What's New with DriveSavers
04 September 2007 18:51 Filed in: Tech News
Magnetic Avalanche
When a consumer buys a new high capacity, top of the line hard drive, one of the first things they think is, "Wow, I have tons of space...and it's screaming fast too!" The last thing on the happy purchaser's mind is not about how it works. After all, it is quite complicated and best left to those who develop and build drives.
Scientists have found that these rapidly-spinning drives could potentially be vulnerable to a "magnetic avalanche." In basic terms, this would be the result of electrons spinning so fast that they cause their neighboring atom's electrons to "flip bits" and thus, cause corruption.
Disk drive manufacturers have been creating new designs and using new materials to prevent magnetic avalanches from occurring. During the manufacturing process, they use an effect known as "damping" which is the process of quieting the drive down or reducing its vibration by making sure that spinning parts spin continuously at the correct rate and stabilizing the magnetism inside a drive.
The reality of having a drive suffer from this condition is slim, as it is ideally resolved during manufacturing. If, however, one did slip through the cracks and suffered a failure like this, it is unclear if the data would be recoverable.
There is nothing you can do to prevent a magnetic avalanche, and there is no way to tell if you this is the issue you are experiencing. Our advice-if you are going to sell a "screaming fast, super large drive", perhaps sell two. And teach your customer how to back up on the second one!
When a consumer buys a new high capacity, top of the line hard drive, one of the first things they think is, "Wow, I have tons of space...and it's screaming fast too!" The last thing on the happy purchaser's mind is not about how it works. After all, it is quite complicated and best left to those who develop and build drives.
Scientists have found that these rapidly-spinning drives could potentially be vulnerable to a "magnetic avalanche." In basic terms, this would be the result of electrons spinning so fast that they cause their neighboring atom's electrons to "flip bits" and thus, cause corruption.
Disk drive manufacturers have been creating new designs and using new materials to prevent magnetic avalanches from occurring. During the manufacturing process, they use an effect known as "damping" which is the process of quieting the drive down or reducing its vibration by making sure that spinning parts spin continuously at the correct rate and stabilizing the magnetism inside a drive.
The reality of having a drive suffer from this condition is slim, as it is ideally resolved during manufacturing. If, however, one did slip through the cracks and suffered a failure like this, it is unclear if the data would be recoverable.
There is nothing you can do to prevent a magnetic avalanche, and there is no way to tell if you this is the issue you are experiencing. Our advice-if you are going to sell a "screaming fast, super large drive", perhaps sell two. And teach your customer how to back up on the second one!
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