My laptop dropped only 8 inches when my foot caught a cable connected
to it. There were read/write operations taking place at that exact
moment. There was no damage to the laptop proper. However, serious
damage was done to the data on that drive. Of course this is anecdotal.
A hard drive is a hard drive is a hard drive. It's limitations do not
change whether in a desktop, a laptop or a field recorder. If subjected
to some g-force shock at a angle perpendicular to the rotating disc
surface, there is a high likelihood that the head could strike the disc
and damage the surface/data.
Any solid state memory solution can be affected by EM field artifacts
from lightening or static electricity etc.....
You do not have to be hard wired to take a hit from a high em field
event such as a lightning strike etc....
Rory, if your suggesting that Oryoko is spouting some theory/sales
hype, might I suggest that your propagandistic attitude with regard to
the well known characteristics of the technologies we are discussing
here suggest that maybe you are trying to deny the possibility that
mechanical data storage technologies are well on their way to
obsolescence.
Moe Kunkle
-----Original Message-----
From:
Behalf Of Walter Knapp
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2007 8:49 AM
To:
Subject: [Nature Recordists] Re: Flash based IDE drives...
Posted by: "Rory"
> I am more interested in how a field recorder works in the real world
than I am in your desktop computer :)
>
> The question is this: is there hard evidence to support the
statements, which by the way go beyond shock, that Oryoko makes about
to the effect that hard drive recorders are less reliable than flash
recorders?
>
> I ask because I am not aware of any evidence that supports these
statements in the real world, as distinct from theory/sales hype.
>
> So I am looking to be educated.
>
> I do have one question. Are you in the habit of dropping your desktop
computer on the floor?
I don't drop my desktop computer, have not dropped my portadisc either
(but I have friends who have dropped their portadiscs). I did drop the
walkman minidiscs I used to use a few times, they are very tough. Their
tiny size is a problem that makes dropping more likely. My wife's
laptop
has been dropped (by our cat) and took a bunch of work to repair (it
was
not running so the hard disk was parked).
I have, from time to time read first hand reports of folks dropping
their hard disc recorder and losing everything recorded on it. It's a
fairly rare accident, but not impossible by any means. For some more
clumsy people it may be a significant risk. The bad part is the
recordings lost, in some cases it was the entire set from a long
recording trip. Hard to easily replace several week's recordings from a
expensive trip.
Sound Devices also warns about the more accelerated wear on hard disks
used in their portable recorders and recommends periodic replacement of
the hard disk. Go read their stuff on that.
For my laptop I do plan more frequent hard disk replacement than for my
desktop. For now I just maintain clones of the hard disk on identical
drives. A hard disk failure on my laptop will not stop me as I can boot
from one of the clones and continue until I can trade the clone disk
into the laptop.
Thinking that a hard disk is indestructible has lead many people to
very
bad experiences when suddenly everything on it is no longer accessible.
I recently replaced all my desktop's hard disks, they were more than 6
years old and in continuous use. Some had some noise occurring
indicating possible failure soon. Put in 1.5 TB of new disks. And even
then I maintain backup clones of the disks and optical backups of all
the data.
I've had hard disks fail in both desktops and laptops. And I'm not
alone.
Note solid state memory can fail too. I back it up as well.
Walt
"While a picture is worth a thousand words, a
sound is worth a thousand pictures." R. Murray Schafer via Bernie
Krause
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