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Bobcat7677
Regular
Posts: 224
Join Date: Aug, 2002
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« on: July 17, 2003, 03:06:27 PM » |
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About to go dark...
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Bobcat7677
Regular
Posts: 224
Join Date: Aug, 2002
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« Reply #1 on: July 17, 2003, 03:06:27 PM » |
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Greetings all...
Sometime today, my handle will go grey on the stats list. It is sad but I feel I have to do this for now. After having to RMA the hard drive in the system that I was folding the most with, I have decided to stop folding on all my systems. I still feel it is a good cause and hope I can continue to contribute again at some point in the future...but not untill I get a flash memory drive to run folding off of so I don't have to worry about storage failures. I may also come up with some other solution too...but haven't thought of anything yet. It's even more sad being that I just built a 2ghz XP setup around my old KT7-RAID board.
Anyway, it's been fun and I hope to be back soon.
-Bobcat
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Jasper
Ace
Posts: 4,360
Join Date: Dec, 2001
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« Reply #2 on: July 17, 2003, 04:28:43 PM » |
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Hope you come back soon too!
Are you thinking folding caused your hard drive problems?
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Bobcat7677
Regular
Posts: 224
Join Date: Aug, 2002
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« Reply #3 on: July 17, 2003, 06:11:20 PM » |
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Yes, it all started with the sectors on my drive that FAH was using to store data went bad. I lost a couple WUs and then SMART started complaining. It's a known that FAH is constantly writing to the drive as it processes. The rest of the drive was OK it seemed but I'm one to RMA first and ask questions later.
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BMWRider
Member
Posts: 613
Join Date: Jan, 2003
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« Reply #4 on: July 17, 2003, 06:13:55 PM » |
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Bobcat,
I am sorry to see you go, though now I will pass you, AGAIN! Anyway I understand your concerns. Hope you get back here soon, we need your contributions to the team. Hang in there.
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SFFNooB
Member
Posts: 555
Join Date: Mar, 2003
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« Reply #5 on: July 18, 2003, 12:11:18 AM » |
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that is sad.. perhaps I should run my windows FAH machines from a network drive.. one with a cheaper HDD
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Xtian
Ace
Posts: 1,284
Join Date: Jan, 2003
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« Reply #6 on: July 18, 2003, 05:03:11 AM » |
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This is sad bobcat.
I have blown two old HD's due to F@H.
When are these guys going to address this problem?
Are they totally unaware of the fact that the normal IDE HD people use to
fold are not built to handle this kind of abuse, only scsi drives are.
I have written to them about this but no reply.
Maybe some celebrity from Sudhian can motivate them to fix this ?
/xtian
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BMWRider
Member
Posts: 613
Join Date: Jan, 2003
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« Reply #7 on: July 18, 2003, 11:02:46 AM » |
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So do I need to start folding on a RAMDrive? If so is there anything special I need to do?
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Bobcat7677
Regular
Posts: 224
Join Date: Aug, 2002
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« Reply #8 on: July 18, 2003, 12:58:31 PM » |
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I know grendleprime did some experimenting with running FAH off a ramdrive once. Please enlighten us grendle on how you set it up  |
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Wrawrat
Ace
Posts: 6,818
Join Date: Sep, 2002
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« Reply #9 on: July 18, 2003, 01:17:09 PM » |
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I don't understand. How the FAH client could make the drive crash? I don't see anything wrong with writing to the drive continously. According to my system monitor (gkrellm2), my client seems to write ~15K of stuff every 10 seconds... I wouldn't have thought it would be enough to crash a drive.
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SFFNooB
Member
Posts: 555
Join Date: Mar, 2003
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« Reply #10 on: July 18, 2003, 03:56:24 PM » |
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I've been folding on my WD 80gig SE drive since about march, and recently I have noticed large video files suddenly becoming 0 bytes. the file is still present but its got nothing in it. so im just going to move my folding directories from my big expensive drives to a smaller drive on a linux system and run FAH from there..
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Bobcat7677
Regular
Posts: 224
Join Date: Aug, 2002
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« Reply #11 on: July 18, 2003, 04:22:14 PM » |
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By Warwrat's stats, that means around 260,000 writes to the same spot on the disk a month...as a constant trickle. That's pretty hard on an IDE disk et al and the media itself. As we painfully learned from the 75GXP deathstars, typically IDE drives have a duty cycle of less then 100%. Having something writing to the drive at short intervals 24x7x7 doesn't let the drive rest much. The fact that it's only a few kilobytes doesn't matter. Being a critical part of the system with moving parts, I want my drives to have all the rest they can. I like SFFNoob's idea though...throw in an old drive that you don't care about anymore and run all your folding clients off of that. If it fails, the worst that can happen is you loose some WUs. It's already a known that FAH can be run off a network share.
