesting that you say that, because the trend is to go in the opposite way. Put the swap onto flash for safety.
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And I'm assuming there are materials engineers working on the limitation of how many times you can write to flash memory. Obviously every storage solution has some drawbacks, but at least with flash memory, it's less about human error (a spec of dirt got in, or a drive arm measurement was a couple of nanometers off causing more wear than expected) and more about material properties (for which there is a more accurate measurement of failure point).
I've actually lived in 3 different locations and have had my server running almost 24/7 for the past 8 or so years. I've had a UPS for the past 2 years, but I haven't bought a power conditioner yet. That'll be my next upgrade.
There are newer tech that will eliminate both the lifetime and speed issues, but the cost issue won't go away. Here's one:
And I guess you could say that I've been using hard drive technology for about 15 years now. I'm just counting the last 10 or so where I've been running a server and not just a desktop PC.
It's a bit less than 70%. I've probably owned about 20 hard drives from various manufacturers over those 10 years. And yes, some actually made it to retirement, but the majority failed in some way. Many of them I was able to catch before complete failure by watching for I/O errors in the system log, but a couple of them caught me by surprise (the recent one included). The one which failed before this was the one which prompted me to create a RAID.
I've had many more Hd's than that, both here at home, and in my company over a period going back to the early '80's. In the beginning, when MTBF was 30,000 hours for a quality drive, they would fail.
But as those times inched up to, and crossed the million hour mark for SCSI, and the 200 thousand and above mark for ATA, failures have been rare.
The vast majority of my drives have been removed from use as bigger, faster, drives arrived to replace them.
I think the 5" drives went away when the performance and cost difference was small. I haven't seen that yet with the 2.5" drives yet. The max RPM was limited by platter diameter. The current useful max for the 3.5" platters is 7200RPM, all the 10k and higher drives that I've seen have smaller platters.
The drive cap was difference was fairly large, but the move was made.
3.5" drives do come in 10k and 15k versions, with some work done on faster rotation, but without success. I don't know why you don't know that. Do you mean 2.5" instead?
There are no 15k drives in the 2.5" size, and, offhand, I don't recall if there are any 10k drives in 2.5, though I seem to remember an article about one somewhere.
We will be seeing 300 GB 2.5" drives before too long. That has already been stated by drive manufacturers. 500 GB drives are expected around 2008.
Most computers would be quite fine with 2.5" 300-500 GB drives rotating at 7,200 rpm.
3.5" models would linger a while longer, as did the full height 5.25" drives did after all the others had gone.
3.5" drives do come in 10k and 15k versions, with some work done on faster rotation, but without success. I don't know why you don't know that. Do you mean 2.5" instead?
The enclosure may be the same size, but I said was that the platter size was reduced from standard 3.5" drives to get the higher RPM. I have a couple old 10k and 15k drives, and the platter size is noticeably reduced from 7200 drives.
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There are no 15k drives in the 2.5" size, and, offhand, I don't recall if there are any 10k drives in 2.5, though I seem to remember an article about one somewhere.
The latest Savvio are 15k drives in a 2.5" wide package. Seagate's Savvio has been available in 10k RPM for over a year. The 15k versions were announced a couple weeks ago. They aren't really notebook form factor, they are about the same height as a current desktop drive.
The enclosure may be the same size, but I said was that the platter size was reduced from standard 3.5" drives to get the higher RPM. I have a couple old 10k and 15k drives, and the platter size is noticeably reduced from 7200 drives.
Those are 3.5" drives. The platters are not very much different.
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The latest Savvio are 15k drives in a 2.5" wide package. Seagate's Savvio has been available in 10k RPM for over a year. The 15k versions were announced a couple weeks ago. They aren't really notebook form factor, they are about the same height as a current desktop drive.
We have the same situation here. These are not really 2.5" drives.
I'm speaking about standard drives. Those aren't out yet.
Interesting that you say that, because the trend is to go in the opposite way. Put the swap onto flash for safety.
It's weird that people consider a computer crash to be so important. With a journelling file system and applications which auto-save periodically, a computer crash is about the least invasive problem which can happen to you. A hard drive crash is much more deadly. As in, I've had musician friends lose years of work to them -- and I've lost a few important files myself. An hour or so of work lost due to computer crash is really nothing compared to losing years of irreplaceable data.
