"Oh noes! My SPARES!"
Posted on 08/04/2021 3:34:04 AM PDT by CptnObvious
The Dirty Ticking Time Bomb of Computing is About to Come Out!
The Disk Manufacturers all know it. The Operating System producers have all known it. But for decades the Dirty Ticking Time Bomb of Computing is about to come out.
It does not matter whether you are on a Laptop, Desktop, Smartphone or even a mainframe, the Ticking Time Bomb is on your system and you probably never knew it.
It is under the heading of SPARES. Specifically when your drive runs out of them.
And a couple of areas on your system disk. Sector 0. If sector 0 is bad, typically it's all over on the next boot. KAPOW!!
Your Smartphone is DEAD AND GONE. Your $1000 apple watch is Kaput. The Data on your PC system disk is GONE and not recoverable.
In a Nutshell, the Time Bomb is WHEN, NOT IF, YOU RUN OUT OF "SPARES" and the next SECTOR IS CRITICAL. KABOOM!!
It does not matter what type of disk it is. Whether it is a Hard Drive, Solid State Drive, or even the new NVMe Drives. THE TICKING TIME BOMB IS THERE.
For when the Spares are gone, God only knows what will happen.
And what the industry is praying for, is that you keep buying the new stuff so that the old stuff, which is wearing out, is gone in time before the TIME BOMBS start Going Off.
BUT THERE IS GOOD NEWS:
Much of the Solid State Drive industry has standardized the reporting of Spare Usage so that the operating systems can know before hand that the problem is approaching.
And the Operating System Vendors are getting ready to be able to watch out for the Time Bombs.
For instance, a Windows 10 major update 21H2, scheduled for the October/November 2021 time frame. Has a feature which can report the "Lifecycle %" left on an SSD. And I'm guessing they are referring to, is the Spares left on the Drive.
From there, it is only one step, to give a warning message "2% Lifecycle left on C:" or something like that.
Disk drives, in general, have been so good that few have experienced THE BOMB. And a Few folks have used RAID on their system volumes to protect themselves.
But this has been a silent killer, nobody wants to talk about. But is finally being addressed.
If only there were a way to save the data before the drive blows up.
When my computer or phone goes “KAPOW” I buy a new one. Same with the fridge and lawnmower. Stop being so dramatic.
Time to adjust the meds, captain
.
It's not a matter for God. If you lose/break your smart phone, shudder, shudder, God only knows what will happen.
Get a grip, it's only a device.
Didja lose a drive or something?
If a laptop fails to boot up and nobody cares, did it make a sound?
hmm...Sam’s has new one’s on sale.
Ping
There is, it’s called a spare external disk drive...
I have a couple of 2TB portable drives, I used them to back up my old laptop and kept everything I didn’t want to lose on there....
Monitor the drive, as it fills up, get another and keep going....
Bottom line, monitor your storage, don’t install applications on a whim, actually need the app before installing and got thru from time to time and remove apps you haven’t used in a while....
Assuming this is a real issue, pay attention to your devices and you want have a problem..
Yeah...I dont get this KAPOW mentality either. Been playing with PC’s since 1990 and only seen one harddrive in 1991 deteriorate. So i replaced it before it died. BTE..I caught it by running a Defrag program to spot the bad blocks. Do that every month and other standard disc maintenance and you’ll be fine.
**The deteriorating hard drive was a Maxtor 250MB..a monster for 1991.
Mechanical failure in standard hard disks (bad bearings. etc.) and SSD “write-cycles” will probably kill your drive before it runs out of “spare bits”.
https://www.volico.com/the-most-common-causes-of-hard-drive-failure/
https://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/hardware/ssd-lifespan-how-long-will-your-ssd-work/
Dude should be writing for comic book publishers.
Boom, Pow, Kaput!
Costco had 1T external SSDs for $139 when I was there in the last few days. It wasn’t that long ago that rotating drives cost that much.
LOL
Wow!
I just checked my 'puter and I have 85% unused
I'm a computer developer by trade.
I have never heard of SPARES in relation to a hard disk drive. Sure, there is a Sector 0; sure, you don't want that going out.
But I have no Earthly idea what SPARES is, unless you mean a spare drive. And spare drives are cheap.
So, explain your concern, and do so technically, or I will assume you are a technical dolt.
(PS: 99.99999% of the time, almost all your data is recoverable. You may have to pay a pretty penny to get it back, but it is recoverable in the vast majority of cases.... even if your boot and other important sectors go out.)
Oh, and here is a Dell page regarding your assertions. Doesn’t seem like a ‘ticking time bomb’, but instead, a nice way to (lightly) protect your data, and/or utilize virtual disks.
So stop hyperventilating.
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