A nice apple story
 

North Star wrote:
On Nov 18, 11:21 pm, wrote:
On 11/18/2011 9:02 PM, Honey Badger wrote:

North Star wrote:
Lucky for those two you're probably right.
I just like to jab at the snarling little dogs to get them frothing at
the mouth.
So you lied about staying here to improve the newsgroup? You are a first
class asshole with a ******** for a home, Don.
-HB (Collecting pistachio cash!)
Pffffttt. He sits here all day trying to make himself feel like a real
man...snerk We all know he has gender insecurity;)
It's not me running around with a ponytail acting out a 'Peter Pan
life'.... or would that be 'Tinkerbell'.. ~~ Snerk ~~
So WHAT are you doing aside from neglecting your home?

-HB (Doesn't give a ****!)

A nice apple story
 

North Star wrote:
On Nov 19, 10:38 am, X ` Mandump-on-conservati...@anywhere-you-
can.com wrote:
On 11/19/11 9:22 AM, North Star wrote:





On Nov 18, 11:21 pm, wrote:
On 11/18/2011 9:02 PM, Honey Badger wrote:
North Star wrote:
Lucky for those two you're probably right.
I just like to jab at the snarling little dogs to get them frothing at
the mouth.
So you lied about staying here to improve the newsgroup? You are a first
class asshole with a ******** for a home, Don.
-HB (Collecting pistachio cash!)
Pffffttt. He sits here all day trying to make himself feel like a real
man...snerk We all know he has gender insecurity;)
It's not me running around with a ponytail acting out a 'Peter Pan
life'.... or would that be 'Tinkerbell'.. ~~ Snerk ~~
Be real, Don... More like "Stinkerbell."- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -
Hey... I like that. We'll add it to Snotty's list od alais names.
Who is we, OK (We'll)? Are you part of a lame conspiracy? What is "od
alais names"?

-HB

A nice apple story
 

"X ` Man" wrote in message
m...

On 11/18/11 11:02 PM, Califbill wrote:
"X ` Man" wrote in message
...

On 11/18/11 12:11 PM, Califbill wrote:
"X ` Man" wrote in message
m...

On 11/17/11 9:38 PM, Califbill wrote:
wrote in message ...

On Wed, 16 Nov 2011 11:09:01 -0500, X ` Man
wrote:

I had a choice of drives for my server, so I bought four of these:

Seagate Constellation ES 2 TB Internal hard drive - 300 MBps - 7200 rpm


Seagate/Maxtor is a pretty good drive


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



The problem with Apple, at least in former days, was you had to buy the
drive from Apple at excessive price. Same frikken drive as on a PC but
with a unique identifier in the SCSI packet. I designed Maxtor drives
and they were the same exact drive except for the identifier. The
problem with WD drives was getting them to be reliable at 7200 rpm. As
Jim McCoy, Chairman of Maxtor when I worked there, stated, anyone can
build a 3600 rpm drive, hard to handle the head flying and control at
7200 rpm. Lots of turbulence at the extra rpm.

That's no longer the case. You can buy drives in many sizes
from many vendors. I could upgrade the drive in my laptop, for example,
in about 10 minutes.

The server I have is made by Synology, not Apple. There is a long list
of recommended drives you can use with it. The device comes "driveless,"
as it were. Took longer to take the four drives out of their packaging
than it did to install them in the server.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------

But how many of those 7200 rom drives are reliable? As to lots of
vendors, lots. As to manufacturers, shrinking all the time.


How many decades ago were you designing drives? Isn't it possible drives
have gotten more reliable? In my last Windows PC, I had a 10,000 rpm
drive. It was perfectly reliable.


===================================
10 years ago. But still the mechanical problems rule. And if they were
perfectly reliable, you would not have to had a drive replaced. Still
the problems go up exponentially with speed. They fly closer now and
more turbulence with speed. Semi contact is almost the norm now. The
error correction helps immensely but there are still media problems. One
of the reasons I have a patent is on defect scanning. I wrote a lot of
the defect self scanning firmware for Maxtor. Interface code for
Ministore and DSP control code for Samsung and as an Apps engineer for
the DSP supplier. The higher speed and higher density makes for probably
the same reliability we had all through the 90's. Which was a lot more
than the CDC, IBM and NCR removable media 14" drives.


