Longevity of Hard-drives

[Nikolai]

Hey guys,
I read somewhere that a 7,200 rpm hard drive has a lifespan 3 times longer then a 10,000 rpm hard drive.
Do different brands have better reputations for longevity of hard drives?

Im wondering because i work a lot on photo shop and don't want hard drive to conk out on me too soon in the future. Id like longevity in my machine.

Also i have read a bit about ram disks, like the gigabyte i-ram .... is this something that is too early in its conception to be worthwhile for using as say a scratch disk for photo shop, or even a place to run your OS?
Thanks for your help.

[qazwsx]

Originally Posted by Nikolai

Also i have read a bit about ramdisks, like the gigabyte i-ram .... is this something that is too early in its conception to be worthwhile for using as say a scratch disk for photoshop, or even a place to run your OS?
Thanks for your help.

Ah the gigabyte I-RAM. its very fast but it limits you to only 4gb of space MAX. for the I-RAM you really need the speed, or its a waste of money. There are some videos on youtube of it working, but where's the 'youtube video link' button gone?
I think solid state will take over but not yet. some seagate drives (7200.10 i think) have 5 year warrentys, so they must trust their stuff.

[PrOLifIC_onE]

Not only that, the I-ram has to be loaded with windows whenever you boot up before it will run as an OS. Not only is it only necessary if you REALLY need the speed, but you would need to leave your PC on 24/7 with a battery backup. Because, when the PC shuts down or loses power, the ram loses all it's data.

Regarding the I-ram, the short answer is that it is not really practical if your primary concern is photoshopping.

As previously mentioned, check out warranties if you are concerned about HDs crashing. First thing is that you should do backups of all your important data on a second hard drive anyway. Get two HDs and run them in RAID if you want to make sure your data is constantly saved on two drives at once. If one goes bad you have the identical second drive with all your data. Otherwise just have a backup program run once per day or week, and save files to a second hard drive.

[Computer-Ed]

I like the idea of a solidstate HD but the cost for a good one is way to high and the ones with the lower pricing just do not have enough going for them yet in my opinion.

Concerning the 10K vs 7200 drives I have not heard that and am not sure it makes sense but at the same time I guess there is a little logic in it as well. While the 10K drives are neat I have yet to find a need to move to one as 7200 is a very quick drive and is always a better buy for storage vs cost.

As for brands and longevity, there are curently that I am ware of only two companies offering 5 years warrenties, Seagate and WD. While there are other brands that rpoduce good HDs these two are still the kings of the heap.

[gvblake22]

I have not seen any hard evidence that even suggests that 7,200rpm drives last longer than 10,000rpm. But I can tell you that out of the four years or so that I've been building computers, I've only had the misfortune of one hard drive dying on me and it just so happened to be an early 74GB Western Digital Raptor 10,000rpm drive!
I got it replaced through Western Digital (which went very quickly I might add) and it is still running great to this day, as well as another Raptor that I've purchased since then.

As for the Gigabyte iRAM thing, I think you're better off waiting for the first or second generation of desktop solid state drives. It is really expensive and you can't get much storage space. Plus, the battery on it only lasts for so long with the computer's PSU turned off before you permanently lose all your data.

[Yellowhello]

For both the builds I have done I used a 250GB Seagate and a 250GB Western Digital. Both are running fine so far. In one of the older family computers we had, an old 9GB Hitachi die on us, but it wasn't a huge deal.

I sorta makes sense that a 10,000RPM drive has a shorter life span than a 7,200RPM drive. The 10,000RPM drive runs hotter and faster, increasing wear. I haven't heard anything official regarding this issue, so I don't know for sure.

As always, back up all your data to a second hard drive, and I wouldn't worry about it. You can enable S.M.A.R.T. in the BIOS and monitor your hard drives health, also.

[Stormcrow]

Aye, it does have a logical twist behind it, as Yellow said the 10,000rpms run hotter and faster, but I would assume that the HDD manufacturers would compensate for this by adding in parts that can take the strain. It's very easy to back up data, with built in RAID controllers and HDDs a lot cheaper now. If you really need the added peace of mind, I think a 16GB flash drive constantly plugged into a USB port that you can back your Photoshop work onto would work. If you need more space then that, a RAID array or an external drive will work just fine, at least until Solid State becomes more mainstream. Last time I checked, a 32GB SSD was going for 500 frogskins, not very practical.

[Sumgai]

There's always online storage too.

[Yellowhello]

Originally Posted by Sumgai

There's always online storage too.

How much does that cost? You would think that storing the equivalent of a 250GB+ HDD would cost a lot for that much server space.

[Capper]

Originally Posted by qazwsx

where's the 'youtube video link' button gone?

I made some changes about a week ago, you don't have to put tags around the media links.....just post the links and the forums will automatically post it as a video.