And I dunno what to say regarding all the hard drive failures I've seen. It's not like my server is under high load. It's a Linux NAT/router/IMAP/file server used by myself and my wife. I just plain don't trust hard drives anymore, which is why I'm looking for another technology.
I guess with hard drive prices so cheap, seeing RAID as a standard computer option is more likely than seeing flash drives replace hard drives.
...And I dunno what to say regarding all the hard drive failures I've seen. It's not like my server is under high load. It's a Linux NAT/router/IMAP/file server used by myself and my wife. I just plain don't trust hard drives anymore, which is why I'm looking for another technology.
I guess with hard drive prices so cheap, seeing RAID as a standard computer option is more likely than seeing flash drives replace hard drives.
I think people are not realising if they have 250-500gb of storage, that's fantastic, but really, you need an external of almost equal size for redundant x1 backup.
For anything above 200gb just a spare external drive is enough for a backup and Leopard Time Machine, I imagine.
People with a lot of media would need to offload their backup/ collection onto something like a 2-hard-drive RAID 1 set on the external Lacie, etc...
That's the way I would play it... At the moment I can't afford to get a 2nd 2.5" drive (to swap out the MacBook 5400rpm drive, use that as backup 60gb, and put in a Seagate 7200rpm 80or100gb) . So I just do some weeklies onto 4gb iPod Mini 1st gen, and burn off single layer DVDs (at 4x [15minutes or so to burn]) in a more "scattershot" fashion.
The above is more portable than lugging around a 250gb RAID 1 2x2.5" or 2x3.5" external box.
For me, wireless NAS is just too slow on 802.11g. And dropouts are so unrecoverable/ unresumable that you have to re-connect the WHOLE FRIGGIN TRANSFER set of file.
Comments
Why would anybody RAID together multiple 32G flash drives intead of simply hanging 128G worth of flash memory chips off of a single flash file system controller?
I think the 32G "limit" described is a limit only in terms of price and physical space within an iPod's shell.
Translation: "I don't need one, so everybody who thinks they do is insane, stupid, or in dire need of re-education".
Well thank you very much. Remind me to vote for someone else when the ballot goes around to elect a god.
wow, a bit touchy are we? I didn't realize it was a crime to post an opinion on the matter.
Obviously a person can't carry their entire CD or DVD collection with them (unless it's very small), so I'm just wondering why people expect to do it with their digital media collection once it grows beyond a certain size? In that case, no matter how much storage a portable media player has, it'll never be big enough because you'll just keep amassing more media to fill it and go beyond it's capacity.
I mean, is your solution to only having so much space in your house for your possessions to just buy a bigger house when you buy more stuff? If so, good luck with that strategy if you live in a large city.
So my point is, part of having a large collection of digital media is learning to manage it. Just as part of having a lot of furniture, clothes, devices, etc is learning to organize it. When you buy new stuff, you recycle, donate, put into external storage, or (as a last resort) throw out the old stuff. If you don't want to deal with the chore of doing that, then don't buy/download new stuff.
So yes, I do think people whose solution to having too much media to fit on their portable music player is to get a larger one are in dire need of re-education.
As a god I would decree, "You want to go home and re-think your file management strategy".
Then why was it designed to be bounced around continuously in your pocket?
It was redesigned to absorb a bit of shock around the time it was put in laptops. But it's never been ideally suited for said bouncy environments.
If you think it is, try dropping a hard-drive based iPod a few times while it's playing. My wife's only took one such drop to end its life.
Obviously a person can't carry their entire CD or DVD collection with them (unless it's very small), so I'm just wondering why people expect to do it with their digital media collection once it grows beyond a certain size? In that case, no matter how much storage a portable media player has, it'll never be big enough because you'll just keep amassing more media to fill it and go beyond it's capacity.
Nobody is saying iPods require infinite capacity.
But there are tons of people who currently carry all their music on the device. My collection is 40GB, which fits very nicely on the 80GB iPod. But now you come along and say "Apple should discontinue that model, and everybody who wants it is an idiot for wanting it."
You're being incredibly arrogant when you tell everybody else that they have no right to want what they want, simply because you personally don't agree with them.
You're being incredibly arrogant when you tell everybody else that they have no right to want what they want, simply because you personally don't agree with them.
I think it's one thing to want something, often, it's another thing to be realistic about it. 200+ GB suggested by at least one is plain unrealistic.
