Faulty hard disk

[philmophlegm]

Bad news: Came down this morning to find that one of the hard disks on this PC had failed.

Good news: Because I built this machine with a RAID 1 array (i.e. two identical hard disks each containing an exact copy of the other's data), I haven't lost anything.


Moral of this story: Spending an extra £60 or so on an additional hard disk and an extra 20 minutes or so configuring the array when you build a new PC is well worth doing. Most motherboards nowadays come with a RAID controller built in.

I've ordered a replacement hard disk. When it arrives, in theory all I have to do is swap it in and let the software rebuild the array.

Incidentally, my experience of RAID controllers (whether built into the motherboard or not) is that Intel ones are easier to use, configure and repair than Promise ones, mainly because of better drivers and utilities.

Comments

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I'm deeply impressed by the way the machine is still running happily on the one disk, I must say. I know it threw a bit of a wobbly for a while when the disk went, but compared with the agony of losing a hard disk normally, it's brilliant. Makes me think twice about my laptop, though I suppose laptop HD's are easier to swap and it is all backed up...