Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2020 May 21

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May 21

Do servers have bad sectors like normal HDD?

Do servers have problems like bad sectors like normal HDD? If not bad sectors , what is the equivalent problem in servers? Ram nareshji (talk) 17:10, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Servers are just computers. You can use your standard Windows, Linux or Mac PC as a server. The same considerations apply.

That being said, most people who run servers have redundant RAID disks and make regular offsite backups. Then again, my personal PC also has redundant RAID disks and I also make regular offsite backups, so there is nothing unique about servers in that regard.

Finally, bad sectors that are detected by the operating system are pretty much a thing of the past, Modern hard drive controllers take care of any bad sectors by mapping in good ones. This is invisible to the user. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:23, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Due to bad sectors, I lost data in HDD due to unreadable. if I attach RAID disk to it & convert as server, then my HDD will never have bad sectors?

I didn't understand mapping in good one so in HDD there are two things, one is good & other is bad ? I am confused.Ram nareshji (talk) 17:38, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Anything can fail. Hard disks can fail. Power supplies can fail, burning out the motherboard and all the drives in a RAID array. A single drive in a RAID array failing does not cause data loss, but the entire RAID array can fail. A computer with an up to date backup can fail when a thief steals the computer and the backup, or the building burns down. MAKE LOCAL AND OFF-SITE BACKUPS! Read Backup and Remote backup service.

To answer your technical questions about bad sectors, read this page and this page. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:13, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Configuring and managing a RAID array comes with a cost of ownership. Are you prepared to put on your system admin hat and learn how RAID works, the concepts and commands to make it happen, and disaster recovery procedures? Yes, there are still disasters.

RAID0 won't save you from a disk going bad. A standard installation will put you around RAID5 for effective mitigation of the "bad sectors" problem. But now you'll need at least three disks, where you used to have just one. You've got to configure and build the array and you've got to monitor it somehow for health.

For end-users, the best defense against a disk going bad is regular backups. Don't even think of using a computer if you're not going to keep good backups. Instead of learning RAID administration, learn backup administration, find someplace off-site to store backups, and then sleep in peace, knowing you can recover your data at a moment's notice, whether it's a bad disk, ransomware, fire, flood, or Act of God. Elizium23 (talk) 05:52, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Like User:Guy Macon said, servers are just computers, so they can have bad sectors just as user computers can. However, servers are typically scaled for high redundancy and fault tolerance, so a bad sector on a server is not so much a problem as a bad sector on a user computer. JIP | Talk 22:49, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

It's not a hard disk, but one system for reducing corruption errors on servers is ECC RAM. Blythwood (talk) 06:05, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

That can often introduce a steep cost to purchase ECC DRAM plus the kind of motherboard that will support it. This is mentioned in the article.

Intel basically does not want home users to have ECC. They design their consumer motherboards so that it will not work.

AMD is more generous with ECC functionality. They do not restrict it in the way Intel does. If you are willing to invest in an AMD mainboard and processor combo, and you can afford ECC DRAM, then that is the typical way to go. Elizium23 (talk) 06:10, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

User:Elizium23 Why is Intel motherboard designed to not to support ECC RAM? Ram nareshji (talk) 18:53, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Because they expect people who wish to use ECC features to purchase workstation- or server-class mainboards instead of the consumer ones. Elizium23 (talk) 18:53, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

More information Elizium23 (talk) 18:56, 22 May 2020 (UTC)