If I wanted to, I can fill an 80GB a few times over, but I don't. I just know that after putting 160+ hours of media on it, the incremental value of putting more on it decreases.
But there are tons of people who currently carry all their music on the device. My collection is 40GB, which fits very nicely on the 80GB iPod. But now you come along and say "Apple should discontinue that model, and everybody who wants it is an idiot for wanting it."
Not at all. I'm simply pointing out the flaws in the rationale behind thinking that bigger and bigger hard drive based iPods will solve the problem of a growing digital media collection. I much prefer rational argument to name-calling.
And I don't think Apple should completely discontinue the hard drive based iPod line. I simply think they should put more focus on the flash-based line until such time as they can replace the existing hard drive based line with equivalently sized flash-based players. Rather than spending time on designing bigger and bigger hard-drive based models.
That way, flash prices will eventually come down due to increased market size and greater influx of money. Which will then help fund more R&D and optimization of the production chain. That will enable flash-based storage to replace hard drive storage in the long run. Which is what my end desire out of all this is.
Eventually, you should be able to get flash based media players which are as big as the hard-drive based ones you want. And on top of that give you 3 times as much battery life plus be resistant to drops.
But I understand that the average consumer has no idea about the underlying technology and why one is superior to another, and so they simply will buy based on numbers. Which is why I'm being so arrogant about it. Flash memory is simply a better storage medium.
I write this as one of the hard drives in my RAID array just stopped working a couple days ago. That's hard drive number 7 which has failed on me in the past 10 years or so. What a great technology!
Eventually, you should be able to get flash based media players which are as big as the hard-drive based ones you want. And on top of that give you 3 times as much battery life plus be resistant to drops.
Everything has a cost. I've heard people say that they want to replace desktop hard drives with flash as well. Which sounds great until you consider what the cost of a 300GB flash drive would cost, the fact that it will be much slower than a modern hard drive, and that things like swap files will rapidly go through all of its write-cycles, leading to premature failure.
There are plusses and minusses to every device. I don't think you can simply say "this one is better". You always have to qualify it with what you mean by "better" and what the intended application is.
But I understand that the average consumer has no idea about the underlying technology and why one is superior to another, and so they simply will buy based on numbers. Which is why I'm being so arrogant about it.
But the "average consumer" is not generally going to be found posting on an AppleInsider forum. Probably not many reading this forum either.
I write this as one of the hard drives in my RAID array just stopped working a couple days ago. That's hard drive number 7 which has failed on me in the past 10 years or so. What a great technology!
You've had some incredibly bad luck. You may want to look into the brand/model you're buying, and possible power problems at your location.
I've also been using computers with hard drives for a long time (approaching 20 years now), and I think only one (out of about 15-20) of the drives I've purchased has actually failed. Most of them are either still in use or have been retired for other reasons (e.g. need more capacity, or no longer have a need for the computer they're mounted in.)
Some of this is good luck, some is due to the fact that my primary systems are never powered off, and some is due to the fact that all of my computers have line conditioners and/or UPS's.
I see similar reliability in my office, where there are a few dozen PCs, a handful of UNIX servers, and a few standalone high-capacity file servers. Some drives have failed, but most get retired for other reasons before that.
Maybe if 70% of my drives failed (if that's what you were reporting), I'd feel differently, but I really see no reason to write off the entire concept as a bad idea.
then tell me, where are you going to buy this data from with the attribution that is needed? TIGER does not have appropriate accuracy for the USA. That is the only other continious data provider in the US, not to mention the globe. All mapping portals on the intnernet get there data from one or both of these firms, as well as personal navigation devises & auto firms. check your facts.
You don't have to buy any of this data. this isn't a mapping function. It's locating a device that's putting out a signal. If location finding was added to these, or to the laptops (a much better idea), a signal could be broadcast, receivable by whatever method required, GPS or otherwise. It could broadcast its serial number with it. Finding it would simply follow from that.
For some reason, people here seem to think that "turn left at this corner" is required for this. It isn't. Broadcasting latitude and longitude is enough. That ability is inherent within the device itself.
It could be turned on if a password wasn't supplied, or by some other less annoying method that could be user defines. Or it could be done by the user giving the serial number to the authorities tracking the device. Broadcasting a query for that serial number would elicit a reply from the proper device if it is turned on. The rest would take seconds. The device would then send it's L&L, and it would be found.
Let's not make more of this than it is. This is already old technology. It's in use.
