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new hard drive
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Paul Olson:
I just haven't seen the reliability problems everyone is talking about.  I currently have a 45GB IBM, 60GB WD, 160GB Seagate, 200GB WD, 250GB WD, 250GB Maxtor, and a 300GB Seagate.  They have all been stable.  The only drives I've heard of that were consistantly bad were the IBM 75GB.

Paul
elvis:

--- Quote from: BobA on February 18, 2005, 12:46:38 pm ---You probably have already noticed the reduced warranty on many drives lately.  Probably a sure sign of what is happening to quality in the race to get the most Gbytes per buck. 

--- End quote ---

That is changing.  There are at least 2 manufacturers who are going back to 3-year warranties this year.  Others will follow suit after that when customers jump ship.
krick:
Problem is that the length of the warranty doesn't matter if I lose important data.  The warranty just gets me a new drive.
Dexter:

--- Quote from: whammoed on February 17, 2005, 04:29:52 pm ---Also what about the actual loading of the rom when a large game in mame is started...would that portion be faster?

--- End quote ---

If you're running dosmame, theres a way of speeding up loading times of roms on SOME systems. Download a dos utility called smartdrive and add the following line to your autoexec.bat file (back it up first just in case!)

smartdrv 8192

Make sure you place it after any 'SET' lines i.e. SET BLASTER

It made a huge difference on my cabs

elvis:

--- Quote from: krick on February 18, 2005, 04:15:22 pm ---Problem is that the length of the warranty doesn't matter if I lose important data.  The warranty just gets me a new drive.

--- End quote ---

Drives are no more or less volatile than they where 15 years ago.  Any hardware with moving parts is always subject to a percentage failure rate.  I don't know where this misconception that drives where better quality in the past comes from.  I'm guessing it was because back in the old days there where far fewer folks who had home PCs, and therefor less reports of busted hard drives.  That, and with the proliferation of the interenet, now every idiot with a home PC has a public forum to vent their anger whenever their hardware breaks.  Economy if scale, I guess.

Back up your important data regularly.  If that much is too difficult, then invest in RAID1 mirrors.  Harddrives never where perfect, and never will be perfect.  That much is just a plain fact of the IT industry.

I don't know how many times I've said "I told you so" to folks who have lost all of their data even AFTER I've told them to back up.  I've got an old 1GHz machine at home with a big RAID1 mirror on it, and everyone in my house uses it as a dumping ground for important information.  Even then I recommend that the REALLY important stuff gets backed up to DVD-R and lives offsite somewhere.  After all, RAID mirrors won't save you from a house fire.

I guess it all boils down to how much you care about your data.  If it really means that much to you, then you'll put in the effort to ensure it is safe.
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