HDD Guide, check it out and give me your opinions

[blakerwry]

Hey dudes, I'm working on a project for technical writing class. I'm making a guide on how to treat your hdd's nicely

http://harddrive.howto.dns2go.com


check out what I have so far and tell me what you think, ok?


gtg, enrollment is starting.. I look forward to your opinions when I get back.

 

[Tea]

Looking good, Your Grace. Your layout and choice of illustrationz is excellent. Not sure about "lost sales" though - every time someone breaks a hard drive, someone else gets to sell a new one! But an excellent start.

 

[blakerwry]

good point tea.

Yes, good start... but keep in mind this is not even a completed rough draft as of yet. I haven't really started writing anything past section 3... all I have are some rough brainstorming notes...

 

[Buck]

Nice layout Blake.

 

[Buck]

If you need some HDD information, perhaps these sites can help:

http://www.firmware.com/support/index.htm
http://www.pcguide.com/
http://www.redhill.net.au/
http://www.hlmcompany.com/

 

[blakerwry]

bump

 

[NRG = mc²]

Its going pretty well, let us know when you've finished it.

 

[J-Frog]

Very nice. Your guide will be helpful to many people, and should get you a good grade .

 

[blakerwry]

heh, we just finished our group projects and I still have another month till this project is due... We did very well on our presentation today and I'm feeling pretty good right now.

 

[blakerwry]

OK, I just did my presentation and turned in my project, check out the website @ http://harddrive.howto.dns2go.com/ or http://hdd.howto.dns2go.com

 

[blakerwry]

A printed flier that goes along with the website (to gain a reader's attention, relate the topic to their concerns, and to direct them to the website) is available in pdf format here: http://hdd.howto.dns2go.com/flier.pdf

 

[Handruin]

A printed flier that goes along with the website (to gain a reader's attention, relate the topic to their concerns, and to direct them to the website) is available in pdf format here: http://hdd.howto.dns2go.com/flier.pdf

Want a website? I can sell you space? 8) (domain name not included)

 

[Handruin]

Nice job with the guide. Let us know how you do on the project!

 

[Handruin]

I gotta laugh at this one: (not at your image, but a relation to it)

Makes me think of all the 1.6 inch 36GB cheetahs drives stacked in the cabinet at work... they still work though

 

[blakerwry]

well...

I have gotten an A on the project proposal, an A on the presentation, an A on my status report, now all that needs to be graded is my self analysis and the content of my project (50% of grade).

I hope the pattern continues...

I put the site on CD-ROM incase it happens to go down, and I made a neat auto-run menu for the CD that has links to all the documents that were created for the final project and a link to the copy of the site that I burned to the CD.

hopefully I will get some boku points.

 

[blakerwry]

heh, by looking at those drives can you tell what kind they are? I bet tannin could pick out 1 for sure....

 

[Handruin]

heh, by looking at those drives can you tell what kind they are? I bet tannin could pick out 1 for sure....

Looks like:

maxtor
WD
maxtor

 

[e_dawg]

Quantum WD Quantum

 

[e_dawg]

And yes, excellent layout as well. Thankfully, there are no tasteless MIDI tunes and retina searing colours with poor contrast in the background as I have seen on too many amateur websites.

 

[Tea]

Quantum

WD AC280 (or relative from the same era)

Quantum

 

[Cliptin]

I vote for Quantum, WD, Quantum as well.

 

[Buck]

Quantum

WD AC280 (or relative from the same era)

Quantum

Very good Tea, it is an AC2200 which is in the same family as the AC280. That family spanned from a AC140 to a AC2700. The AC2200 spun at 3,652-rpm, had 64KB of cache, and a 14ms Read Seek Time. I think those things have been out of production since mid 1993.

 

[Bartender]

Buck's a cheater! He looked at the other pictures!

 

[Buck]

You're not allowed to stack drives and put them on their sides?

 

[blakerwry]

Nope, stacking is not as bad as laying on sides...

I was looking in a Fujistsu(?) article and it showed the G-forces exhibited on a drive when they fall from an upright position... well it's not good. Leaving the drives upright, they are not stable so it is a bad combination.

stacking is probably not good eaither as a drive could probably slide right off if jarred.

Both are poor practices that have become accepted in some situations. If you have a large amount of drives and want to color inside the lines store your drives in the original packaging or make your own containers.

I made a travel case out of a school supply kit and some foam. These kits are also stackable with interlocking pieces on the bottom and top of each case.

 

[Buck]

Thanks for the explanation blakewry, I should've opened and closed my comments with the [sarcasm] tag.

 

[blakerwry]

well, another person asked me that seriously the other day.... and I know it is a common practice for some people.

 

[Buck]

If I were to do that on a regular basis I would get upset customers.

 

[blakerwry]

ugh... I was at a local PC shop today .. A guy was bringing some OEM HDD's (Maxtors) on a cart from the repair section fo the shop to the back store room.

The OEM drives (about 20) were just hap hazardly stacked ontop of each other and ontop of a bunch of retail AMD processor packages.

The guy moving the HDD's was picking them up 6 at a time (3 in each hand) and holding them by applying preasure to the top and the PCB side of the drives....

In the back room it looked like it was pretty common to stack ~10 drives ontop of each other before starting another stack.. even though there was plenty of space.

 

[e_dawg]

Yep. That's why they say integration is the biggest cause of HD failures. The drives are normally 99.99% reliable when they leave the factory, and yet there are significantly more drive failures than you might expect. Computer shops who put OEM drives into computer with those poor storing, handling, and installation procedures are part of the problem.

 

[blakerwry]

I almost bought a HDD from them once, I'm glad I no longer do. I don't neccessarily think that someone has to be 100% correct 100% of the time, but when you get into a bad habit on a consistant basis there are bound to be problems.

I wonder how it has affected teir failure rates? I didn't ask, but as they are OEM drives from a tech shop who seems to specialize in sales I would assume most people would goto the manufacturer for anything other than a DOA... so the shop wouldn't even know about it.

 

[Buck]

That is why I'm happy to buy Samsung. They come conveniently packed in a plastic holder with some shock absorption and a three-year warranty.

Yes, I know Cougtek, they're not the best performers, but . . .

 

[CougTek]

The three years warranty makes them more interesting than they used to be. They are still slugs, but as they currently are the only "budget" drives with a decent warranty, they constitute a nice alternative for cheapo boxes.

Since October, I have only used Western Digital SE though, since the 40GB/60GB models are sold at a very small premium here compared to all the other 2MB buffer/single year warranty drives.