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SFFNooB
Member
Posts: 555
Join Date: Mar, 2003
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« Reply #12 on: July 18, 2003, 04:42:14 PM » |
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ok my windows machines folding directories are moved over to one of my linux folding machines shared directory... now that machine has 3 FAH directories on it.. and the little 1.2gb seagate drive is probably getting quite a constant workout in 3 different spots on the disk.. lets see how long she lasts |
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Wrawrat
Ace
Posts: 6,818
Join Date: Sep, 2002
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« Reply #13 on: July 18, 2003, 05:03:04 PM » |
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Well, I personally didn't thought that 260K writes would be THAT hard... I do much more than this in a month, after all.  IMO, we should file a bug report to the Pande Group. The client should write the data to the disk only every 5 minutes or something like that. RAM is quite cheap these days, so I don't think that a bigger RAM consumption would matter for 99.9% of us. Losing 5 minutes of folding due to a power outage is far less important than losing an hard drive. USB mass storage devices might be a better solution, but it would be stupid for the client to require one. I wonder if bigger folding teams noticed the same thing? |
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Bobcat7677
Regular
Posts: 224
Join Date: Aug, 2002
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« Reply #14 on: July 18, 2003, 07:41:45 PM » |
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There was a previous Thread about failed components related to folding. In that case, the failures were attributed to heat buildup. I had a fan blowing directly on my hard drive in my case so the heat couldn't have been that bad. But in any case, I don't want to be causing undue stress on the systems I depend on. Failed components costs $$$ and ALOT of time for me if it's on my main workstation (which it was in this case) or servers. I don't mind "investing" some $$$ and time into the cause, but that should be time and $$$ spent adding more Mhz, not trying to keep up with failed hardware. Anything I can do to preserve my hardware is good. |
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Wrawrat
Ace
Posts: 6,818
Join Date: Sep, 2002
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« Reply #15 on: July 18, 2003, 09:58:38 PM » |
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Aye, I understand you Bobcat. That's just... strange. We should signal this "feature" as a bug. Why should it need to write periodically on the HD, anyway? You know, I thought it was only writing on it at every completed frame or when you were closing the client.  |
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Shadow
Regular
Posts: 155
Join Date: Jan, 2003
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« Reply #16 on: July 19, 2003, 12:48:49 AM » |
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Well guys, I too have been struggling with the continuing of folding on all my machines.
My reasons are a little different, mine kind of come down to costs. Now that summer has hit full force, the air conditioning really cranks alot and my bill was over $200 last month.
That's for a small cape cod.... not good.
What makes it so damn hard, is that I have no threats and I'm slated to break the top 10 in a week and continue to rise to the #3 or #4 spot if everyone stays about the same.
So, I like that, but also at the same time, we have all talked about getting Team Sudhian promoted more and new members joining so we can rise as a team and I just don't see that happening.
Now I know we are supposed to be folding for the cause but some of us sicko's just can't resist a good competition more than anything. Afterall, that is what has kept me here so long now was raising through the ranks but I want to see us succeed as a team more than anything.
Sooooo, if anyone notices my stats plummeting you may know why. I will check in on occasion and haven't made the critical decision but I fear it is inevitable.
The Shadow.....
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SFFNooB
Member
Posts: 555
Join Date: Mar, 2003
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« Reply #17 on: July 19, 2003, 01:18:58 AM » |
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Shadow, you have to do what you feel is best for you, the team doesn't seem to be doing much of anything lately, which is sad.. its really a good way to get traffic to a site.... I've visited alot more forums for other hardware sites since I started folding... primarily the top teams.. because there seems to be alot of traffic there. This can't be a bad thing for sites looking for more readership. on a different note, I just got this deal in email.. and its pretty good I think! USB Flash Drive 128meg $34.50 |
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Tmagic650
Ace
Posts: 5,707
Join Date: Feb, 2002
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« Reply #18 on: July 19, 2003, 01:18:02 PM » |
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I don't understand the Folding load failures either. I recently changed houses and ISP's. I am fully up and running today. My system was off-line for almost 2 weeks and the last Folding WU finished while my system was on, but off-line. When I reestablished the Internet connection, Folding@Home sent and received new data, just like normal. My 2 PC's are back running 24/7 and both protected by my APC SmartUPs 1000 now |
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BMWRider
Member
Posts: 613
Join Date: Jan, 2003
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« Reply #19 on: July 19, 2003, 03:11:22 PM » |
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Well we are rapidly declining to 300 active CPUs. But I keep chugging away. I will try to find my RAMDrive among the boxes(in the middle of a move myself) and see if I can start folding on that. Hang on guys we need all of you.
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Zeus
Ace
Posts: 2,074
Join Date: Mar, 2003
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« Reply #20 on: July 20, 2003, 09:44:14 AM » |
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With reguards to the heat and hard drive issues (we concerns me also) If I get a USB Flash Drive 16MB (£13.50 Belkin 3-year warranty, one for each system) stick it in one off my USB ports, put all my folding directories on it, get the hard drives to turn off when not activity.  That sloves the hard drive problem and the extra heat  |
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millerman61
Veteran
Posts: 444
Join Date: Jan, 2002
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« Reply #21 on: July 20, 2003, 09:56:13 AM » |
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Shadow
I feel your pain on the electric bill. Mine was up around 200 too. I'm taking my 3 best folders offline till it starts to cool down some. These 3 XP's I have upstairs heat the room up like a space heater. To me it doesn't make sense to heat and cool the room at the same time.
As far as growing the team. BMW had the right idea a month or so ago when he started trolling the SFF forums. Sudhian has turned mostly into SFF at least in the forums. That is where most of the volume seems to be in posts. Honestly I'll never go there though. I have no interest in SFF. Another part of the problem I think is MarkF MIA. Jasper is the 'Captain', but MarkF has been the folding team leader as long as I have been folding.
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SFFNooB
Member
Posts: 555
Join Date: Mar, 2003
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« Reply #22 on: July 20, 2003, 01:34:08 PM » |
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this may be too early to mention, and it may seem crazy.. but my main XP box seems alot more stable now that its writing and reading from a network drive other than the local harddisk... hmmm
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