Re: How long do XP laptops last?

Somewhere on teh intarwebs Mark Shapiro wrote:
>> I understood that Macs use the same hard disc drives that every one
>> else uses.
>
>
> I have found that Mac laptops have drives that are
> more protected with rubber or shock-absorbing mounts,
> and better power supplies, and the OS is not constantly
> writing to the disk.

Also they're better designed than your aveage $300 laptop with attention to
HDD temperature.

The biggest killer of HDDs (after shock) is high temperatures. A lot of
cheap laptops are poorly designed in that their HDDs often exceed the HDD
manufacturers specified maximum temperature (60 deg C for most Seagate
drives FI).

> Maybe 7 will be less drive-grinding. Maybe I just won't
> buy a Dell again.

If you spend more you get more. Also there's a neat little application that
I wouldn't do without on *any* machine I own called Hard Disk Sentinel. It
runs in the background and monitors your HDD temperature and SMART status.
It can sound an alarm if the temperature goes over a pre-set point or if the
disk is failing etc.
--
Shaun.

"Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's
warm for the rest of his life." Terry Pratchet, 'Jingo'.

Somewhere on teh intarwebs BillW50 wrote:
> In news:,
> me/2 typed on Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:13:07 -0700:
>> On Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:23:09 -0500, "BillW50" <>
>> wrote:
>>>> In news:4add7782$,
>>>> M.I.5¾ typed on Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:41:04 +0100:
>>>>> "BillW50" <> wrote in message
>>>>> news:hbhtha$7o8$...
>>>>>> Unlucky? Well since MacBook's have their own anti-shock
>>>>>> technology and others usually doesn't, pretty much explains it
>>>>>> to me.
>>>>>
>>>>> I understood that Macs use the same hard disc drives that every
>>>>> one else uses.
>>>>
>>>> Nope, MacBook's have their own anti-shock hardware and some even
>>>> have anti-shock hard drives coupled with the anti-shock hardware.
>>>>
>>>> http://macs.about.com/b/2009/08/10/s...rpm-drives.htm
>>
>> I retired almost 4 years ago after spending my last 10 years working
>> as a Senior Tech at a Toshiba Premier ASP. At least a year before I
>> retired Toshiba was shipping some of their models with anti-shock
>> technology both in the hard drive and in the notebook itself.
>
> That is very good to know. So far that makes Macs, IBM, and now
> Toshiba using anti-shock technology. You would think everybody would
> be using them.

It adds to the cost of the laptop. Most punters don't want to pay the extra
few bucks for the premium model or the better brand.

In New Zealand there is an average ~20% price increase for an otherwise
identical HDD that has anti-shock protection over one without.

Cue a punter in a Best Buys looking at a laptop. He doesn't know that the
machine he just ruled out because it's $50 dearer has HDD protection as it's
too 'geeky' to be on the display so he buys the cheap one and then comes
here to complain when it turns to custard.
--
Shaun.

"Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's
warm for the rest of his life." Terry Pratchet, 'Jingo'.

> So as a Senior Tech, how did you tell if a drive failed from shock or
> general failure? And did you get a lot of drive failures in general?

On Thu, 22 Oct 2009 07:20:47 -0500, "BillW50" <> wrote:

:>In news:,
:>me/2 typed on Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:13:07 -0700:
:>> On Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:23:09 -0500, "BillW50" <> wrote:
:>>
:>>>> In news:4add7782$,
:>>>> M.I.5¾ typed on Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:41:04 +0100:
:>>>>> "BillW50" <> wrote in message
:>>>>> news:hbhtha$7o8$...
:>>>>>> Unlucky? Well since MacBook's have their own anti-shock technology
:>>>>>> and others usually doesn't, pretty much explains it to me.
:>>>>>
:>>>>> I understood that Macs use the same hard disc drives that every one
:>>>>> else uses.
:>>>>
:>>>> Nope, MacBook's have their own anti-shock hardware and some even
:>>>> have anti-shock hard drives coupled with the anti-shock hardware.
:>>>>
:>>>> http://macs.about.com/b/2009/08/10/s...rpm-drives.htm
:>>
:>> I retired almost 4 years ago after spending my last 10 years working
:>> as a Senior Tech at a Toshiba Premier ASP. At least a year before I
:>> retired Toshiba was shipping some of their models with anti-shock
:>> technology both in the hard drive and in the notebook itself.
:>>
:>> me/2
:>
:>That is very good to know. So far that makes Macs, IBM, and now Toshiba
:>using anti-shock technology. You would think everybody would be using
:>them.
:>
:>So as a Senior Tech, how did you tell if a drive failed from shock or
:>general failure? And did you get a lot of drive failures in general?

