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Just lost another HD. are docking stations to blame?
megido-rev.M:
We seem to be at an impasse. OP hasn't mentioned the models of said HDs and docking station.
rathoriel:
the HD that have died have been 2- 1TB seagates and 1 - 2TB WD Hard Drives as for the docking station
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153112 using USB
I also dont undock them frequently
edit: the seagates were 2 to 3+ years before fail the WD was from august 2011
megido-rev.M:
I'm not sure about anyone else, but I am not fond of exposing the drives the way the docking seems to do. There's a huge difference in environments, between keeping a drive in the PC case and leaving it outside. Usually I would say actual enclosures would do you better, but each of those takes a power plug.
Anyway, aside from possible heating/powering problems I'm not sure of what other issues docking a drive would pose.
datora:
.
There's a good bit of difference in reliability of drive manufacturers. For example, Seagate from more than a year ago sold just about the most horrible large-capacity drives on the planet. Failure rates for 1TB and larger drives by them were not "if" but "when." 3 years of service and you beat the odds by a pretty good spread. I think the Hitachi "DeathStars" were the only model that was clearly worse.
The Western Digital from last year should have been more reliable, where values for "should" have significant variability. It was probably a WD Green drive? Those have been "mostly" reliable for the past two years, but still with significant FAIL rates. I would be stunned if it was a WD Caviar Black drive. Those have been nearly as stable as the bones of the Earth. Yet, we still watch out for earthquakes ...
The dock you linked to is a low-ish to medium end solution. Decent brand name, so I'd have some fair confidence, in general, about it's safety for drives. Caveat: I still don't like docking stations much ... but this one's about as good a bet as any I'd take if I had to. The 2 Amp output seems a bit anemic, especially if I spun up two drives simultaneously ... but it should still have been adequate.
My guess is that the docking station is probably performing about as normally as one is expected to, which is slightly increased risk for several reasons due to design. The drives can be exposed to pollen and fingerprints and cat hair and stuff, plus other mechanical stress from plugging/unplugging. I sure wouldn't hot swap if I could ever avoid it (in fact, have not done it even once in my entire life), but that's me being really paranoid after some devastating data losses in my life. Triple points for large, 1 TB plus drives.
Another thought, though. I run all my electronics off of APC battery back-ups that are plugged into high quality surge suppressors. I KNOW the electricity is very clean and stable running into all my equipment. Plugging directly into raw house current introduces a lot of stress into most electronics because there is always variations in current and other spikes and drops. Every time someone runs a microwave or flips a switch, "noise" is introduced.
Again, triple points for a docking station (or other external hard drive) getting its power from a "dirty" source. In technical terms, we say that is Very Bad for hard drive devices, among others. My speakers and my monitors, for example, I am much more comfortable "only" running them off a top-end surge suppressor, one with capacitors in it to help stabilize & clean up the feed.
AnimeJanai:
I have used various external drive cases and was unsatisfied with many (mostly due to their choice of external switching power supplies). Like you, I've lost multiple hard drives (some deliberately, ha ha) not because of intrinsic hard drive failure, but because the external case or its power supply caused the drive to fail.**note_1
The exception to drive failure I noticed came from external docks by Antec. So, over time, the household had become a user of those docks. I used external and internal docks for years (early adopter) and have no problem with them. As with you, the drives are rarely removed. There are several different brands, but I now exclusively use the Antec EZ-DOCK ones for external docks.
--- Quote from: datora on April 23, 2012, 03:24:46 AM ---Another thought, though. I run all my electronics off of APC battery back-ups that are plugged into high quality surge suppressors. I KNOW the electricity is very clean and stable running into all my equipment. Plugging directly into raw house current introduces a lot of stress into most electronics because there is always variations in current and other spikes and drops. Every time someone runs a microwave or flips a switch, "noise" is introduced.[\quote]
I will accept your specific wording and applaud your luck in creating a destructive problem out of your APC branded parts. During testing with resistive load to check output noise ripple and claimed longevity of the UPS, I had connected multiple resistive loads to the APC power strip which was then plugged into the UPS. When the UPS was operating, the APC surge and noise suppressor powerstrip had its output go out of tolerance as well as the powerstrip unit physically vibrating a lot. THEREFORE, this proved that you MUST NOT connect a APC surge and noise suppressor to the output of a consumer-grade UPS. This is because consumer-grade UPS utilize a stepped waveform to emulate the 60 Hertz AC sine-wave. This stepped waveform causes a problem in the filtering section of the APC noise suppression circuit (which uses toroid inductors that end up vibrating wildly).
If you connected your external drives in such an arrangement, they could go bad if the UPS came on.
--- Quote ---Again, triple points for a docking station (or other external hard drive) getting its power from a "dirty" source. In technical terms, we say that is Very Bad for hard drive devices, among others. My speakers and my monitors, for example, I am much more comfortable "only" running them off a top-end surge suppressor, one with capacitors in it to help stabilize & clean up the feed.
--- End quote ---
The top-end units have both circuitry (integrated circuit or transistorized crowbar) and LC (inductors and capacitors) networks. APC makes multiple types of surge/noise suppressor bars. The ones I have from APC are about two inches thick in order to accommodate the circuitry. Opening the units up you'll find MOVs, electronic circuitry, replaceable fast-blow crowbar fuses, multiple toroid inductors, and multiple capacitors. These were not sold on the normal consumer market (wal-mart, sears, hardware stores), although those models were at Office Depot and stores that sold to businesses. I also use Transtector silicon diode protection since that is the fastest response available. We had thought about using Transtector type devices in a larger breaker panel, but that would have been too expensive and overkill.
Transtector: http://www.protectiongroup.com/Surge/AC-Protectors/Type/AC-Plug-in-Surge-Protectors/SL-V-Surge-Protection
--- End quote ---
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