" 11 Years!! wow!
My oldest drive is about 8 years (WD too) and it is still working perfectly.
I would recommend low capacity velociraptors, i have about 10 of them ranging from 74 GB to 500GB and are by far, the best sata drives around.
recently i decide to upgrade to ssd (samsung 840 pro) after two weeks of use, i decide to go back to my 250 GB velociraptor… yes ssd are fast, but they are not as consistent and predictable as a good enterprise class hard drive, I know what my velociraptors are doing by looking at the HDD activity light and listen to the (mild) noise they make.
ssds for me are way too umpredictable, they are a must have for notebooks, but not for high performance desktops.
your new dell sff is it SAS or SATA?, SAS 10K and 15K server drives are really badass units, can take almost anything, I have a couple of hp servers here with a mix of 10K and 15K SFF SAS, and they work perfectly and fast as h@ll but to be honest, LFF drives are faster "
induktor:
really, i too had no idea that a disk could last that long, much less that i actually had one… my guess was maybe 5 years tops since the NT-4 Workstation partition was setup around then… (what a headache that was ! !).
also, i agree with your choices for drives… seems the ssd technology is in its “teeth cutting” phase, and we’re supposed to be the test labs… i wouldn’t get one until they’re worked out all the bugs.
my “new” SFF is actually a used unit i found on ebay for $<180… from what i can tell, it has a sata interface / hdd drive and a cd of unknown type… i had a little delay getting the system up and running because a keyboard and mouse weren’t included - and - they had to be dell usb, only… i could not even use an adapter for my mini-din… so, back we go to ebay… if that wasn’t enough, i’ve also learned that the previous owner only included 2gb ram… so, back we go to ebay yet again… !..:robotmad:
oh well, you get what you pay for - literally.
i like the extremely compact design but know i’m going to run into problems with the anemic power supply (235w)… heck, some advanced pci-e video cards need that much all by themselves… maybe i can find a factory original (important to get a warranty for p/s units) on dell that will up it to … say 500w… that would be sweet.
i’ll keep you posted and might need some advice as this progresses… thanks for commenting.
~d~
