A little question about HDDs and Repack Games

[rambohazard]

I read on the internet and had a experience (twice) about repack games can damage the HDD because some repackers (including me) have methods that extract thousands of folders and small files and inject back to original file. This process make the drive use the maximum read/write throught the folders and can let the files fragmented. I had 2 (almost the current) HDD damaged over the years that i installed and made repack games. It is true or just coincidence what happened to me? Repack games can really damage the Hard Disk?

Sorry for the bad english

[felice2011]

we must not explode anything, an HD survives for use that do, without blaming short or long installations, you logical thing that prolonged writing over the months and years can break the motor and the mechanical positioning of the heads, an HD it is tested (4-5 years) on the nucleus of the disc support bearings, but objectively if the user uses it for 12 hours per day in continuous writing, the hours of the hard disck life are shortened inevitably.

[rambohazard]

Originally Posted by felice2011

we must not explode anything, an HD survives for use that do, without blaming short or long installations, you logical thing that prolonged writing over the months and years can break the motor and the mechanical positioning of the heads, an HD it is tested (4-5 years) on the nucleus of the disc support bearings, but objectively if the user uses it for 12 hours per day in continuous writing, the hours of the hard disck life are shortened inevitably.

Thanks for the info.

[FitGirl]

Originally Posted by rambohazard

I read on the internet and had a experience (twice) about repack games can damage the HDD because some repackers (including me) have methods that extract thousands of folders and small files and inject back to original file. This process make the drive use the maximum read/write throught the folders and can let the files fragmented. I had 2 (almost the current) HDD damaged over the years that i installed and made repack games. It is true or just coincidence what happened to me? Repack games can really damage the Hard Disk?

Sorry for the bad english

Typical urban myth. Browsing the web creates and deletes thousands and millions of files. Reading/writing files is a NORMAL mode for any HDD. Just make defragmentation once a week or so to keep random access at good speed.

[rambohazard]

Originally Posted by FitGirl

Typical urban myth. Browsing the web creates and deletes thousands and millions of files. Reading/writing files is a NORMAL mode for any HDD. Just make defragmentation once a week or so to keep random access at good speed.

WoW, i never think in defragment my Hard Drive, maybe this is the problem. Thank you, FitGirl, love your repacks

[Razor12911]

Originally Posted by FitGirl

Typical urban myth. Browsing the web creates and deletes thousands and millions of files. Reading/writing files is a NORMAL mode for any HDD. Just make defragmentation once a week or so to keep random access at good speed.

It may not really be a myth from my point of view, I mean a hard drive is mechanical, there are moving parts and it can be compare best to an engine of a car. What you're saying there "web creates and deletes thousands and millions of files" can be challenged by saying, at what rate does a browser actually create and delete those thousands and million files? I'll take GTAV as an example, way before we had to use rawdet and rawrest, and repacks needed close to 140GB some less just install the game. Now look at that figure, 140GB and how long did the installation take? Hmm, 4 hours at best and a day when installing on slower PCs, don't forget srep virtual temp which can be as big as 10GB. So 140GB or more IO from the repack itself + reflate temps, all that must happen in 4-24 hours, the temperature will obviously increase and stay as high as possible meanwhile things like oil also heat up and a couple of mechanisms that don't like to be run at high revs for a long period of time. Now let's look at browsing, do you really think a browser can do so much IO? The answer is yes, but the question is how frequently must it be used in order for it to match the frequency of a repack installing? Well the answer is a long time, I myself don't even think a browser can make 140GB of IO even in 10 days meaning, yes millions of files will be created an deleted but the hard drive mechanisms will not be over working because at the rate at which they are created an deleted, I mean for example looking for information on wikipedia, I open a page, thousand files are created, it's obvious I opened the page to view information, I read for 20 minutes, IO transfer is very low, because I'm reading something then I say, I'm done reading this, I move to the next page, old files deleted and new files deleted, it's like that, while a repack, whenever it gets the chance to create and delete a file, depending on HDD speed, it will just keep going and going until installation is finished, meanwhile I'm not even done reading my 7th page on the web and total IO is only 33mb. Example, idiot driving from England to France to watch a football game, driving the car to its max vs some guy driving at normal speeds, it's obvious the guy who's driving fast is a repacker and the guy driving slow is a browser, the guy driving fast will mess up the engine because of things like high revs and etc.

