Hard drives are about to undergo one of the biggest format shifts in 30 years. By early 2011 all hard drives will use an "advanced format" that changes how they go about saving the data people store on them.

The move to the advanced format will make it easier for hard drive makers to produce bigger drives that use less power and are more reliable. However, it might mean problems for Windows XP users who swap an old drive for one using the changed format.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8557144.stm

Something to think about if you are about to build a new system (Like me)
These newer hard drives are already available from Western Digital. The new 1TB and 2TB 64Mb cache hard drives already use this new type of formatting.

Heres another more deeper article on whats happening.
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/03/why-new-hard-disks-might-not-be-much-fun-for-xp-users.ars

given that this is a Faceman thread I thought for sure there was going to be some conspiracy about how the new drives would make it easy for law enforcement to decrypt your shiz

sweet

I like bigger and more reliable drivea

Gah, hoping to actually find out without having to go the link...

I thought similar line, but opposite end. I.e. New format is harder for the Governments and Aliens to read your shizz.

I have a ~3 year old 500Gig HDD that I use for media and Time Machine backups. It's been making some weird noises lately. Is there anyway to tell if a HDD is about to die?

Wow, I just went and looked up prices thinking "Oh yeah, probably going to cost an arm and a leg" and a 2TB hard drive costs about $200! f*** me, I didn't realise hard drives were so cheap now.

Weird noises means about to die, I'd get a replacement in there ASAP billy.

http://www.pure-mac.com/diag.html#dasboot then build up a diag kit

Also rip that s*** apart and run who manufactures it is then run their tool over it

Also disk utility

last edited by HerbalLizard at 18:38:19 21/Mar/10

I have a ~3 year old 500Gig HDD that I use for media and Time Machine backups. It's been making some weird noises lately. Is there anyway to tell if a HDD is about to die?

Billy - backup **now**

I have a ~3 year old 500Gig HDD that I use for media and Time Machine backups. It's been making some weird noises lately. Is there anyway to tell if a HDD is about to die?

Billy - confirm your backups **now**

I dunno why you wouldn't just replace it. We're talking about $120 here - and you'd get a much better HDD now for that cash.

On the back-up issue - if you don't back-up your important s***, you're an idiot. I have one folder called 'MirroredFiles' which contains anything that should be backed up. It's backed up at home, at work and on my portable HDD. Syncing to three devices is annoying, but if work burns down and my computer at home is stolen on the same day, I'll still be a winrar.

If I lose my COD4 saved games, I'm not going to care much. If I lose my sister's wedding photos, there would be a real problem. That's the kind of stuff in my MirroredFiles folder.

Looking at off-site backup now - any pro-tips on that?

Looking at off-site backup now - any pro-tips on that?

Buy a large chest and bury it somewhere so it can't be affected by fire or wolves. Draw a map, and then hide the map, and leave yourself clues on how to find the map in case you go senile.

Buy a large chest and bury it somewhere so it can't be affected by fire or wolves. Draw a map, and then hide the map, and leave yourself clues on how to find the map in case you go senile.

I chuckled...

Looking at off-site backup now - any pro-tips on that?

Print the photos and store them in a safe.

thermite ya need to change your avatar to Ford Falcon

that pic makes me think you can't fly your plane off the threadmill

no idea why :P

I use my Aunties house.

Cloud storage

I have multiple servers around the world
seriously, it's pretty easy to do with rsync

http://www.ausgamers.com/forums/general/thread.php/2867932#postitem2868688

Here's is a detailed look at what is happening with the new Hard drives.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3691

Is there anyway to tell if a HDD is about to die?

make sure you have smart enabled on all your drives billy

billy try freezing the drives in a bag with a small smear of peanut butter to ionize

If I lose my COD4 saved games, I'm not going to care much. If I lose my sister's wedding photos, there would be a real problem. That's the kind of stuff in my MirroredFiles folder.

I would rather just use an incremental 100% content backup, so that neither important nor useful but unimportant files are lost. Losing a small amount of work is annoying enough.

I have a Time Machine backup, but I'm considering getting a second hard disk and doing back ups on that too, or possibly looking at cloud backups, though bandwidth and upload speed are the main reason why that's a hassle.

that Link from Lynx has diagrams explaining it.

thermite ya need to change your avatar to Ford Falcon

that pic makes me think you can't fly your plane off the threadmill

I don't get it.

Perhaps he meant Ford Fairlane (aka Andrew Dice Clay)? I dunno.