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Author Topic: Drive Fail Rate Ed Forth Film Handler Posts: 11 From: Syracuse, NY, USA Registered: Jul 2010 posted 07-21-2011 06:33 PM                        I manage a one screen subrun that just switched to digital Tomorrow will be the fifth week and I just received my second non-working drive (out of 10 total features). Is this normal, or am I just unlucky?  |  IP: Logged Jeremy Weigel Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1062 From: Edmond, OK, USA Registered: Mar 2007 posted 07-21-2011 08:09 PM                     Unlucky I suppose. I've never had a failed drive come in in the 2+ years we've had digital. I've had bad power supplies, but I was able to use one from another drive.  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-21-2011 09:10 PM                        Were the two failures from the original installation? There may have been a bad batch of drives. What brand and model is it? What interface (SATA, SAS, or SCSI)? For the most part, disks will either fail soon after installation or will last for many years.  |  IP: Logged Jeremy Weigel Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1062 From: Edmond, OK, USA Registered: Mar 2007 posted 07-21-2011 09:32 PM                     I think he's referring to "feature" drives from TES or DFS. At least that's the way I read it.  |  IP: Logged Phil Ranucci Expert Film Handler Posts: 236 From: Carpinteria,CA, United States Registered: May 2006 posted 07-21-2011 11:30 PM                     Only one totally dead drive in over 2 years(I'm probably jinxing myself).I've had some drives that won't mount as a CRU drive, but will load through the USB port. Much slower, but usable.  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-22-2011 12:43 AM                        I haven't had a bad drive yet, except I had one CRU type drive that I could NOT get out of the carrier. I tried everything I could think of but it was like the thing was glued together. Just ingested it via USB rather than bust something trying to get it apart. (It was a Deluxe drive.)  |  IP: Logged Frank Cox Film God Posts: 2234 From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada Registered: Apr 2011 posted 07-22-2011 01:03 AM                        I just had one last week (one of the Trail Mix drives) that wouldn't slide into the CRU slot. There didn't appear to be anything obviously bent or wrong with it, but it would slide in about 2/3 of the way and get stuck. I set up the little power supply and hooked it up through the USB port and ingested it that way. First time I've had to do that. Boy, USB transfer is ghawd-awful slow compared to directly copying it via the CRU slot. What takes maybe ten minutes to do via CRU took about 40 minutes via USB.  |  IP: Logged Edward Havens Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 614 From: Los Angeles, CA Registered: Mar 2008 posted 07-22-2011 01:11 AM                     I've had one or two bad drives in the five years of dealing with digital cinema. Failure rate far below 1/5th of one percent.  |  IP: Logged Monte L Fullmer Film God Posts: 8367 From: Nampa, Idaho, USA Registered: Nov 2004 posted 07-22-2011 01:36 AM                     ..Sounds like a Sony unit - they have fits with TECH drives at times and refuse to recognize the drive...and it's USB only on the local injest - no drive sled.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-22-2011 08:54 AM                     USB 3.0 to the rescue...! That is at least if the drive caddys are also updated to USB 3.0.  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 07-22-2011 11:57 AM                     USB3 is a stupid, stupid feature to add to a server. The industry has standardized on CRU drives and they are NOT going to run out and buy new drives with a USB3 connector. Talk about a complete waste of money on R&D.  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-22-2011 12:39 PM                        Evidently, I misinterpreted the original question. Question: when a movie disk is returned to the depot, does someone verify that the contents are correct before the disk is shipped to another theatre? Or is it possible for a theatre that plays the movie after its opening date to get a wiped or otherwise corrupt copy? [ 07-22-2011, 09:52 PM: Message edited by: Scott Norwood ]  |  IP: Logged Monte L Fullmer Film God Posts: 8367 From: Nampa, Idaho, USA Registered: Nov 2004 posted 07-22-2011 01:59 PM                     quote: Scott Norwood or otherwise corrupt copy? I've had to request duplicate drives (or go to a location and borrow their HD copy until my duplicate arrives..) due to the injest manager program can't see the content on the drives - in either USB connected or CRU slot install.  |  IP: Logged Bill Enos Film God Posts: 2081 From: Richmond, Virginia, USA Registered: Apr 2000 posted 07-22-2011 09:05 PM                     They haven't checked film prints in 30 years, I don't see any reason why they would start checking electronic devices  |  IP: Logged Carsten Kurz Film God Posts: 4340 From: Cologne, NRW, Germany Registered: Aug 2009 posted 07-23-2011 05:02 AM                     Depends I guess. One major posthouse I recently spoke to is formatting every drive they get back, because they regularly find weird stuff,alien data, viruses, etc. on these drives. Seems a lot of cinemas use intermediate storage on local machines with plain-vanilla operating systems and the usual candidates of possible issues with them. So, even if they send out this drive with the same content later again, is has been wiped before. Checking a whole drive for bad blocks takes considerable time. Though I guess that when they copy new content to it, they will usually perform at least a validation of the data they actually copied before the drive is sent out. Of course, drives will fail sooner or later. This is the only business where so many magnetomechanical drives are shipped around on a regular schedule. Though this is not perfectly in line with drive specs, the amount of failures seems to be quite small. Once SSDs are becoming considerably cheaper, we will see even less issues. They will probably then ship them in cushion envelopes instead of boxes. - Carsten  |  IP: Logged

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