Computer Hard Drives, Knocks and Bumps

[DrBurkstrom]

Has anyone ever had a traditional hard drive (rather than more modern Solid State Drives) fail or be damaged by a knock to the boat, or even just engine vibration?

 

I'll be moving on to my boat next year and what I'm worried about is a small network attached storage box that holds 4 hard drives which I use for storing films and backing up work. It uses 4 because it automatically backs everything up, 2 are the main drives and 2 are backups, which protects against standard hard drive failure, but if a sudden, china-rattling shake causes damage, it would probably have the same effect on all four drives.

 

I'm basically trying to assess the risk to decide whether it's worth spending an outrageous amount of money upgrading to solid state drives.

 

 

 

 

[Lady Muck]

if you're moving onboard I'd suggest that you give the back up drives to a friend or relative to keep as an off site back up and have dupe drives (solid state) for the boat. My drives have all my work on, so I'm super paranoid, I now pay a subscription to dropbox and keep a copy on the cloud too. I have three sets. I actually lost two sets once, due to theft, so for me it was worth doing.

Solid state is better for the boat no doubt about it, we've switched everything over, now, its not so much the vibrations you want to worry about, its the dust (from the burner) and condensation (we have a dehumidifier running from autumn to spring, now though).

Yes we've had drives fail on the boat but I suspect dust as him indoors never cleans his desk!

Edited October 17, 2016 by Lady Muck

[Dave Payne]

Or think about laptops, mine gets lugged in a rucksack daily off the boat, in the car, in the shop and back again.

 

No failures so far and it's not an ssd.

 

Got a hard drive also on the boat that's connected to my TV, it usually swings around when I'm moving and still going strong, and one in the Xbox one.

 

Narrow boating is not really white water rafting so I wouldn't worry about it.

 

 

But some valid points about backing up to the cloud though if you have the data plan to suit.

[WotEver]

And configure them as RAID 5.

if you're moving onboard I'd suggest that you give the back up drives to a friend or relative to keep as an off site back up and have dupe drives (solid state) for the boat. My drives have all my work on, so I'm super paranoid, I now pay a subscription to dropbox and keep a copy on the cloud too. I have three sets. I actually lost two sets once, due to theft, so for me it was worth doing.

Solid state is better for the boat no doubt about it, we've switched everything over, now, its not so much the vibrations you want to worry about, its the dust (from the burner) and condensation (we have a dehumidifier running from autumn to spring, now though).

Yes we've had drives fail on the boat but I suspect dust as him indoors never cleans his desk!

[Robbo]

Hard drives will fail (not if) at one point or another, including solid state hard drives. If you value the data keep it on another device pref in another location.

 

And yes vibration is bad for hard drives of the spinning kind.

[Sbg]

Have you thought about anti-vibration / anti-shock mounts?

A quick search online brought up quite a few options.

[dor]

Whilst NAS drives and some either drive enclosures are not really designed to be moved around and not happy about vibration, there are plenty of portable drives around which are very robust. Most are USB but there are probably NAS ones available. A couple of Terabytes for a few pounds. I've got a few WD ones and not had a problem. Good software ("Smartware") with WD drives as well which will back up whatever you want continuously or at e.g. hourly intervals.

 

Not had a problem for years either with having laptops/notebooks/netbooks on boat, all with spinny disks.

 

eta: anything I really wouldn't like to lose is in three different places every night, plus an off-site one every few days. I used to run a lot of accounting software and the thought of losing everything brought me out in a cold sweat.

 

Even now I am amazed how many people have all their photos, spanning many years, solely on their laptop drive which, as Robbo pointed out, will fail at some point, even SSD ones.

Edited October 17, 2016 by dor

[Guest]

Just a thought....

Will you be using while the boat is moving?

If they are turned of while moving then I see no problem.

All modern disk drives 'Park' when the power is off.

Your back up solution would thus be no worse than if on dry land.

 

John

[tree monkey]

Just a thought....

Will you be using while the boat is moving?

If they are turned of while moving then I see no problem.

All modern disk drives 'Park' when the power is off.

Your back up solution would thus be no worse than if on dry land.

 

John

I remember having to tell the drive to park directly through dos before moving a desktop PC

[WotEver]

I remember having to tell the drive to park directly through dos before moving a desktop PC

Me too. I also remember 5" floppies (when they WERE floppy!) and 5Mb drives the size of a dinner plate...

 

But today's drives all self park.

[tree monkey]

Me too. I also remember 5" floppies (when they WERE floppy!) and 5Mb drives the size of a dinner plate...

 

But today's drives all self park.

Flinging the 5" floppies across the computer lab, the 3" ones were just never the same

[WotEver]

Flinging the 5" floppies across the computer lab, the 3" ones were just never the same

Apparently the 3.5" ones could be split apart and the floppy bit rolled up and hidden in a ball point pen.

 

Oops, there goes one of MI5's secrets...

[tree monkey]

Apparently the 3.5" ones could be split apart and the floppy bit rolled up and hidden in a ball point pen.

 

Oops, there goes one of MI5's secrets...

This is bringing memories back, waiting for the new BBC master to turn up and being blown away by it

 

Simple times

[WotEver]

I used a BBC Master in an edit suite for about 10 years - it did what it needed to do (create an editable count-down clock) flawlessly for all that time.

[DHutch]

I expect a conventional HDD would be find on a narrowboat as long as you ensure it doesnt fall over/down, you could always soft-mount it on the some foam.

 

Obviously, backups, including off-site, are always advisable if the data is important to you and or irreplaceable.

 

 

Daniel

[nbfiresprite]

Flinging the 5" floppies across the computer lab, the 3" ones were just never the same

8" floppies went further.

[Arthur Brown]

With most computers it's a good plan to have a back up drive, and one kept elsewhere.

[Guest]

Me too. I also remember 5" floppies (when they WERE floppy!) and 5Mb drives the size of a dinner plate...

 

But today's drives all self park.

 

Hmm.....

Now I feel really old.

Done all the floppy sizes (and still got some) but started on a PDP 8 which had paper tape program entry via a teletype.

First HDD I recall was on a modular one and it had a three phase motor drive and was water cooled!

It died when there was an interruption to the water supply.

Happy days.

 

John

[tree monkey]

 

Hmm.....

Now I feel really old.

Done all the floppy sizes (and still got some) but started on a PDP 8 which had paper tape program entry via a teletype.

First HDD I recall was on a modular one and it had a three phase motor drive and was water cooled!

It died when there was an interruption to the water supply.

Happy days.

 

John

My School had a paper tape reader and was linked to the local college by phone line.

Early internet and it was bloody massive