The drive that failed, according to the techs who messed with it,
checked out ok, but there was someone written on it by software that
they couldn't reach...or some explanation like that. In any event, it
was the only hard drive that went teats up on me since 1984-85.


------------------------------------------------------------

Someone? What kind of a writer are you? Other than poor. All drives have
extra stuff written on them. Manufacturers bad block file, ID stuff. And
you have to know the special codes and commands to access them. Checked out
OK? Will be on sale at Fry's in a couple months.

A nice apple story
 

wrote in message ...

On Fri, 18 Nov 2011 20:02:15 -0800, "Califbill"
wrote:


10 years ago. But still the mechanical problems rule. And if they were
perfectly reliable, you would not have to had a drive replaced. Still the
problems go up exponentially with speed. They fly closer now and more
turbulence with speed. Semi contact is almost the norm now. The error
correction helps immensely but there are still media problems. One of the
reasons I have a patent is on defect scanning. I wrote a lot of the defect
self scanning firmware for Maxtor. Interface code for Ministore and DSP
control code for Samsung and as an Apps engineer for the DSP supplier. The
higher speed and higher density makes for probably the same reliability we
had all through the 90's. Which was a lot more than the CDC, IBM and NCR
removable media 14" drives.

I always wondered why operating systems did not collect soft error
statistics on hard drives. Usually the first time you know you have a
problem is when you get that "cannot read from device" error and that
may actually be an epitaph. You certainly need to stop and get the
drive backed up right then, hoping there is still something there to
back up. Hopefully your last backup is not that old.

I am really becoming a RAID fan, now that drives are cheap enough to
make it reasonable. I have 2 RAIDED sets in different machines with a
lot of the same data on each of them and things I really care about
are also on a portable drive. Things like pictures, music etc are
scattered around all over the place so it would be hard to lose them
all.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the late 80's I was working on a design for one of the first RAID systems
with hot swap and auto rebuild. Unfortunately the company had a layoff and
Hugh Sierra who I was working with on the RAID design was one of the layoffs
and they scrapped the program. We could have been the EMC powerhouse. Hugh
Sierra http://www.amazon.com/Hugh-M.-Sierra/e/B001KD286K had probably more
patents for disk drives at IBM than anybody else. System Industries made a
really big errors in judgment as to what to design. Turned down Sun when
they wanted us to design a file server for them in the early years of Sun
among others.

A nice apple story
 

On 11/20/11 12:10 AM, Califbill wrote:
"X ` Man" wrote in message
m...

On 11/18/11 11:02 PM, Califbill wrote:
"X ` Man" wrote in message
...

On 11/18/11 12:11 PM, Califbill wrote:
"X ` Man" wrote in message
m...

On 11/17/11 9:38 PM, Califbill wrote:
wrote in message ...

On Wed, 16 Nov 2011 11:09:01 -0500, X ` Man
wrote:

I had a choice of drives for my server, so I bought four of these:

Seagate Constellation ES 2 TB Internal hard drive - 300 MBps - 7200
rpm


Seagate/Maxtor is a pretty good drive


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------




The problem with Apple, at least in former days, was you had to buy the
drive from Apple at excessive price. Same frikken drive as on a PC but
with a unique identifier in the SCSI packet. I designed Maxtor drives
and they were the same exact drive except for the identifier. The
problem with WD drives was getting them to be reliable at 7200 rpm. As
Jim McCoy, Chairman of Maxtor when I worked there, stated, anyone can
build a 3600 rpm drive, hard to handle the head flying and control at
7200 rpm. Lots of turbulence at the extra rpm.

That's no longer the case. You can buy drives in many sizes
from many vendors. I could upgrade the drive in my laptop, for example,
in about 10 minutes.

The server I have is made by Synology, not Apple. There is a long list
of recommended drives you can use with it. The device comes "driveless,"
as it were. Took longer to take the four drives out of their packaging
than it did to install them in the server.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------


But how many of those 7200 rom drives are reliable? As to lots of
vendors, lots. As to manufacturers, shrinking all the time.


How many decades ago were you designing drives? Isn't it possible drives
have gotten more reliable? In my last Windows PC, I had a 10,000 rpm
drive. It was perfectly reliable.