Toshiba was very liberal as to replacing drives under warranty. If
there was no evidence of physical damage to the drive they would take
it back no questions asked.

As for failures in general it seemed to go in cycles. Usually when we
saw a lot of failures they tended to be the same exact drive in the
same model of notebook and were due to manufacturing defects or poor
notebook designs more than end user abuse. Also, we did have a class
of people that tended to close the lid and "throw" the notebook in
their bag while windows was still shutting down and before the hard
drive had time to fully spin down. The payback was that those kind of
people tended to be the ones that never backed up their data and when
the drive failed they were SOL. :-)

me/2

~misfit~ wrote on Sat, 24 Oct 2009 13:32:18 +1300:
> Somewhere on teh intarwebs Mark Shapiro wrote:
>>> I understood that Macs use the same hard disc drives that every one
>>> else uses.
>>
>> I have found that Mac laptops have drives that are
>> more protected with rubber or shock-absorbing mounts,
>> and better power supplies, and the OS is not constantly
>> writing to the disk.
>
> Also they're better designed than your aveage $300 laptop with attention to
> HDD temperature.
>
> The biggest killer of HDDs (after shock) is high temperatures. A lot of
> cheap laptops are poorly designed in that their HDDs often exceed the HDD
> manufacturers specified maximum temperature (60 deg C for most Seagate
> drives FI).

Hi Shaun! Where did you hear this from? This is something I would
automatically believe without question. Although my personal experience
coupled with Google's study shows cool hard drives fails far more. For
example, out of 20 drives, I have had 3 of them that failed. And they
were all highly cooled down drives (80°-100°F range). My hot drives
(120°F plus) have never failed me yet.

"Surprisingly, Google's study found no correlation between drive failure
and elevated heat and activity levels. The largest percentage of
failures occurred on drives operating within a mild 77-to-88-degree
range. However, desktop PCs typically operate at temperatures well over
the maximum of 125 degrees (52°C) reported in the Google study, so the
findings do not support running hard drives without adequate airflow to
cool them."

http://www.pcworld.com/article/13116..._frequent.html

>> Maybe 7 will be less drive-grinding. Maybe I just won't
>> buy a Dell again.
>
> If you spend more you get more. Also there's a neat little application that
> I wouldn't do without on *any* machine I own called Hard Disk Sentinel. It
> runs in the background and monitors your HDD temperature and SMART status.
> It can sound an alarm if the temperature goes over a pre-set point or if the
> disk is failing etc.

Actually "Google's study relied in part on SMART (Self-Monitoring And
Reporting Technology) data from drives that have this feature. But so
many drives failed without any SMART warnings that Google concluded the
feature was not helpful in predicting real-world failure patterns."

And "Corporate buyers might rethink purchasing plans in light of
Carnegie Mellon's finding that fiber-channel and SCSI drives appear no
more reliable than the cheaper SATA variety. But IDC analyst David
Reinsel says fiber-channel and SCSI drives are still worthwhile when
performance matters."

So this suggests that expensive drives don't last longer than cheaper
drives.

