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Would that be nice to have a hard drive that act like a normal hard drive but that have redundancy inside. Instead of a raid system that you need to have all connected together with a motherboard that support it, etc., you just have a simple hard drive (well, look-a-like) with normal connection.
On
the data link, you can pass the status of the drive. With a simple (and I mean simple) software installed on the PC, you can monitor the drive. In case of a hazardous loss of power, physical shock, etc., the system will try to recover. I was thinking a 3-image system. When one byte is incorrect on one (like it's not the exact byte as the other 2 images), the byte will be replicated from the others. Some PM could be also added to a internal flash system. When some threshold are crossed (like a byte is obviously wrong too often), the software will notify the user that something is wrong with one of the image. Even if the system is running fine, there's a chance there's a physical problem with the disk.
In resume, it's a redundancy disk (the idea is existing) but with some internal intelligence and without the need of an additionnal hard drive.
I just bough a 80 Gigs for 75$ and I was: "Geez, that's @^# big, it would be nice to have a 30Gigs with redundancy instead!".
Redundant motor, head, dc converter (if any), circuitry, etc.
Waddayathink folks?
[link]
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I guess the big question is what modes of failure are likely to occur. If spindle motor failure is a risk, avoiding having that hit both drives would require using two motors. If head actuator failure, than redundant actuators and heads. If surface failure than redundant surfaces. If electronics failure than redundant electronics. |
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If one makes everything redundant, there's little advantage over having two separate drives. If there's only partial redundancy, then there's a cost saving in whichever part isn't redundant but no protection against that part's failure. |
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80GB is small enough to be useless. |
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[Supercat] is right. Easier to buy 2 x 80Gb and set them up in a RAID 1 config, using a cheap RAID controller. |
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Western Digital seem to be the most reliable IDE drives, for a decent price, at the moment. |
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