===================================
10 years ago. But still the mechanical problems rule. And if they were
perfectly reliable, you would not have to had a drive replaced. Still
the problems go up exponentially with speed. They fly closer now and
more turbulence with speed. Semi contact is almost the norm now. The
error correction helps immensely but there are still media problems. One
of the reasons I have a patent is on defect scanning. I wrote a lot of
the defect self scanning firmware for Maxtor. Interface code for
Ministore and DSP control code for Samsung and as an Apps engineer for
the DSP supplier. The higher speed and higher density makes for probably
the same reliability we had all through the 90's. Which was a lot more
than the CDC, IBM and NCR removable media 14" drives.


The drive that failed, according to the techs who messed with it,
checked out ok, but there was someone written on it by software that
they couldn't reach...or some explanation like that. In any event, it
was the only hard drive that went teats up on me since 1984-85.


------------------------------------------------------------

Someone? What kind of a writer are you? Other than poor. All drives have
extra stuff written on them. Manufacturers bad block file, ID stuff. And
you have to know the special codes and commands to access them. Checked
out OK? Will be on sale at Fry's in a couple months.


Uh, I don't always wear my reading glasses when typing here.

I doubt the failed drive will be on sale at Fry's or anywhere else,
since it was handed back to me in the box that held the new drive. I
might mess with the drive a little bit to see if I can plumb its
mysteries, but otherwise, it'll be heading to the "Electronics Dumpster"
at the county trash-out.

A nice apple story
 

On 11/19/11 1:46 PM, wrote:
On Fri, 18 Nov 2011 20:02:15 -0800, "Califbill"
wrote:


10 years ago. But still the mechanical problems rule. And if they were
perfectly reliable, you would not have to had a drive replaced. Still the
problems go up exponentially with speed. They fly closer now and more
turbulence with speed. Semi contact is almost the norm now. The error
correction helps immensely but there are still media problems. One of the
reasons I have a patent is on defect scanning. I wrote a lot of the defect
self scanning firmware for Maxtor. Interface code for Ministore and DSP
control code for Samsung and as an Apps engineer for the DSP supplier. The
higher speed and higher density makes for probably the same reliability we
had all through the 90's. Which was a lot more than the CDC, IBM and NCR
removable media 14" drives.

I always wondered why operating systems did not collect soft error
statistics on hard drives. Usually the first time you know you have a
problem is when you get that "cannot read from device" error and that
may actually be an epitaph. You certainly need to stop and get the
drive backed up right then, hoping there is still something there to
back up. Hopefully your last backup is not that old.

I am really becoming a RAID fan, now that drives are cheap enough to
make it reasonable. I have 2 RAIDED sets in different machines with a
lot of the same data on each of them and things I really care about
are also on a portable drive. Things like pictures, music etc are
scattered around all over the place so it would be hard to lose them
all.

I went with a modified RAID on my little Synology server. Four two
terabyte drives, with one drive set up as "backup" for the other three.
I have less than one terabyte "used" by our computer and data here.

http://tinyurl.com/7fwkgeo



I also back up my iMac desktop to a separate one terabyte hard drive,
and my wife backs up her PC to the Synology server. All her files are
also on her at-work server, and I store my data files, photos and music
on "the Cloud," too.

Apple's Time Machine backup software works well, in the background,
though I don't let it run continuously. I use "SuperDuper," a program
for Macs, to back up a sparse image to the Synology server. Both Time
Machine and SuperDuper allow retrieval of one, many, or all files from
the backups, and also allow a complete restore if necessary.










































'used

A nice apple story
 

In article ,
says...

On Sat, 19 Nov 2011 08:41:59 -0500, iBoaterer wrote:

In article ,
says...

On Fri, 18 Nov 2011 15:52:46 -0500, X ` Man
wrote:

I look at it as Windoze lets you do things that Bill Gates did not
think you would ever want to and Apple simply tells you what Steve
Jobs allows you to do.

If I am willing to look around a little I can find a driver for just
about any kind of obscure hardware and the world is flush with windows
software.
I do like playing with the hardware tho.
I can understand people who just want to cut open the box and start
using their machine but you pay in spades for that and you plod along
a pretty narrow path. If that is where you want to go, it is good for
you.


You're a computer hobbyist. I am not. I earn my living as a writer with
my apple computers. I expect them to work and allow me to use my word
processors, printers, web clients, email clients, fax, whatever, without
any serious glitches. If my desktop apple craps out on me (as it did the
other day when the hard drive failed), I expect to be able to turn on my
backup macbook pro and continue where I left off. I can do this because
I back up work files fairly continuously, even as I work on them.

