Woot: Refurb 250GB HD's for $50 again

Posted by: matthew_k

Woot: Refurb 250GB HD's for $50 again - 26/03/2006 04:42

These are a love/hate item, but they're my favorite woot. My 500GB raid5 array is going up to the 1TB mark with a hot spare, I think. As usual, no idea how long the woot will last. Also great for replays/tivos/xboxes in need of upgrading.

Matthew
Posted by: matthew_k

Re: Woot: Refurb 250GB HD's for $50 again - 26/03/2006 18:06

And they're gone.

Matthew
Posted by: lectric

Re: Woot: Refurb 250GB HD's for $50 again - 26/03/2006 19:54

Hehe, I dunno. My data is too important to risk on a refurbed drive. Important to me, anyway.
Posted by: matthew_k

Re: Woot: Refurb 250GB HD's for $50 again - 26/03/2006 20:32

I just think that's a bogus argument. Even if we accept that the refurbished drive is more likely to fail than a new drive, any data that's "too important for a refurbished drive" is too important to not be backed up.

My feeling is that any drive that's working properly now is no more likely to die than any other. I could be wrong, but then, these go into a raid array where it's not really an issue.

Matthew
Posted by: Dignan

Re: Woot: Refurb 250GB HD's for $50 again - 26/03/2006 21:09

It's also a moot point if you have a RAID 5. I imagine the chance that more than one drive will fail at the exact same time is unlikely.

Unfortunately I saw this woot at around 1PM, which seems to have been about 10 hours too late
Posted by: lectric

Re: Woot: Refurb 250GB HD's for $50 again - 27/03/2006 00:37

Granted, I'll admit it's just a mental block of mine. Then again, at work, when any drive on one of my arrays at work gets kicked out for the second time, I replace it. No questions asked. Call me paranoid. Backing up 250G+ at home can get rediculously expensive. Much cheaper to just mirror and be done with it.
Posted by: tman

Re: Woot: Refurb 250GB HD's for $50 again - 27/03/2006 05:51

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It's also a moot point if you have a RAID 5

That still isn't an excuse to not do backups

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I imagine the chance that more than one drive will fail at the exact same time is unlikely.

That chance isn't as low as you think actually. If you're buying from the same batch then it is possible that there is a flaw in both of them.
Posted by: n2toh

Re: Woot: Refurb 250GB HD's for $50 again - 27/03/2006 06:03

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Quote:
It's also a moot point if you have a RAID 5

That still isn't an excuse to not do backups

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I imagine the chance that more than one drive will fail at the exact same time is unlikely.

That chance isn't as low as you think actually. If you're buying from the same batch then it is possible that there is a flaw in both of them.


How is one suposed to backup 1TB on the cheap?
Posted by: tman

Re: Woot: Refurb 250GB HD's for $50 again - 27/03/2006 06:28

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How is one suposed to backup 1TB on the cheap?

Buy more HDs to use as an offline backup or buy a tape drive. Backup systems aren't cheap. It all depends on how valuable your data is. If you feel okay with RAID5 just protecting against drive failure then go with that. If you want to make sure that if you accidently formatted the wrong partition that you can get everything back then go with a backup system as well.
Posted by: g_attrill

Re: Woot: Refurb 250GB HD's for $50 again - 27/03/2006 10:03

That's what I'm planning to do imminently, just buy 2x 250Gb HDDs and copy my essential data over, then clone my 30Gb system drive onto the current 120Gb secondary drive and then I will be happy for a good while yet.

Actually, does anybody know whether it is recommended to use different makes (of an identical size) in a SATA RAID configuration? I know about the compatilbity concerns of the RAID array itself, which is partly why I'm going to get a PCI card. (The other reason being that my motherboard doesn't have on-board SATA and I don't need to upgrade the rest yet)

Gareth
Posted by: Roger

Re: Woot: Refurb 250GB HD's for $50 again - 27/03/2006 10:25

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Actually, does anybody know whether it is recommended to use different makes (of an identical size) in a SATA RAID configuration?


Depends on how paranoid you're feeling. The theory is that a batch of drives bought from the same manufacturer at the same time might have a flaw that causes them all to die at the same time.

However, unless you're really unlucky, they're not all going to die at exactly the same time. You just have to hope that you've got a hot spare available before the next one dies.

Personally, all 4 drives in my RAID array are Seagate Baraccuda SATA disks, all bought at the same time, from the same place. Hopefully they won't all die at the same time.

I'm not too bothered, though -- I have got fairly recent backups.
Posted by: tman

Re: Woot: Refurb 250GB HD's for $50 again - 27/03/2006 19:07

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of an identical size

Got to be careful about this part. The precise capacity seems to vary slightly among the drive manufacturers. You might get a couple hundred MB more on one than the other. Your RAID controller won't like it if you replace a dud drive with one that is a fraction smaller.
Posted by: FireFox31

Re: Woot: Refurb 250GB HD's for $50 again - 28/03/2006 01:49

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I just think that's a bogus argument.

Maybe I can rephrase it. My time is too valuable (not really) to spend recovering from a backup at the worst possible time. My frustration level is too great (really) to deal with "clicks of death" any more often than I have to.

I'll pay top dollar for my WDs and Segates for the sense of security that they won't die TOO soon. Not.... too soon.....
Posted by: andy

Re: Woot: Refurb 250GB HD's for $50 again - 28/03/2006 21:39

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Got to be careful about this part. The precise capacity seems to vary slightly among the drive manufacturers. You might get a couple hundred MB more on one than the other. Your RAID controller won't like it if you replace a dud drive with one that is a fraction smaller.


I even had that problem when I ordered an additional IBM drive using the model number. Quite how they thought it was a good choice to suddenly start shipping a slightly smaller drive with the same model number !
Posted by: Mataglap

Re: Woot: Refurb 250GB HD's for $50 again - 30/03/2006 12:56

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Quote:

Got to be careful about this part. The precise capacity seems to vary slightly among the drive manufacturers. You might get a couple hundred MB more on one than the other. Your RAID controller won't like it if you replace a dud drive with one that is a fraction smaller.


I even had that problem when I ordered an additional IBM drive using the model number. Quite how they thought it was a good choice to suddenly start shipping a slightly smaller drive with the same model number !


Sun will even switch vendors using the same part number.
Posted by: tman

Re: Woot: Refurb 250GB HD's for $50 again - 30/03/2006 13:17

Quote:
Quote:
Quote:

Got to be careful about this part. The precise capacity seems to vary slightly among the drive manufacturers. You might get a couple hundred MB more on one than the other. Your RAID controller won't like it if you replace a dud drive with one that is a fraction smaller.


I even had that problem when I ordered an additional IBM drive using the model number. Quite how they thought it was a good choice to suddenly start shipping a slightly smaller drive with the same model number !


Sun will even switch vendors using the same part number.

They should be asking the drive manufacturer to give them special drive firmware which caps the capacity. Thats how it should work anyway...
Posted by: andy

Re: Woot: Refurb 250GB HD's for $50 again - 30/03/2006 13:30

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Sun will even switch vendors using the same part number.


IBM, a drive manufacturer (at the time), managed to switch manufacturer on me. The drive that arrived when I ordered a new IBM 18GB SCA drive was a Seagate...

...it was however clearly marked with the IBM part number.

I expect they are still sitting on a shelf here, because I didn't bother to look at the drives in detail until a couple of months after I got them and Scan didn't want to take them back after that length of time.
Posted by: wfaulk

Re: Woot: Refurb 250GB HD's for $50 again - 30/03/2006 13:53

They do. Sun drives with the same part number seem identical from the OS (with the exception of the SCSI ID string).