There are plusses and minusses to every device. I don't think you can simply say "this one is better". You always have to qualify it with what you mean by "better" and what the intended application is.
I agree. There is no adequate replacement for the desktop hard drive on the desktop, unless you are willing to make very drastic changes. Even the 2.5" notebook hard drives are still generally far better than its existing flash counterparts. The HDDs aren't that bad on power consumption, and current ones are very quiet too.
Drives fail, but not that often unless they are abused or poorly made. I had maybe three in three dozen drives fail in the past decade, one was in an overly abusive environment. Even now, I'm not seeing a better alternative for what I do with them. Duplicate sets of hard drives is still about 10x cheaper or 10x more manageable than the alternatives.
I agree. There is no adequate replacement for the desktop hard drive on the desktop, unless you are willing to make very drastic changes. Even the 2.5" notebook hard drives are still generally far better than its existing flash counterparts. The HDDs aren't that bad on power consumption, and current ones are very quiet too.
Drives fail, but not that often unless they are abused or poorly made. I had maybe one in twelve drives fail in the past decade or two and even now, I'm not seeing a better alternative for what I do with them.
We are beginning to see 3.5" drives being moved out of the desktop space as well. 2.5" drives will take over there. Seagate has announced a high speed 2.5" drive, and others will follow.
The question in any of this is just how much storage does anyone really need?
Do we really need multiple terabyte drives in our desktops?
Do we need 500 GB in our phones or music players?
The high end iPods have always been the slowest sellers. No doubt, that will continue.
With all the talk here of 120 Gb iPods, people are forgetting that Apple could have gone to 100 GB a year ago, if they felt the need. They could go to 120 now.
I think that price is more important to most people, otherwise, they would buy the device with the largest storage in each category in overwhelming numbers. That hasn't been the case, just the opposite.
Apple would have to tread a fine line if they discontinued HD's in the larger models.
We are beginning to see 3.5" drives being moved out of the desktop space as well. 2.5" drives will take over there. Seagate has announced a high speed 2.5" drive, and others will follow.
The question in any of this is just how much storage does anyone really need?
Do we really need multiple terabyte drives in our desktops?
Do we need 500 GB in our phones or music players?
I will say that people have always been wondering why such large drives were necessary, I remember comments like that as far back as when the 300MB drives were introduced, and I think I've read accounts of people saying that about 5MB computer drives.
Seagate did announce the 2.5" server drives last year or the year before. The latest do have an IO advantage at a very high cost. Outside of the Savvios, 2.5" drives are still noticibly slower, much slower, than the same capacity desktop drive, and they are all still more expensive than the 3.5" drives. Even if I only needed 10GB, I still wouldn't go with a 2.5" drive for non-mobile use if I can reasonably avoid it. I know the shift is starting, but I think it will be a while before it becomes sigificant.
I will say that people have always been wondering why such large drives were necessary, I remember comments like that as far back as when the 300MB drives were introduced, and I think I've read accounts of people saying that about 5MB computer drives.
Seagate did announce the 2.5" server drives last year or the year before. The latest do have an IO advantage at a very high cost. Outside of the Savvios, 2.5" drives are still noticibly slower, much slower, than the same capacity desktop drive, and they are all still more expensive than the 3.5" drives. Even if I only needed 10GB, I still wouldn't go with a 2.5" drive for non-mobile use if I can reasonably avoid it. I know the shift is starting, but I think it will be a while before it becomes sigificant.
It will take another 18 months, or so, before it becomes significant.
But, I heard the same thing about going from 5.25" drives to 3.5".
If we still had 5.25" drives, we would have 2 TB drives running at 150 MB/s. But, we don't.
The 3.5" will go the same way. Computer manufacturers have been talking about ridding themselves of the 3.5" models for the past two years. The Mini is just the most prominent of those so far.
The truth is that most people don't need fast drives. 5,400 rpm models are more than fast enough for most purposes, including Dv editing.
It's the same as always, people LIKE to think they need more than they do, and they can give (incorrect) reasons why.
Everything has a cost. I've heard people say that they want to replace desktop hard drives with flash as well. Which sounds great until you consider what the cost of a 300GB flash drive would cost, the fact that it will be much slower than a modern hard drive, and that things like swap files will rapidly go through all of its write-cycles, leading to premature failure.
And a 300GB hard drive cost a fortune 3 years ago as well. Times change very quickly once there's enough demand, money and engineering behind a technology.
