Poll: Reliability of Various Storage Drives

I have had a hard drive fail on me

  • Yes

    Votes: 976 85.1%

  • No

    Votes: 171 14.9%
  • Total voters
    1,147
1. Yes, several over the years.

2. No, I have not gotten one yet.

3. No, see answer for #2.

4. I've had plenty of CD-R's fail on me. Most of them have been due to age although some have been because of cheap media.

5. It was not recoverable by me as I did not have the tools to recover it or it just wasn't important enough to bother with.

6. I try to keep important files backed up with removable media and/or store a second copy on another hard drive or system.

 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you? Yes
2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these) No
3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these) Yes
4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you? Yes
5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable? Yes
6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen? Yes
 
I would have voted no up until last weekend when I had my first hard drive fail. It was a maxtor and i think what helped it go was the poor circulation on a computer left on for 2 days straight from my girlfriend. Nothing valuable on it.

Almost 10 years with computers for me and this is the first one. Luck? Who knows.
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?
No
2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)
N/A
3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)
N/A
4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
Yes
5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?
Yes
6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
Eh.
 
Asgorath said:
I am conducting a poll to use as data in a speech I am giving. Please answer the following questions. Only answer a question if it applies to you.
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?
2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)
3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)
4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?
6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
Click to expand...
1. Yes. 10GB Quantum Fireball
2. No. Never owned one.
3. No. Never owned one.
4. Not aside from bad burns. I can still read the very first CD I ever burned, back in 1999, just fine.
5. Yes. I'm stupid.
6. Yes. Outlook data is backed up weekly. Otherwise, most my data is living on the edge.

-bZj
 
Asgorath said:
I am conducting a poll to use as data in a speech I am giving. Please answer the following questions. Only answer a question if it applies to you.

1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)

3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
Click to expand...


1. Nope
2. Don't use these.
3. Nope. Have several that have been working for years.
4. Yes, but it was probably damaged to begin with from a bad burn or got scratched up.
5. Nope
6. Not yet. Going to be upgrading to RAID 0+1 and 10 in the future. I could use DVD-Rs but that would take alot of them...
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?
yes
2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)
n/a
3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)
n/a
4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
yes
5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?
yes
6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
yes
 
1 yes
2 not used
3 not used
4 yes many from slight scratches or little spots where the cd layer disappeared
5 yes, unimportant file
6 no
 
1. Yes, most brands seem to die out after 3 years.

2. Yes, but I'm tougher than most on my equipment.

3. Yes. Most are just internal drives in a plastic case. No ruggedization whatsoever.

4. I've seen layer separation and strange results of moisture being trapped between layers, due to sub-par manufacturing, but only on the cheap stuff, for the most part. Have had some stuff heat warped/just bad media straight out of the box from Memorex, though.

5. No. I'm a file pack rat.

6. 3 tier, DVD, disk & external drive. He who forgets to back up is he who regrets it most later.
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?

No, but I did have a compressed volume (old MS-DOS DriveSpace volume) go corrupt that was virtually the same result, all of my data was gone.

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)

I use several of these (for about the last 18 months) and none have ever failed.

3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)

No, but only recently starting using one.

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?

Yes, several DVD-R's and DVD+Rs have gone bad after initially burning fine. I've had maybe five CD-Rs go bad after burning fine, out of several hundred that I've burned over the years. More often the problem occurs when burning rather than later on.

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?

Yes, through force of habit whenever I delete anything (in Windows) I do a shift-delete, which by-passes the recycle bin and does a permenant delete. Over 10 years of doing this, I've made a mistake maybe three times where I deleted a file I meant to keep.

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?

Yes, once a week selected folders on each of my two primary PCs are backed up to a hard drive on a third PC over a 100MB/s network. I just use the built in backup tool in WindowsXP Pro.
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?
Yes about 5 maxtor drives and 1 Seagate and 1 WD personally. Many more at work.

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
Yes from scratches, and from bacteria eating the organic CD-Rs (not the silver or gold, but the blue or esp the green ones), and from a disk failing and litterally shattering into many pieces in a 52x drive from the high rpms

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?
Yep, havn't we all?