I have no reason to futz around with obscure hardware. If I want to do
that, I'll take apart and clean a fishing reel.


Like I said, you don't want to know you have a computer. You just want
an appliance.

OTOH I have never had a reason to take a fishing reel apart. ;-)

Gee, at one time, Harry claimed right here in rec.boats that he was the
resident computer guru and no one else knew anything! He even claimed
that Microsoft was sending him pre-beta software to test!

Microsoft sells everyone "pre Beta" software. That is anything prior
to SP2. ;-)

True dat!

A nice apple story
 

On Sat, 19 Nov 2011 21:10:08 -0800 , "Califbill"
wrote:
"X ` Man" wrote in message
m...


On 11/18/11 11:02 PM, Califbill wrote:
"X ` Man" wrote in message
...

On 11/18/11 12:11 PM, Califbill wrote:
"X ` Man" wrote in message
m...

On 11/17/11 9:38 PM, Califbill wrote:
wrote in message
...

On Wed, 16 Nov 2011 11:09:01 -0500, X ` Man
wrote:

I had a choice of drives for my server, so I bought four of
these:

Seagate Constellation ES 2 TB Internal hard drive - 300 MBps -
7200 rpm


Seagate/Maxtor is a pretty good drive



-----------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------



The problem with Apple, at least in former days, was you had to
buy the
drive from Apple at excessive price. Same frikken drive as on a
PC but
with a unique identifier in the SCSI packet. I designed Maxtor
drives
and they were the same exact drive except for the identifier.
The
problem with WD drives was getting them to be reliable at 7200
rpm. As
Jim McCoy, Chairman of Maxtor when I worked there, stated,
anyone can
build a 3600 rpm drive, hard to handle the head flying and
control at
7200 rpm. Lots of turbulence at the extra rpm.

That's no longer the case. You can buy drives in many sizes
from many vendors. I could upgrade the drive in my laptop, for
example,
in about 10 minutes.

The server I have is made by Synology, not Apple. There is a
long list
of recommended drives you can use with it. The device comes
"driveless,"
as it were. Took longer to take the four drives out of their
packaging
than it did to install them in the server.



-----------------------------------------------------------------------
---

But how many of those 7200 rom drives are reliable? As to lots of
vendors, lots. As to manufacturers, shrinking all the time.


How many decades ago were you designing drives? Isn't it possible
drives
have gotten more reliable? In my last Windows PC, I had a 10,000
rpm
drive. It was perfectly reliable.


===================================
10 years ago. But still the mechanical problems rule. And if they
were
perfectly reliable, you would not have to had a drive replaced.
Still
the problems go up exponentially with speed. They fly closer now
and
more turbulence with speed. Semi contact is almost the norm now.
The
error correction helps immensely but there are still media
problems. One
of the reasons I have a patent is on defect scanning. I wrote a
lot of
the defect self scanning firmware for Maxtor. Interface code for
Ministore and DSP control code for Samsung and as an Apps
engineer for
the DSP supplier. The higher speed and higher density makes for
probably
the same reliability we had all through the 90's. Which was a lot
more
than the CDC, IBM and NCR removable media 14" drives.




The drive that failed, according to the techs who messed with it,
checked out ok, but there was someone written on it by software that
they couldn't reach...or some explanation like that. In any event,
it
was the only hard drive that went teats up on me since 1984-85.




------------------------------------------------------------


Someone? What kind of a writer are you? Other than poor. All
drives have
extra stuff written on them. Manufacturers bad block file, ID
stuff. And
you have to know the special codes and commands to access them.
Checked out
OK? Will be on sale at Fry's in a couple months.


I hope they are able to scrape Harry's important files off it before
reselling it.

--
2012, the end of an error:-) Yee Haw!

A nice apple story
 

On Sun, 20 Nov 2011 08:04:19 -0500 , X ` Man
wrote:
On 11/20/11 12:10 AM, Califbill wrote:
"X ` Man" wrote in message
m...

On 11/18/11 11:02 PM, Califbill wrote:
"X ` Man" wrote in message
...

On 11/18/11 12:11 PM, Califbill wrote:
"X ` Man" wrote in message
m...