Problems can be worked around. Put the swap file on a small hard drive. Since it's not as critical to lose a swap file (might cause the computer to crash, but at least a whole data store isn't lost), it wouldn't be as big a deal.
And I'm assuming there are materials engineers working on the limitation of how many times you can write to flash memory. Obviously every storage solution has some drawbacks, but at least with flash memory, it's less about human error (a spec of dirt got in, or a drive arm measurement was a couple of nanometers off causing more wear than expected) and more about material properties (for which there is a more accurate measurement of failure point).
Some of this is good luck, some is due to the fact that my primary systems are never powered off, and some is due to the fact that all of my computers have line conditioners and/or UPS's.
I've actually lived in 3 different locations and have had my server running almost 24/7 for the past 8 or so years. I've had a UPS for the past 2 years, but I haven't bought a power conditioner yet. That'll be my next upgrade.
And I guess you could say that I've been using hard drive technology for about 15 years now. I'm just counting the last 10 or so where I've been running a server and not just a desktop PC.
Maybe if 70% of my drives failed (if that's what you were reporting), I'd feel differently, but I really see no reason to write off the entire concept as a bad idea.
It's a bit less than 70%. I've probably owned about 20 hard drives from various manufacturers over those 10 years. And yes, some actually made it to retirement, but the majority failed in some way. Many of them I was able to catch before complete failure by watching for I/O errors in the system log, but a couple of them caught me by surprise (the recent one included). The one which failed before this was the one which prompted me to create a RAID.
It will take another 18 months, or so, before it becomes significant.
But, I heard the same thing about going from 5.25" drives to 3.5".
If we still had 5.25" drives, we would have 2 TB drives running at 150 MB/s. But, we don't.
The 3.5" will go the same way. Computer manufacturers have been talking about ridding themselves of the 3.5" models for the past two years. The Mini is just the most prominent of those so far.
I think the 5" drives went away when the performance and cost difference was small. I haven't seen that yet with the 2.5" drives yet. The max RPM was limited by platter diameter. The current useful max for the 3.5" platters is 7200RPM, all the 10k and higher drives that I've seen have smaller platters.
And a 300GB hard drive cost a fortune 5 years ago as well. Times change very quickly once there's enough demand, money and engineering behind a technology.
That's true. But 5 years is a long time. Hd tech will keep up in the larger sizes. As cost is even more important than other qualities in the desktop space, we won't seen Hd's replaced on any large scale for even longer time scales.
Problems can be worked around. Put the swap file on a small hard drive. Since it's not as critical to lose a swap file (might cause the computer to crash, but at least a whole data store isn't lost), it wouldn't be as big a deal.
Interesting that you say that, because the trend is to go in the opposite way. Put the swap onto flash for safety.
And I'm assuming there are materials engineers working on the limitation of how many times you can write to flash memory. Obviously every storage solution has some drawbacks, but at least with flash memory, it's less about human error (a spec of dirt got in, or a drive arm measurement was a couple of nanometers off causing more wear than expected) and more about material properties (for which there is a more accurate measurement of failure point).
I've actually lived in 3 different locations and have had my server running almost 24/7 for the past 8 or so years. I've had a UPS for the past 2 years, but I haven't bought a power conditioner yet. That'll be my next upgrade.
There are newer tech that will eliminate both the lifetime and speed issues, but the cost issue won't go away. Here's one:
http://samsung.com/PressCenter/Press...911_0000286481
And I guess you could say that I've been using hard drive technology for about 15 years now. I'm just counting the last 10 or so where I've been running a server and not just a desktop PC.
It's a bit less than 70%. I've probably owned about 20 hard drives from various manufacturers over those 10 years. And yes, some actually made it to retirement, but the majority failed in some way. Many of them I was able to catch before complete failure by watching for I/O errors in the system log, but a couple of them caught me by surprise (the recent one included). The one which failed before this was the one which prompted me to create a RAID.
I've had many more Hd's than that, both here at home, and in my company over a period going back to the early '80's. In the beginning, when MTBF was 30,000 hours for a quality drive, they would fail.
But as those times inched up to, and crossed the million hour mark for SCSI, and the 200 thousand and above mark for ATA, failures have been rare.
The vast majority of my drives have been removed from use as bigger, faster, drives arrived to replace them.
