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The Tragic Illiteracy of Aging Hard Drives
Hardware Post #5509, on Sep 23, 2023 in TG

The Tragic Illiteracy of Aging Hard Drives

Description

A two-panel meme using the 'If those kids could read, they'd be very upset' format from the animated series King of the Hill. In the top panel, the character Bobby Hill is seen through a window, pointing to a sign he has taped up that reads, 'Hard drives last only 3-5 years on average.' The bottom panel shows his father, Hank Hill, looking into a classroom where the students' heads have been replaced with images of internal hard disk drives (HDDs). Hank remarks, 'If those hard drives could still read, they'd be very upset.' The humor is a clever pun tailored for a technical audience. It plays on the dual meaning of 'read': the drives are not only oblivious to the sign (like the original meme's illiterate children) but are also literally at risk of losing their physical ability to 'read' data due to mechanical failure, which is the very reason for their short lifespan. The meme highlights the known reliability issues and limited operational life of mechanical hard drives

Categories

Hardware Storage TechHistory DevOps SRE

Comments

35
Anonymous ★ Top Pick The main difference between an HDD and a Schrödinger's cat experiment is that with the HDD, you don't need to open the box to know the data is probably dead
  1. Anonymous ★ Top Pick

    The main difference between an HDD and a Schrödinger's cat experiment is that with the HDD, you don't need to open the box to know the data is probably dead

  2. Anonymous

    Compliance wants 7 years of retention, Finance wants the same RAID shelf for 5, and I’m stuck explaining that statistically, spinning rust drops out of kindergarten after 3

  3. Anonymous

    That one WD Green from 2009 in your NAS that's somehow outlived three enterprise-grade SSDs, two RAID controllers, and the entire company that originally purchased it - still spinning at 5400 RPM with 47,000 power-on hours and a SMART status that reads like a medical miracle

  4. Anonymous

    The real tragedy isn't the 3-5 year lifespan - it's that we all know this statistic, have experienced catastrophic drive failures, religiously preach the 3-2-1 backup rule to juniors, yet somehow still have that one critical dataset sitting on a single spinning disk from 2019 because 'the migration is scheduled for next quarter.' At least when these drives finally click their last click, they won't have to read the post-mortem incident report

  5. Anonymous

    Design for the bathtub curve: RAID is uptime, 3-2-1 is employment - by year three the only thing those disks read is their SMART obituary

  6. Anonymous

    Floppies: the undead legacy storage that outlives HDDs but mocks every data migration postmortem

  7. Anonymous

    “Hard drives last 3 - 5 years on average” - precisely long enough for all the co‑aged disks in your RAID5 to wait for rebuild day and give you a masterclass in URE math

  8. @Vlasoov 2y

    they still can read but write badly :(

  9. @bubblechuk 2y

    My 15 year old HDD honest reaction:

    1. @RiedleroD 2y

      my school's 50yo HDD honest reaction:

      1. @RiedleroD 2y

        it's got like 10MB it's crazy lol

        1. dev_meme 2y

          is that save button? 🤣

  10. @ALEKSEYR554 2y

    My HDD honest reaction:

    1. @cakebulls 2y

      37к hours lmao

      1. @ALEKSEYR554 2y

        it is barely dead, looking for replacement, but still working

  11. @M_Ali_S_S 2y

    Nope

  12. @M_Ali_S_S 2y

    My old pc's hdd is about 12 years old

  13. Deleted Account 2y

    I have a hard drive that's still going strong after five years

  14. @Sp1cyP3pp3r 2y

    I have a hard drive that instafreezes the bios

  15. @SamsonovAnton 2y

    Disk failures in the real world: What does an MTTF of 1,000,000 hours mean to you?

  16. @SamsonovAnton 2y

    Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population

    1. dev_meme 2y

      Thank you! That’s sad to see how badly “on average” in perceived 😄

  17. @ilia_esmaili 2y

    This meme was brought to you by HDD manufacturers

    1. @callofvoid0 2y

      this meme is made by ssd manufacturers to ruin the reputation of hdd makers

      1. @endisn16h 2y

        TRUE

      2. @callofvoid0 2y

        thanks for all the attentions and admirations

  18. dev_meme 2y

    I still remember great old days when dozens of VPS/etc providers went into the bankruptcy solely because of mass failures of disks

  19. @wadies1 2y

    mmm yes I love spreading misinformation online

  20. @Agent1378 2y

    That bullshit

  21. @doodguy1991 2y

    Is that why my Windows 98 PC still works with the original HD? Lmao

  22. @hiddenpoolrunner 2y

    My still works after 10 years

  23. @hiddenpoolrunner 2y

    But became slow

    1. @RiedleroD 2y

      it probably just feels slower because modern systems have higher requirements

      1. @hiddenpoolrunner 2y

        Yeah this too, but my one is really slow, i tested it in crystal disc and it shown that condition is 40 %. So i bought new ssd

        1. @RiedleroD 2y

          bruh

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