[RndTbl] hard drive failure curve (John Donovan)

Dan Martin ummar143 at shaw.ca
Fri Sep 5 21:45:39 CDT 2014


The lifespan of humans is not a bad analogy.  Typically, death rates are very high in the first 2 weeks of life, still quite high in the first 2 years of life in 'underdeveloped' countries.  In many cultures, children don't get named until they are a year or two of age (you don't want to get too attached to them!).  Mortality levels off until old age (which is 30 or 70 depending where you live).  If you make it to age 80, you are in a select group and have a reasonable chance to make 85.  If you make it to 102, your chances of making it to 104, however, are not so good.

Of course, if the 102  -year-old steps on a banana peel, the odds go down more.  Which raises the issue of trauma, suicide, and homicide.

I ran out of hard drive space on my MacBook Air, so I spent the last few days transferring everything to an external drive, the same one that has my backups, and deleting the original to make room for things like swap.  I don't want all my data in just one place, no no no!  So I took it to my office to sync with my desktop machine.

As I was plugging the external drive in, about an hour ago, with my back turned to it, it jumped off the desk.  I suspect all the stuff I put on it, like John says, was too depressing and it just couldn't take it.  I am unable to revive it, and I fear my data is lost just before I could back it up.

If anyone knows of a fairly cheap place that might be able to recover some data on post mortem, I would appreciate it.

-Dan

On 2014-09-05, at 4:18 PM, Gilbert E. Detillieux wrote:

> On 05/09/2014 3:55 PM, JD wrote:
>> But alas: As if it's not disappointing enough for them to finally learn
>> which operating system the majority of these drives have to host, add to
>> that, that a certain number of them will soon be asked to store untold
>> horrors; filth and crud which their owners call 'data'. Bad recipes.
>> Panda porn. Political opinions. Twittertwattwaddle. Fwd'd Fwds .. yucky
>> stuff. Blech.
>> 
>> Think about it. (or maybe .. don't).
>> 
>> Marvel as we may, it is _us_ who kill them:
>> Hard drives die of abject depression, chronic bewilderment, and
>> disgust.
> 
> Good to have you back among us, John!
> 
> Thanks for making a rainy afternoon a bit sunnier.  :)
> 
> -- 
> Gilbert E. Detillieux		E-mail: <gedetil at muug.mb.ca>
> Manitoba UNIX User Group	Web:	http://www.muug.mb.ca/
> PO Box 130 St-Boniface		Phone:  (204)474-8161
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Dan Martin
GP Hospital Practitioner
Computer Scientist
ummar143 at shaw.ca
(204) 831-1746
answering machine always on




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