Long story short, repacks can actually break HDD because they can actually strain the disk because of rapid activity, there's heat that's generated.

Simple example
https://www.quora.com/How-does-a-hig...ect-the-engine

Temps or not, since a hard drive is not like SSD which has a limit number of writes, The only thing HDD surfers from is it being mechanical but other than that it can probably work forever.

[doofoo24]

great post razor
may i add using shingled magnetic recording hard drive should be great for large write...
and the newest hard drives is Helium-filled which make wear and tear less of an issue

[Grumpy]

I'm confused? ......

Originally Posted by Razor12911

Example, idiot driving from England to France to watch a football game ....

are they an 'idiot' for driving from England to France?
or
are they an 'idiot' for watching a Football game?
or
is it a combination of both? Are they an 'idiot' for driving from England to France to watch a football game?

[FitGirl]

Originally Posted by Razor12911

It may not really be a myth from my point of view, I mean a hard drive is mechanical, there are moving parts and it can be compare best to an engine of a car. What you're saying there "web creates and deletes thousands and millions of files" can be challenged by saying, at what rate does a browser actually create and delete those thousands and million files? I'll take GTAV as an example, way before we had to use rawdet and rawrest, and repacks needed close to 140GB some less just install the game. Now look at that figure, 140GB and how long did the installation take? Hmm, 4 hours at best and a day when installing on slower PCs, don't forget srep virtual temp which can be as big as 10GB. So 140GB or more IO from the repack itself + reflate temps, all that must happen in 4-24 hours, the temperature will obviously increase and stay as high as possible meanwhile things like oil also heat up and a couple

While it's true - it's a normal operation for HDD. The same would happen if you've decided to copy several terabytes from one partition of HDD to another. Or if you simply seed/leech many torrents at the same time. If a HDD fails in such situations - it's not repack's problem, but user's (if he didn't provide normal cooling) or HDD's (it was faulty from the beginning).

I have my HDDs with games for many years, I install each repack on them on daily basis, many times. Much more than any user will ever do. And they all are OK. Of course some day they will die, but that's the electronics - it can't work forever.

[doofoo24]

HOW about DNA storage ?

[rambohazard]

I appreciate all the answers of you guys. So, if i create the repack (in SSD) and install the repack (in SSD too), can be the solution to avoid the intense work of mechanical parts and the excessive temperature of my HDD ?

I not have an SSD, by the way

[Bulat]

modern windows (win7 and later) automatically defragments hdds

[doofoo24]

who still using hard drive for main OS ?
on SSD windows does not allow defragmentation it waste of ssd write cycles..
but when using hdd it better to monitor temperature when doing large write to the drive recommended not above 40C

[FitGirl]

Originally Posted by Bulat

modern windows (win7 and later) automatically defragments hdds

Background defragmentation is not as good as complete one, especially when you're low on space. I use Auslogic Disk Defrag, it's free and pretty good and fast.

[Bulat]

140 GB / 4 hour = 10 MB/sec, that's not much work. so, slow installations means exactly opposite - hdd has little work and it doesn't heat up. just the same as with browsing. the real measure is I/O operations/sec or preferably disk seeks/sec

i lost two HDDs. it may be just luck, or just seagate quality, or because i fed torrents from them. both lived 3-4 years or so, and at least with the first drive i seeded 24h/day. overall i seeded 20 TB, so you need to perfrom 10 TB I/O in 8KB (?) portions to lose one HDD