Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2013 August 22

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August 22

Yahoo or Firefox

How can I get incoming and outgoing mail to appear as Verdana 12? The fonts avail211.124.35.20 (talk) 03:34, 22 August 2013 (UTC)able in the mailpage don't include Verdana 12.

The font displayed on outgoing mail would depend upon the options available through Yahoo!'s web mail interface. I checked mine, and it looks like Verdana isn't an option.

Incoming mail displays based on the content of the message. Plain text email's font is controlled through Settings in Yahoo's mail client. It's under the gear icon (top-right), Mail Options, and "Plain text font". Jdphenix (talk) 22:19, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

"Fragility" of disks

Are disks with more data storage more fragile than disks with less data storage? It's something I've been hearing a while now, and sounds like a myth, is it? 190.60.93.218 (talk) 12:10, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

If by "more data storage" you mean "of higher capacity", there's perhaps some truth in that. Given the same number of recording surfaces, if a disk has can store more on it, the storage domains (the individual regions of magnetic material used to store a given datum) are necessarily smaller. As physical contaminants like dust haven't shrunk over time, the damage done by a given particle of contaminant would thus affect more domains on the denser disk than on the less dense one. But as disks have become denser so have disk manufacturing processes improved and disk encoding and redundancy practices become better - so I know of no actual evidence that modern 2TB disks are any less reliable than the 300GB disks of a few years ago. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 13:43, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

If by "more data storage" you simply mean "fuller", I don't see any reason why that would be the case. The 2007 survey of disk failures that Google released showed only weak correlation between disk use (wear) and failure. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 13:43, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

2007 survey - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 14:19, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

I personally never go for the "cutting edge" drives; they are not only very expensive; their technology and production process could be immature and inherently flawed. I have met quite some faulty products back when drive capacity doubled every year. Totally not worth it, IMO.

A very full drive (say, less than 15%) might become unreliable because of fragmentation and additional stress on the drive. Even if it does not damage the drive (it usually won't, unless the drive is faulty to begin with, or really old) it might hurt overall performance. On top of that, high-capacity drives are faster because the seeks are physically shorter.

SSDs are another story - full SSDs degrade physically. 217.88.163.84 (talk) 14:14, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Epic login fail on my part. - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 14:16, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'cutting edge' drives but nowadays the cheapest hard drives per/GB often use the newest tech (in terms of the densest platters) at least in the 3.5" space. In terms of faulty products, I don't think it's really clear there's any singnificant risk, you're just as likely to get a faulty drive from 'mature tech', HD manufacturers are clearly concentrated on cost more than anything else. Really since then infamous IBM Deathstars, there hasn't been any clear significant problems related to new tech. The only real problems have been firmware ones, e.g. the interaction between WD's green line head parking and some OSes and also the problem with Seagate's 500GB platter line a while back, and while these problems are of course something that only occurs when it's new (because they are detected), there's no guarantee it's going to be the higher capacity or 'cutting edge' drives. Some lines may have more problems then others but these may easily last just as long in the market and useful statistics are almost impossible to come by for the home user so waiting a few months doesn't help. The best thing to do with HDs is to recognise they will fail and not rely on any plan that assumes they won't. Nil Einne (talk) 07:48, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Speaking of Deskstars, I have one (of the infamous model) that's still running. So... yes, one could be lucky with a design that's known to be crappy or have a well-designed HDD fail, but for most users, it will be the other way. - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 17:03, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes but the point is it's almost impossible for the end user to know if a HD is crap or well made. Time doesn't help because the sort of statistics that are needed for this are simply not available to the end user and the few that are so poor as to become known like the "Deathstar" are so rare as to be not worth considering. So the only sound strategy is to not assume a HD will be fine because it's an older model but to assume any HD will fail new or old and just go buy whatever matters to you, e.g. price/GB. I've some suggestions a big percentage of failures are caused by handling errors anyway (whether the end user or someone on the supply chain). I avoid buying HDs which have to be couriered because whenever I do so they are generally sent with bubble wrap or popcorn or both i.e. not packed properly yet even picking them up instore there's no guarantee the store actually received them packed properly or that someone in the stockroom didn't drop it. Nil Einne (talk)