On 11/17/11 9:38 PM, Califbill wrote:
wrote in message
...

On Wed, 16 Nov 2011 11:09:01 -0500, X ` Man
wrote:

I had a choice of drives for my server, so I bought four of
these:

Seagate Constellation ES 2 TB Internal hard drive - 300 MBps
- 7200
rpm


Seagate/Maxtor is a pretty good drive



-----------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------




The problem with Apple, at least in former days, was you had
to buy the
drive from Apple at excessive price. Same frikken drive as on
a PC but
with a unique identifier in the SCSI packet. I designed Maxtor
drives
and they were the same exact drive except for the identifier.
The
problem with WD drives was getting them to be reliable at 7200
rpm. As
Jim McCoy, Chairman of Maxtor when I worked there, stated,
anyone can
build a 3600 rpm drive, hard to handle the head flying and
control at
7200 rpm. Lots of turbulence at the extra rpm.

That's no longer the case. You can buy drives in many sizes
from many vendors. I could upgrade the drive in my laptop, for
example,
in about 10 minutes.

The server I have is made by Synology, not Apple. There is a
long list
of recommended drives you can use with it. The device comes
"driveless,"
as it were. Took longer to take the four drives out of their
packaging
than it did to install them in the server.



-----------------------------------------------------------------------
---


But how many of those 7200 rom drives are reliable? As to lots
of
vendors, lots. As to manufacturers, shrinking all the time.


How many decades ago were you designing drives? Isn't it
possible drives
have gotten more reliable? In my last Windows PC, I had a 10,000
rpm
drive. It was perfectly reliable.


===================================
10 years ago. But still the mechanical problems rule. And if
they were
perfectly reliable, you would not have to had a drive replaced.
Still
the problems go up exponentially with speed. They fly closer now
and
more turbulence with speed. Semi contact is almost the norm now.
The
error correction helps immensely but there are still media
problems. One
of the reasons I have a patent is on defect scanning. I wrote a
lot of
the defect self scanning firmware for Maxtor. Interface code for
Ministore and DSP control code for Samsung and as an Apps
engineer for
the DSP supplier. The higher speed and higher density makes for
probably
the same reliability we had all through the 90's. Which was a
lot more
than the CDC, IBM and NCR removable media 14" drives.


The drive that failed, according to the techs who messed with it,
checked out ok, but there was someone written on it by software
that
they couldn't reach...or some explanation like that. In any
event, it
was the only hard drive that went teats up on me since 1984-85.


------------------------------------------------------------

Someone? What kind of a writer are you? Other than poor. All
drives have
extra stuff written on them. Manufacturers bad block file, ID
stuff. And
you have to know the special codes and commands to access them.
Checked
out OK? Will be on sale at Fry's in a couple months.




Uh, I don't always wear my reading glasses when typing here.


I doubt the failed drive will be on sale at Fry's or anywhere else,
since it was handed back to me in the box that held the new drive.
I
might mess with the drive a little bit to see if I can plumb its
mysteries, but otherwise, it'll be heading to the "Electronics
Dumpster"
at the county trash-out.


Try wearing your writing glasses, dumbo.

--
2012, the end of an error:-) Yee Haw!

A nice apple story
 

On 11/20/11 10:44 AM, wrote:
On Sun, 20 Nov 2011 08:04:19 -0500, X `
wrote:


I doubt the failed drive will be on sale at Fry's or anywhere else,
since it was handed back to me in the box that held the new drive. I
might mess with the drive a little bit to see if I can plumb its
mysteries, but otherwise, it'll be heading to the "Electronics Dumpster"
at the county trash-out.


If they told you the truth about it, you could bring this back to life
with a low level format (what they call "recertified" in the used
world). How long it will last before it corrupts another critical file
is the question.
I have "recertified" drives that ran for years, others crapped out in
a month. Usually if the manufacturer recertified them they will swap
it out under the warranty.

If you scrap it, take the magnets out. They are fun to play with. Then
the only part that needs to go to the electronics dumpster is the card
and the leads to the voice coil and heads (the parts with lead)
New drives don't use lead solder anyway. (RoHS)


I've got an unused hard drive USB docking station somewhere that
accommodates 2.5" and 3.5" SATA hard drives. Might unbox it and hook it
up to the failed drive to see what I can do with it.