P.S. I saw your earlier posts and I'll get to them in the next day or
so. This one I had time for though. ;-)

--
Bill
Asus EEE PC 702G4 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
Xandros Linux (build 2007-10-19 13:03)

Somewhere on teh intarwebs BillW50 wrote:
> ~misfit~ wrote on Sat, 24 Oct 2009 13:32:18 +1300:
>> Somewhere on teh intarwebs Mark Shapiro wrote:
>>>> I understood that Macs use the same hard disc drives that every one
>>>> else uses.
>>>
>>> I have found that Mac laptops have drives that are
>>> more protected with rubber or shock-absorbing mounts,
>>> and better power supplies, and the OS is not constantly
>>> writing to the disk.
>>
>> Also they're better designed than your aveage $300 laptop with
>> attention to HDD temperature.
>>
>> The biggest killer of HDDs (after shock) is high temperatures. A lot
>> of cheap laptops are poorly designed in that their HDDs often exceed
>> the HDD manufacturers specified maximum temperature (60 deg C for
>> most Seagate drives FI).
>
> Hi Shaun! Where did you hear this from?

I got this from Seagate's NZ agent. Their laptop drives are specced to 60
deg C and their desktop drives to 50 deg C (operating temp). Their SMART has
a self-preserving record of the highest temp reached and, if it is above
that figure then any warranty is invalid. The min and max temps for the
various HDDs are available at the drive manufacturers websites, on the spec
sheets.

> This is something I would
> automatically believe without question. Although my personal
> experience coupled with Google's study shows cool hard drives fails
> far more. For example, out of 20 drives, I have had 3 of them that
> failed. And they were all highly cooled down drives (80°-100°F
> range). My hot drives (120°F plus) have never failed me yet.
>
> "Surprisingly, Google's study found no correlation between drive
> failure and elevated heat and activity levels. The largest percentage
> of failures occurred on drives operating within a mild 77-to-88-degree
> range. However, desktop PCs typically operate at temperatures well
> over the maximum of 125 degrees (52°C) reported in the Google study,
> so the findings do not support running hard drives without adequate
> airflow to cool them."
>
> http://www.pcworld.com/article/13116..._frequent.html
>
>>> Maybe 7 will be less drive-grinding. Maybe I just won't
>>> buy a Dell again.
>>
>> If you spend more you get more. Also there's a neat little
>> application that I wouldn't do without on *any* machine I own called
>> Hard Disk Sentinel. It runs in the background and monitors your HDD
>> temperature and SMART status. It can sound an alarm if the
>> temperature goes over a pre-set point or if the disk is failing etc.
>
> Actually "Google's study relied in part on SMART (Self-Monitoring And
> Reporting Technology) data from drives that have this feature. But so
> many drives failed without any SMART warnings that Google concluded
> the feature was not helpful in predicting real-world failure
> patterns."

Yeah, I'm *very* familiar with Google's red herring report in which they
state a lot of generalities but no real facts. It's been endlessly debated
in a few hardware groups that I frequent since it was first published. The
general consensus amongst people with extensive real-world experience with
hardware is that the report offers no insight into HDD usage and failure
rates whatsoever. It could have been written by a politician's speech
writer.

The very fact that Google say they relied on SMART with srives that have
that feature shows the validity of the report. AFAIK pretty much *all*
drives manufactured since the end of last century and most made for a couple
years before that have SMART.

I like to use HDS to check to see if there are any 'event' occurring with my
drives, if there have been any sectors re-mapped or if the drive is having
to keep trying to read data more often than it should. I also like to know
what temperature my drives are at. The only drive failures I've had, or been
involved with as unpaid PC builder / PC support to my friends (other than
infant mortality) in the last decade have been from drives running too hot.

> And "Corporate buyers might rethink purchasing plans in light of
> Carnegie Mellon's finding that fiber-channel and SCSI drives appear no
> more reliable than the cheaper SATA variety. But IDC analyst David
> Reinsel says fiber-channel and SCSI drives are still worthwhile when
> performance matters."
>
> So this suggests that expensive drives don't last longer than cheaper
> drives.

I only suggested that expensive drives might be better in light of the
drives having built-in anti-shock protection are more expensive than those
without.

