IT Services, Information & Reviews
Reviews
How long should a hard drive last for?
Aug 1st
The life of a hard disk drive varies based on the quality, use & environment of the drive.
Like anything you buy, you get what you paid for seems to be the golden rule of thumb with hard drives.
cheap and nasty drives are not going to last as long as a well known brand, given the same operating use and environment.
Also the more Terra Bytes we squeeze into our drives the lower the overall life of the drive and reliability due of the mechanical challenges in drive design.
A drive is deemed a total loss when ether a mechanical fault or surface defect is impeding the drives operation, most common courses are bad sectors and drive motor failure, ether of these would stop the drive from reading good data from the magnetic surface of the disk.
Factors that could decrease the drives life:
- Temperature - Anything above 60c will see the drive failing under the manufactures expected life
- Use – Hard Drives in constant use e.g CCTV or data centres
- Power – often power cuts may course the recording head to damage the magnetic surface or course file corruption
- Shock – Laptops often fail quicker then desktops due to shock damage
Most drives will last between 3-5 years by design but some professional drive can double the normal time frame.
Western Digital make it easy to choose the right drive based on your needs:
Green: the right balance of system performance, ensured reliability, and energy conservation.
Black: WD Caviar Black drives combine a high performance electronics architecture with a rock solid mechanical architecture to deliver the perfect storage solution for your fully loaded PC or maxed out gaming machine.
Yellow: lightning-fast performance in demanding server and storage applications.
Blue: Good all round performer, perfect mix of quality, features and price
Elite Systems UK provide all systems with Western Digital hard disk drives, a brand that we have tested and over the years devopled trust in their products.
F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin
Mar 13th
FEAR 2: Project Origin
I have just finished playing this brilliant game from monolith, after playing both fear and the expansion pack, extraction point, this game doesn’t compare to any of the older games, the graphic detail is mind blowing, and the storyline unlike fear doesn’t drag on in small buildings, your pushed outside to continue your quest.
This game is something really different when it comes to first person shooters, mixed and fuelled by the horror background of fear, project origin takes on a whole new feeling, of jump out your seat moments, but monolith have made it more bearable then games like Doom 3, which seem really hard to play, as your mind cant work out what is going on, but with the backup of your squad things feel a little bit more in control.
The Ai in this game is truly amazing, its like playing multiplayer where you can never be sure on how the enemy will react, making this game very unpredictable.
I think the guys at monolith have done a really good job on this one and cant wait to see what they create next time.
A game well worth buying and only £25.00 on steam! Buy NOW
Netgear Wifi Skype Phone
Mar 13th
I have been using this phone to make free calls for nearly 2 years now, as long as you have a wireless router, your in business, this phone connects to the router via wifi and you can then sign into skype and ring anyone for free. really good product only thing i found is to make sure you keep the firmware updated to fix bugs.
Battery lasts for around 2 days standby and best part of 2-3 hours of use.
Technical Details
•Call anyone else on Skype, anywhere in the world for free
•No PC required
•Make and receive calls wherever you have WiFi access
•Manage your Skype contact list and view who is available to talk
•Forward calls to your mobile, landline or to another Skype name
•Communicates with ordinary phones for pennies a minute