I just set up a 60 gb hd on a linux box that backs up data from several Sparcs. I have it set to do nightly backups via cron jobs. About 45 gigs of data is backed up.
This data is not super important in that I need nightly backups, once a week would probably be sufficient, but it would be nice to not lose more than a days work in the event of a disk crash.
My question is do you think that copying 45 gigs to this hd every night is going to cause it to wear out prematurely? I would like to have it do the backups nightly, but not if it is going to make the hd give out early.
otheos
09-19-2000, 03:49 AM
I wouldn't think so.
BTW why don't you back up everynight only the data that have been accessed/created the day before instead of all of them? This way you have the backup up to date, and every 3-4 days do a complete backup deleting the old one to get rid of files in the old backup that are not needed anymore.
qball
09-19-2000, 03:47 PM
I agree with otheos, a backup procedure should be implemented and.....but, that makes too much sense.
Anyway, in regards to hard drive, they
don't "wear out prematurely". Hard drives can wear out, but most likely it will be retired and replaced or crash before that happens. To figure out your chances of crashing check out the drive's MTBF (mean time between failure). This should give you a relative guage of the drive's reliability.
Having said that, think of this;
1.) Drive copies 45 Gig a night.
2.) Drive sits in computer (computer on) and does nothing.
3.) Drive sits in box.
For #3 the drive will last the longest, but is useless.
#2 MAY outlast #1. Big MAY!
Since drive #1 copies 45 gig of data, that means the head moves over the platters a lot more than just sitting there. This potentially may lead to the head smacking a platter and crashing. Highly unlikely, but it does happen. This is the only difference between #1 and #2. Both #1 and #2, all other parts basically will wear the same and thus should fail statistically at the same time. #2 is less useless than #3, but still pretty useless.
What if #2 is powered down every night? This will make the difference between #1 and #2 evn less. As now #2 gets powered up and down every day, which is a big thing for drives (relative to spinning, reading/writing) and this would add to its potential failure.
In conclusion, you gain more out of the nightly backup, than you lose in the wear of the drive. Theoretically, the platter on a drive can write/erase infinitely, and the bearing and motors are perhaps the weakest elements. But, HDs are designed to be reliable and to read/write data, so use 'em.
Plus even if the drive fails in 6 months, get another, drives are fast becoming very cheap.
[This message has been edited by qball (edited 09-19-2000).]