> P.S. I saw your earlier posts and I'll get to them in the next day or
> so. This one I had time for though. ;-)

OK, Cheers,
--
Shaun.

"Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's
warm for the rest of his life." Terry Pratchet, 'Jingo'.

~misfit~ wrote on Sat, 24 Oct 2009 19:12:29 +1300:
> Somewhere on teh intarwebs BillW50 wrote:
>> ~misfit~ wrote on Sat, 24 Oct 2009 13:32:18 +1300:
>>> Somewhere on teh intarwebs Mark Shapiro wrote:
>>>>> I understood that Macs use the same hard disc drives that every one
>>>>> else uses.
>>>> I have found that Mac laptops have drives that are
>>>> more protected with rubber or shock-absorbing mounts,
>>>> and better power supplies, and the OS is not constantly
>>>> writing to the disk.
>>> Also they're better designed than your aveage $300 laptop with
>>> attention to HDD temperature.
>>>
>>> The biggest killer of HDDs (after shock) is high temperatures. A lot
>>> of cheap laptops are poorly designed in that their HDDs often exceed
>>> the HDD manufacturers specified maximum temperature (60 deg C for
>>> most Seagate drives FI).
>> Hi Shaun! Where did you hear this from?
>
> I got this from Seagate's NZ agent. Their laptop drives are specced to 60
> deg C and their desktop drives to 50 deg C (operating temp). Their SMART has
> a self-preserving record of the highest temp reached and, if it is above
> that figure then any warranty is invalid. The min and max temps for the
> various HDDs are available at the drive manufacturers websites, on the spec
> sheets.

Seagate has a long history (starting in the 80's) of making excuses why
they won't honor the warranty. Many users and companies have been
screwed royally by Seagate. So this hidden feature is just another
excuse to pass out bad lots of hard drives to unexpecting customers and
companies.

So I see a big problem here. Most customers are not going to have a clue
what this reads when they send the drive back to Seagate. Now that
Seagate has it, they can make it read anything they want too. And turn
around and claim that *you* mistreated it.

Sorry, I have seen how Seagate operates for over 20 years now. And it is
true that some of their drives are indeed very good. But they have
proved lousy when it comes to warranty.

>> This is something I would
>> automatically believe without question. Although my personal
>> experience coupled with Google's study shows cool hard drives fails
>> far more. For example, out of 20 drives, I have had 3 of them that
>> failed. And they were all highly cooled down drives (80°-100°F
>> range). My hot drives (120°F plus) have never failed me yet.
>>
>> "Surprisingly, Google's study found no correlation between drive
>> failure and elevated heat and activity levels. The largest percentage
>> of failures occurred on drives operating within a mild 77-to-88-degree
>> range. However, desktop PCs typically operate at temperatures well
>> over the maximum of 125 degrees (52°C) reported in the Google study,
>> so the findings do not support running hard drives without adequate
>> airflow to cool them."
>>
>> http://www.pcworld.com/article/13116..._frequent.html
>>
>>>> Maybe 7 will be less drive-grinding. Maybe I just won't
>>>> buy a Dell again.
>>> If you spend more you get more. Also there's a neat little
>>> application that I wouldn't do without on *any* machine I own called
>>> Hard Disk Sentinel. It runs in the background and monitors your HDD
>>> temperature and SMART status. It can sound an alarm if the
>>> temperature goes over a pre-set point or if the disk is failing etc.
>> Actually "Google's study relied in part on SMART (Self-Monitoring And
>> Reporting Technology) data from drives that have this feature. But so
>> many drives failed without any SMART warnings that Google concluded
>> the feature was not helpful in predicting real-world failure
>> patterns."
>
> Yeah, I'm *very* familiar with Google's red herring report in which they
> state a lot of generalities but no real facts. It's been endlessly debated
> in a few hardware groups that I frequent since it was first published. The
> general consensus amongst people with extensive real-world experience with
> hardware is that the report offers no insight into HDD usage and failure
> rates whatsoever. It could have been written by a politician's speech
> writer.
>
> The very fact that Google say they relied on SMART with srives that have
> that feature shows the validity of the report. AFAIK pretty much *all*
> drives manufactured since the end of last century and most made for a couple
> years before that have SMART.
>
> I like to use HDS to check to see if there are any 'event' occurring with my
> drives, if there have been any sectors re-mapped or if the drive is having
> to keep trying to read data more often than it should. I also like to know
> what temperature my drives are at. The only drive failures I've had, or been
> involved with as unpaid PC builder / PC support to my friends (other than
> infant mortality) in the last decade have been from drives running too hot.

