Mike Singer wrote:

>> Not sure where you get this from. HDD is IMO one of the
>> best backup media around.
> 
> ha-ha there is no such thing as "just best something" :-)

ho-ho, nobody claimed such a thing ?-)  But somebody claimed that HDD is
not a serious backup medium.

> Talk to service (or sales) personal about HDD reliability on general.
> They'll tell you horrible stories about some brands for some periods.
> That's kind of magic; nobody could swear that a single HDD wouldn't
> die next second, even non-powered one.

Same goes for DVD and others. You might swear that it wouldn't, but we all
know what that is worth, what with atheists, perjuring and all.

> And in contrast to, say, CDR you can't just place its plates into
> another HDD, or buy just another dozen of them to make extra-copies.

It doesn't help a lot to buy another dozen if the one copy you made
(because making those copies is such a pain) has gone bad. Which,
differently from HDDs, I would bet on that it does. And I'd probably win...
if not this year, then within the next few.

There's a chance of failure. But with two HDD copies you are probably safer
than with ten CD/DVD copies. And they are not only safer, but so much
easier to do and to check. (Ever checked 30GB of data on ten sets of CD or
DVD?) And cheaper (per GB) also.

> If they were "reliable" there was not so much fuss about RAID, SMART,
> File System reliability etc.

It seems you have been out of the loop of discussions about reliability of
optical media :)  

> That's the point: the cost of validating (testing) of the new long-run
> situation is much higher than the cost of just getting to the start
> position once in a while, like for steppers. 

You missed the point. The starting position doesn't help me a lot, it's the
working position that I want. That's where the current system is. And it's
pretty far away from the starting position.

Gerhard

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