Thoughts -> Re: classiccmp server

[Dan Wright]

On Monday 04 October 2004 14:58, John Foust wrote:
> The point of RAID is to save your data when a drive fails.
> If the logic board goes, or especially the motor fails,
> you're out of luck.

True, but those failure modes are much less common the a media failure or head 
crash.

That brings me to another point, though -- if you had 2 seperate disks in the 
same enclosure, with no environmental isolation between them, you'd likely 
kill both disks with a head crash on either one.  A head crash in a modern 
high-speed drive tends to throw a lot of pulverized platter and head bits 
around inside the disk, damaging the other platters that may not have been 
involved in the actual crash.  So I think you'd need to isolate the sections 
from each other with some kind of airtight (or at least 
really-small-bits-of-metal tight) seal; probably doable, but would take up 
more room that you're pretty low on already.

That sure would make an interesting drive :)  If it could be pulled off cheap 
enough, it would be well worth it, too.

>
> - John

-- 
- Dan Wright
(dtwright at uiuc.edu)
(http://www.uiuc.edu/~dtwright)

"we are content if we can describe a multitude of other things in terms of...
fundamental incomprehensibilities. science is an activity that takes place on
the shore of an infinite sea of mystery."

chet raymo, "doctor seuss and doctor einstein"