You can certainly try it for any dead HDDs. For most of us, it is the only practical option if we want to recover lost data.

That was a joke. I had not made a statement or a claim of how things are in that joke. I only pointed out that a regular consumer can't confirm that enterprise HDDs are not retail HDDs in disguise. And for all we know, for the cost of a single enterprise HDD, buying two regular HDDs might actually give us better data reliability.

Did you responded because I hit uncomfortably close to the truth?

Just because I had meant it as a joke, it doesn't mean it can't be true. So if my joke was indeed true in real life, it would have been 'uncomfortably close to the truth' for you. It would be silly to deny that simple logic.

And with regards to "for all we know", it does not mean 'common knowledge' or something like that. It means something like "we don't actually know". Someone else has explained it better:


Source: The meaning of "For all you know"

Now, to claim that "for all we know" means something like "common knowledge" is actually a misleading statement.

Faster too.

Try this: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=hard%20drive%20freezer

Short stroking, to be blunt, is stupid.

You can get the same thing by partitioning the first 20% of any HDD. The remaining 80% of capacity you can then format for your data and other stuff.

And even a cheap, low-capacity, budget SSD will still crush, kill and destroy a short-stroked HDD in performance.

If you can't find a replacement, then you could either move the HDD into your desktop or get a replacement external HDD casing without a HDD.

What is your LAN speed, 100 megabit/s or 1 gigabit/s? If your LAN is 100 megabit/s, it doesn't matter what harddisk you use as you will be bottlenecked to a slow ~12.5 megabyte/s.

This. People who don't understand that LUCK plays a major factor when it comes to hardware are either not pros or they know something that they're not sharing.

No surprise there. It is far cheaper to give you another HDD than to fix a HDD and recover any data. Check the serial numbers. I have never been returned my original HDD if there really is a problem.

Only because its opponents defaulted, which isn't very good. I very much prefer them to be the price leader because everyone is pushing down the prices. Also, there is no indication that Samsung's HDDs will not be affected by the supply chain disruptions. Also, it doesn't mean Samsung's prices will stay low if there is a HDD shortage and more people buy Samsung.

If your USB is USB 3.0 and you are not using RAID, it would be no different than using SATA. Even if you are using RAID, the performance penalty wouldn't be too terrible as USB 3.0 should be able to handle more than 300MB/s.

It may be people buying HDDs in fear of future HDD shortage caused by HDD manufacturing facilities in Thailand getting flooded. I was thinking about buying a 2TB spare myself, just in case I lose a HDD in the next nine or so months.

Your SpeedFan results appear to be fine. Your Reallocated Sector Count is still zero, indicating that you don't have bad sectors. It seems like you may have a software problem. Have you tried defragging your HDD?

2TB may be sufficient for a while, depending on how quickly you accumulate your files.

Assuming you are not using RAID or are using RAID-1, giving you 8 TB of capacity, it will take you 3 days to full format on USB 2.0. On USB 3.0, it may take you one day to do the same.

I bought one Samsung HD204UI yesterday at RM255. Today I got a quotation for the same HDD at RM300++. Looks like Samsung is also heavily affected by the floods.

If they accept that they have to do the format for you, they will most likely do a quick format, which doesn't scan 99.99% of the HDD for problems, and give the hardware to you in less than thirty minutes. 95% of the time, this will not be a problem for the customer.

Personally, I'd do the formatting myself just to be sure. But a lot of people won't bother and most of them seem to get along fine.

This post has been edited by everling: Oct 25 2011, 03:35 PM

You could do the logical thing and reuse your current HDD.

Sounds about right.

They all have decent performance. Intel and Samsung SSDs have good reliability. SSDs using SandForce-controllers have a reliability issue at this time, but if you're lucky, you get to enjoy the best possible performance. On the other hand, SandForce has recently been bought out by another company, LSI, that has a focus on enterprise clients, so we can hope to expect reliability problems to be reduced to Intel levels in the future.

If you don't particularly care for any brand, going by cost/GB is an option. I think the OCZ Vertex 2 120GB (uses SandForce-controller) at Viewnet has the best cost/GB at this time at RM589, although you can get a Corsair Force 3 SATA 6.0Gbps 120GB for only RM50 more.

That is a smart requirement, because people who need to buy motherboards tend to need to buy other peripherals like CPU, GPU and etc. Whereas if you only need a new HDD, then your purchase of a HDD means there is one less potential computer that can be built. The HDD stocks for retail must be pretty low for everyone to cause such a rule to be had.

I wonder what is the cause of the floods. Can it happen again within the next ten years?

You have my condolences for having to experience the pain and heartache of storing your data to DVDs. Not only will it take forever to burn stuff, it will also only be of a limited capacity, and you will probably never watch their contents again.