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
For home? nope, nothing here really matters all that much, I can reinstall everything.. At work I have an overkill backup policy, that I make use of fairly often.

==>Lazn
 
1. No - I've had several hard drives over the past 10 years and none have failed. Four of them are Maxtors and are working fine to this day.
4. Yes - an old music CD I had used to work but when I tried it recently it didn't. Also, I have ruined some CD's when writing images to them.
5. Yes - The uninstaller from a spyware program deleted my whole directory where I stored gigabytes various personal stuff (C:/temp).
6. Yes - Transfer all needed files to another computer (or hard drive).
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?
***Several***
2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)
***Never used a "Pen" but have two USB Thumbdrives for over a year without failure.***
3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)
***Only purchased one, and it didn't fail for the month I had it.***
4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
***Only via scratches inflicted by carelessness.***
5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?
****1.2 million times***
6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
***Yep, I have a 2TB RAID5 storage server I store all important pron...err files on***
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?
Yes - 3 over the past 7 years.

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)
No - I've had the same one for 2 years. (I don't use it that much though.)

3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)
N/A

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
I've had 1 CD-R/RW burner die on me. I've made quite a few coasters, though I don't know if that counts. Other than media getting damaged (scratched, etc.), I've never had one mysteriously die on me.

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?
Yes.

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
It's pretty ad hoc at home. Back up to a home file server.
At work we use network file servers. Our source code is backed up using IBM/Rational's Clearcase.
 
1. Yes, twice

2. Not yet

3. N/A

4. Yes, more

5. No

6. I save important files in multiple computers
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you? YES

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)
Do not own
3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)
Do not own
4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?YES

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?NO

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?YES
 
Asgorath said:
I am conducting a poll to use as data in a speech I am giving. Please answer the following questions. Only answer a question if it applies to you.

1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)

3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
Click to expand...

1. Yes. I've had three hard drives fail on me. The first one was the one that came with my first computer back in the early 90's. The next two were IBM Deathstars.

2. No, not used.

3. No, not used.

4. Yes. CD-R/RW, DVD-/+R/RW. All of them.

5. Yes. When I was a noob way back in the DOS 5.0 days I deleted my entire operating system somehow twice in the first week I had the computer. :rolleyes:

6. Yes. DVDs.
 
Asgorath said:
I am conducting a poll to use as data in a speech I am giving. Please answer the following questions. Only answer a question if it applies to you.

1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)

3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
Click to expand...

1. YES most my harddrives last 2-3 years
2. dont have one
3. Yes
4. Yes
5. no
6. no
 
1. Yes, most recently a notebook drive that was a bear to replace. (Too many tiny little screws)

2. Never used a USB Pen.

3. Never used an external Hard Drive.

4. Yes, most recently had 3 or 4 out of 100 or so DVD+R end up not readable on the very drive that burned them, though they are readable on some other drives. Weird.

5. Yes, have deleted plenty of files and not been able to recover.

6. No backup regimen. Unless only backing up when I feel like it or when I'm about to make major changes to hardware counts.
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you? yes

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these) no

3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these) no

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you? no

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable? yes

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen? yes
 
1. Yes - Some WDs(4),Quantums(3), and Maxtors(2). Probably a few others I forgot though.
2. No - My SanDisk Cruzer keeps on chugging, even after a washing machine accident.
3. No -
4. Yes - All the time.
5. No -
6. Yes - I usually use either CD/DVDs, or the DLT and DDS tape drives on my server.
 
Asgorath said:
I am conducting a poll to use as data in a speech I am giving. Please answer the following questions. Only answer a question if it applies to you.

1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?

Yes, numerous ones in various fashoins. Some have had controllers fail or have sectors go bad with varying degrees of data able to be recovered to no data able to be recovered.


2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)
I have had to reformat one after it started acting goofy on me. After that I always stop the drive before I remove it. It may have been unplugging it when it was active that caused the problem.

3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)

Never really used them much.

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?

No, not for reasons other than physically damaging it (i.e. scratching it).

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?

