On Tue, 28 Jan 2003 10:52:58 -0000, Julian Cleak wrote:
>In my limited experience of Computers the two most unreliable components in
>the base unit are the PSU and the HDD, different makes have different common
>faults.
<snip>
>We have tried lots of different manufactures
>from lots of different suppliers but seems to make no difference. 1 yr seems
>to be the critical time of operation hear. I did a report to our buyers
>when tenders were due for renewal and our records showed that 78% of HDD
>failures happened within 2 months of being 1 yr old.
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I would tend to agree. I work in a small library where we have 24
computers which run about ten hours a day, six days a week. Since the
computers were installed about three years ago, we have had two HD
failures and one PSU failure. The computers are about evenly divided
between Dell and Gateway, plus one older IBM which was donated by a
patron. FWIW, our maintenance guys, who take care of hundreds of
computers in our county system, prefer Dell over any other brand for
reliability.
As I mentioned before, I personally have had two HD failures in my ten
years of home computing. I think one can pretty well trust an HD up to
about one year, at two years be cautious, at three years, figure you've
gotten your use out of it and replace it. YMMV, of course.
Also, newer HD's have S.M.A.R.T. technology, which can detect certain
kinds of incipient failures and warn you in advance. For more info,
see: http://www.belarc.com/Drive/smart.html The .pdf link on this
website is apparently broken, but it has a good basic description of the
technology.
For contesting, if you're really serious, I'd recommend using a
relatively new HD and swapping it in and our just for contests.
73, Bill W7TI
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