I think the 5" drives went away when the performance and cost difference was small. I haven't seen that yet with the 2.5" drives yet. The max RPM was limited by platter diameter. The current useful max for the 3.5" platters is 7200RPM, all the 10k and higher drives that I've seen have smaller platters.
The drive cap was difference was fairly large, but the move was made.
3.5" drives do come in 10k and 15k versions, with some work done on faster rotation, but without success. I don't know why you don't know that. Do you mean 2.5" instead?
There are no 15k drives in the 2.5" size, and, offhand, I don't recall if there are any 10k drives in 2.5, though I seem to remember an article about one somewhere.
We will be seeing 300 GB 2.5" drives before too long. That has already been stated by drive manufacturers. 500 GB drives are expected around 2008.
Most computers would be quite fine with 2.5" 300-500 GB drives rotating at 7,200 rpm.
3.5" models would linger a while longer, as did the full height 5.25" drives did after all the others had gone.
3.5" drives do come in 10k and 15k versions, with some work done on faster rotation, but without success. I don't know why you don't know that. Do you mean 2.5" instead?
The enclosure may be the same size, but I said was that the platter size was reduced from standard 3.5" drives to get the higher RPM. I have a couple old 10k and 15k drives, and the platter size is noticeably reduced from 7200 drives.
There are no 15k drives in the 2.5" size, and, offhand, I don't recall if there are any 10k drives in 2.5, though I seem to remember an article about one somewhere.
The latest Savvio are 15k drives in a 2.5" wide package. Seagate's Savvio has been available in 10k RPM for over a year. The 15k versions were announced a couple weeks ago. They aren't really notebook form factor, they are about the same height as a current desktop drive.
The enclosure may be the same size, but I said was that the platter size was reduced from standard 3.5" drives to get the higher RPM. I have a couple old 10k and 15k drives, and the platter size is noticeably reduced from 7200 drives.
Those are 3.5" drives. The platters are not very much different.
The latest Savvio are 15k drives in a 2.5" wide package. Seagate's Savvio has been available in 10k RPM for over a year. The 15k versions were announced a couple weeks ago. They aren't really notebook form factor, they are about the same height as a current desktop drive.
We have the same situation here. These are not really 2.5" drives.
I'm speaking about standard drives. Those aren't out yet.
Interesting that you say that, because the trend is to go in the opposite way. Put the swap onto flash for safety.
It's weird that people consider a computer crash to be so important. With a journelling file system and applications which auto-save periodically, a computer crash is about the least invasive problem which can happen to you. A hard drive crash is much more deadly. As in, I've had musician friends lose years of work to them -- and I've lost a few important files myself. An hour or so of work lost due to computer crash is really nothing compared to losing years of irreplaceable data.
And I dunno what to say regarding all the hard drive failures I've seen. It's not like my server is under high load. It's a Linux NAT/router/IMAP/file server used by myself and my wife. I just plain don't trust hard drives anymore, which is why I'm looking for another technology.
I guess with hard drive prices so cheap, seeing RAID as a standard computer option is more likely than seeing flash drives replace hard drives.
...And I dunno what to say regarding all the hard drive failures I've seen. It's not like my server is under high load. It's a Linux NAT/router/IMAP/file server used by myself and my wife. I just plain don't trust hard drives anymore, which is why I'm looking for another technology.
I guess with hard drive prices so cheap, seeing RAID as a standard computer option is more likely than seeing flash drives replace hard drives.
I think people are not realising if they have 250-500gb of storage, that's fantastic, but really, you need an external of almost equal size for redundant x1 backup.
For anything above 200gb just a spare external drive is enough for a backup and Leopard Time Machine, I imagine.
People with a lot of media would need to offload their backup/ collection onto something like a 2-hard-drive RAID 1 set on the external Lacie, etc...
That's the way I would play it... At the moment I can't afford to get a 2nd 2.5" drive (to swap out the MacBook 5400rpm drive, use that as backup 60gb, and put in a Seagate 7200rpm 80or100gb) . So I just do some weeklies onto 4gb iPod Mini 1st gen, and burn off single layer DVDs (at 4x [15minutes or so to burn]) in a more "scattershot" fashion.
The above is more portable than lugging around a 250gb RAID 1 2x2.5" or 2x3.5" external box.
For me, wireless NAS is just too slow on 802.11g. And dropouts are so unrecoverable/ unresumable that you have to re-connect the WHOLE FRIGGIN TRANSFER set of file.