I am not sure Google's study is a red herring or not. As I understand
they purposely left out the makes and models out of the study. Which is
somewhat disturbing, but understandable why they would do this.

I also admit, SMART does provide some useful information. But it doesn't
and can't tell you everything that goes wrong with a drive. For example,
a motor windings can short or open up like a fuse. And SMART will give
you no warning whatsoever. And one day everything is just fine and the
next, the motor will not spin up. And there is no way you can have
access to it once again without lots of delicate surgery.

I too use HDS and it always reports that nothing is ever wrong and my
drives. Giving them a 100% rating. And despite their claims it works
with SSD (solid state drives), I find HDS to be really lacking in this
regard.

>> And "Corporate buyers might rethink purchasing plans in light of
>> Carnegie Mellon's finding that fiber-channel and SCSI drives appear no
>> more reliable than the cheaper SATA variety. But IDC analyst David
>> Reinsel says fiber-channel and SCSI drives are still worthwhile when
>> performance matters."
>>
>> So this suggests that expensive drives don't last longer than cheaper
>> drives.
>
> I only suggested that expensive drives might be better in light of the
> drives having built-in anti-shock protection are more expensive than those
> without.

Yes ok. Although I am ok using without, but I don't recommend using them
in a portable environment. And when you solve the problem with
anti-shock technology, performance suffers when it is activated. So
while you save it from drive damage, anti-shock isn't perfect either.

>> P.S. I saw your earlier posts and I'll get to them in the next day or
>> so. This one I had time for though. ;-)
>
> OK, Cheers,

--
Bill
Asus EEE PC 702G4 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
Xandros Linux (build 2007-10-19 13:03)

Much of this discussion does not make sense.

In the first place, 60C is about 150F. I simply do not see ANY hard
drive, of ANY laptop (or netbook) getting THAT hot.

In the second place, sure, the drive DOES have a temperature sensor, and
it does record the highest temperature recorded. But, relative to the
comment below: "Now that Seagate has it, they can make it read anything
they want too" ...

Think about this for a minute: Last week, Newegg was selling Seagate
500GB 7,200 rpm laptop (2.5" sata) drives for $99. RETAIL. Just how
much time do you think that Seagate is going to put into analyzing a
drive the comes back "defective"? The usual answer is zero. If it
comes back defective, and it's in warranty, the customer gets sent a
refurb drive. Then this drive goes to the shop to be refurbed (after
which it will go out to someone else as a replacement). It's not cost
effective to spend even 15 to 30 minutes looking at drives that sell for
less than $100 to see if there is grounds to deny a warranty.


BillW50 wrote:

>
> So I see a big problem here. Most customers are not going to have a clue
> what this reads when they send the drive back to Seagate. Now that
> Seagate has it, they can make it read anything they want too. And turn
> around and claim that *you* mistreated it.
>
> Sorry, I have seen how Seagate operates for over 20 years now. And it is
> true that some of their drives are indeed very good. But they have
> proved lousy when it comes to warranty.
>

Barry Watzman wrote on Sat, 24 Oct 2009 18:22:17 -0400:
> Much of this discussion does not make sense.

Reminds me of when you told everybody don't worry about upgrading your
2.5 inch drives because they only draw 500ma max. That is after I told
people that as an electronic engineer, I have to spec 2.5 inch hardware
designs for just over 2000ma.

