On Tue, Dec 30, 2008 at 2:56 PM, Carlos E. R.
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On Tuesday, 2008-12-30 at 19:47 +0100, Per Jessen wrote:
Greg Freemyer wrote:
We do disk recovery as part of our services. Our experience is that most failures are in the electronics of the drive, not the mechanical part.
I second that.
Curiously, when I started studying electronics, there was the idea that the transistor was much better than valves because it was ethernal (amongst other things, of course). Now that I come to think of it, I didn't see in my books a study of why do electronics fail, component by component. Maybe they were learning it.
Most electronics fail because of stress on the wires inside the chips. As a chip heats / cools from normal power on / power off activity the very small wires that connect the very small silicon chip to the very large pins at the edge of the plastic chip get flexed. This happens because the plastic chip itself slightly expands / compresses. Each time that happens the little wires inside the chip get flexed. After enough flexes the wires break. I believe that is one of the reasons the infamous freezer trick works on malfunctioning hard drives. By freezing the drive, you compress the plastic chips slightly and cause all the wires to make solid connections. As the drive warms up and starts expanding the broken wires separate again and your drive stops working again. Military grade chips, CPUs, etc. that are worth spending extra money on are often made with a ceramic chip enclosure. That is because ceramic expands less due to heating. The problem must not be as bad now as 20 years ago. Back then it was always recommended to leave computer equipment on as much as possible in order to extend the life of the equipment. I still tend to leave my PCs on all the time, but I don't see that advice given in general anymore. FYI: I've heard that in some military tech schools they teach you how to attempt to repair a broken chip by opening it up and replacing the little wires if they break. Sounds like a real challenge to me, but I can see why it would be a useful skill in some situations. Greg -- Greg Freemyer Litigation Triage Solutions Specialist http://www.linkedin.com/in/gregfreemyer First 99 Days Litigation White Paper - http://www.norcrossgroup.com/forms/whitepapers/99%20Days%20whitepaper.pdf The Norcross Group The Intersection of Evidence & Technology http://www.norcrossgroup.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org