Art Deco Gadgets and Devices | Data Storage Technologies from West Coast Midnight Run

thumb on rotating equipment, slower speeds are typically more reliable and durable due to lower friction of the head against the platter, lower heat levels, (heat that could result in surface warping) lesser damage to the bearings, while the slower transfer speeds may not be as critical unless you are running state-of-the-art quad core Intel processors and mega data crunching as is the case with graphics extreme applications. Seagate has recently

stopped making the higher speed (7200 rpm) drives for laptops and has had to contend with Western Digital’s acquisition of Hitachi, a manufacturer reputed for producing high quality competitively priced drives. Both Seagate and Western Digital are two of the largest computer drives makers in the world and based in California.

We took the new Seagate 320 GB drive (laptop) for a worldwide tour that started from the West Coast and landed in several spots in Europe and the Middle East for almost a couple of years, earning many every day bumps, jolts and the wear and tear suffered from any laptop that is used with the same load as a desktop. The drive

performed admirably, without a hitch, and then all of a sudden, without much notice or warning except by the way of a louder hum for several days, it failed to boot up.

We applied extensive data recovery routines, fortunately we had multiple backups on two brand new Seagate 500 GB drives. We can’t stress enough the importance of actively archiving your data as part of your weekly or monthly routine. Keeping your laptop as cool as possible, averting the high speed small fan from cutting on and off can reduce vibration on the chassis, damage to motherboard components and potentially the drive itself.

In spite of a well-publicized tech web report from Backblaze (an online data backup company) that purchased a large inventory of drives from Seagate and reported above-average failure rates in a series of articles, we believe the Seagate laptop internal drive performed very well under the circumstances and the

operating environment to which it was subjected. To expect a hard drive to last more than a year inside a laptop on the go is pushing it - even though for stationary desktops drives can be reasonably expected to have a lifecycle of 5 to 6 years. The Backblaze study is made on 25,000 stationary consumer-grade drives, the largest yet.

Mobile platforms are completely different and would be difficult to draw any worthwhile implications.

How does Seagate and other drives makers enable your data storage into running your computer? We’ll look at this bit of technology on the following page of this segment.