Yes, but not because it was immediately unrecoverable. Anything I notice on the spot I can recover right away, but something that was deleted and then written over is pretty much a write-off.

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?

No, nothing I have is too valuable not to be restored by a reinstall. Things like email archives or documents I generally have multiple copies of on various hard drives so no single failure is more than an annoyance, not a crisis.
Click to expand...

Hope this helps you.
 
1> Yes...two drives in RAID 0
2. No
3. No
4. Yes...all of my papers and stories and whatnot were lost FOREVER.......I cried.
5. Yes
6. I always back up on an external with Acronis True Image
 
1. Yes
5. Yes
6. Yes (sorta: Critical data goes on separate drives from the OS and applications; this drive is replaced with a newer and larger one every couple years)
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?
Is there any serious computer user that hasn't?
number failed in the first year 2 (western digital)
number failed in its second year 2 (western digital) Still they have a speedy RMA system
number failed in its third year 0
number failed in its fourth year 1 (oddly a deathstar)

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)
I had one with a construction problem, the lock/unlock switch was missaligned. I just
took it apart and fixed it myslef. Has worked like a champ since. My other one has had
no problems in its 2 years of use.

3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)
I only have one and it just turned a year old, no problems yet.

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
So many times that I can't even count them.

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?
Well yes, but the unrecoverable part was my own stupid fault.

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
Yes, I mainly backup my hard drives to duplicate hard drives. Although looking at my first
response maybe this isn't the best choice :D

I Hope this helps you, and good luck with the presentation.
 
1. Not personally, However i recently fixed a friends computer with a bad hitachi with a known defect.

2. No

3. No

4. Yes, I have had bad burns on known good media and the disk burn sucessful but with errors.

5. Yes. I had a recovery program knowing the time limit was very short for a full undelete.

6. Not so far lately, However i have 2 DVD backups of this system but only with pictures not what would be called consistant.
 
1. Yes, 2 of the old IBM Deskstars, One Maxtor, One Western Digital (of about 15 or so)

2. Never had one

3. Never had one

4. Yes, one CD-ROM drive and one of the early CD-R drives

5. Yup, many times

6. Yes, for certain items, but not everything is backed up.
 
1 - Yes, my old WD died a (thankfully) slow death

2 - N/A

3 - N/A

4 - Yes. I had my backup Starcraft CD fail after the original failed. No SC for me. =(

5 - Probably have, but nothing critical. Mostly due to forgetting to backup something before a reformat.

6 - I always have my mp3s backed up, and I archive some videos on CD/DVD. Other than that, I only backup when I reformat.
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?
Yes, at least 4, maybe more that I can't remember.

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)
Nope, even sent one through the wash and it worked fine.

3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)
never used one

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
yes, those cheap CD-Rs that are like 100 for five bucks are crap

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?
Yes, back in my Windows 3.11 days. Not so much recently.

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
Yes, if you count RAID 1
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?
4 in the last 13 years.

2. Have you ever had a USB Pen fail on you? (if you've used these)
Not a pen drive, but a 128MB CF card.

3. Have you ever had an external Hard Drive Fail on you? (if you've used these)
Not yet, but only recently started using one.

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?
Many many times. Both media and drives.

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?
Not yet. My mistakes have always been recoverable so far.

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?
Only been burned the first time. Had backups every time after that.
 
1. Have you ever had a hard drive fail on you?

Yes... 40 gig Deathstar... weird death too. 3/4 worked normally once I reformatted. But I ripped it open and kept on my desk in the data center I worked at.

4. Have you ever had a CD-R, DVD-R, or other optical media fail/corrupt on you?

Yup. I guess the dye in one of my older CD-Rs went south and never came back. This was a several year old disk. Nothing critical though.

5. Have you ever deleted a file by accident and had it be unrecoverable?

Delete a file on accident? How does this happen?

6. Do you have any sort of backup regimen?

Hell yes. If it's important I keep it on at least two separate physical harddrives until I get around to burning it. Important stuff is always in at least two places, typically my back up hard disk and a CD-R.

I'm actually very lucky, now that I don't work in IT anymore. NOTHING on my system is cosidered critical.

I like it alot.

-dB
 
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