Well I couldn't find many specs for drives, so I couldn't say much. But
later I found out that those original HDD in my '06 Gateway laptops,
SMART claims they draw just over 2000ma. So much of your claim that HDD
doesn't draw more than 500ma, eh?

> In the first place, 60C is about 150F. I simply do not see ANY hard
> drive, of ANY laptop (or netbook) getting THAT hot.
>
> In the second place, sure, the drive DOES have a temperature sensor, and
> it does record the highest temperature recorded. But, relative to the
> comment below: "Now that Seagate has it, they can make it read anything
> they want too" ...
>
> Think about this for a minute: Last week, Newegg was selling Seagate
> 500GB 7,200 rpm laptop (2.5" sata) drives for $99. RETAIL. Just how
> much time do you think that Seagate is going to put into analyzing a
> drive the comes back "defective"? The usual answer is zero. If it
> comes back defective, and it's in warranty, the customer gets sent a
> refurb drive. Then this drive goes to the shop to be refurbed (after
> which it will go out to someone else as a replacement). It's not cost
> effective to spend even 15 to 30 minutes looking at drives that sell for
> less than $100 to see if there is grounds to deny a warranty.
>
>
> BillW50 wrote:
>
>>
>> So I see a big problem here. Most customers are not going to have a
>> clue what this reads when they send the drive back to Seagate. Now
>> that Seagate has it, they can make it read anything they want too. And
>> turn around and claim that *you* mistreated it.
>>
>> Sorry, I have seen how Seagate operates for over 20 years now. And it
>> is true that some of their drives are indeed very good. But they have
>> proved lousy when it comes to warranty.

Back in the late '80's, there was a company making external HDD for
Commodore computers. The Internet wasn't big back then, but BBS were.
Many of them were ran on Commodores. And this company sold tens of
thousands of these external HDD. And all of them were Seagates. Well a
few months went by and tens of thousands of these things were failing.

It turned out that Seagate had used too much oil on the platters. And
when you spin a disc, the oil migrates to the outer track. Right where
the head parks. So starting up cold, the head, oil, and platter would be
sort of stuck together. And the motor would burn out trying to spin the
stuck platter. I believe they called this striction.

These external HDD were expensive. The major cost was the Seagate HDD
themselves. I seem to recall a price of like $800+. So these things were
not cheap. So lots of angry customers. The company couldn't afford to
replace tens of thousands of drives and Seagate said it wasn't their
problem. Contact the manufacture.

Well the company went belly up, and tens of thousands of customers got
screwed. And Seagate got off scot free by selling defective HDD. Seagate
continued this game all the way to this day AFAIK.

Companies like Seagate who sells HDD that are defective and won't do
anything after you get screwed, are companies I don't trust. But you can
support them if you like too Barry, I don't care. As they have stolen
too much money from us good people already.

--
Bill
Asus EEE PC 702G4 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
Xandros Linux (build 2007-10-19 13:03)

Very few 2.5" drives draw more than 500ma. Got to newegg, or zzf, or
the mfgrs sites and check the specs. VERY few draw over 500ma, because
that is the limit on a USB port. There are more older drives that do
draw a bit more. But the most I've EVER seen is between 800 and 900ma.

Barry Watzman" <> wrote in message
news:hc24mh$cht$...
> Very few 2.5" drives draw more than 500ma. Got to newegg, or zzf, or
> the mfgrs sites and check the specs. VERY few draw over 500ma,
> because that is the limit on a USB port. There are more older drives
> that do draw a bit more. But the most I've EVER seen is between 800
> and 900ma.

I just popped two in and checked them. Both manufactured in 2005. The
Hitachi even says 5V 1.0A right on the label. Go figure.

Hitachi IC25N060ATMR04-0 60GB 4200rpm ATA-100 (940ma)
Fujitsu MHV2060AT 60GB 4200rpm ATA-100 (1100ma)

--
Bill
Windows 7 Ultimate (build 7100)
Asus EEE PC 702G16 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC