[Tfug] And another one down

[Bexley Hall]

On 9/8/2013 3:49 PM, John Hubbard wrote:
> Bexley Hall <bexley401 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> [My latest "laptop drive" in that 24/7/365 situation has not
>> failed.  I suspect part of that is because I no longer let the
>> drive "spin down" -- it's not a laptop concerned with prolonging
>> battery life and the power saved (from the ACmains) isn't worth
>> the effort to replace a failed drive "often".]
>
> Next time you need a replacement you might look at the new 2.5 inch
> WD Red drives. They are targeting NAS applications but are still a
> lot cheaper than an enterprise clad drive.

My new design doesn't use gobs of writable mass storage.

I.e., most of the "stuff" on the disk is "read-only":
- system software (firmware?)
- fonts
- (name,IP) mappings
- PXE images
etc.

So, why implement this with a writable store when it needs
only be written "once"?  For a *prototype*, using a disk
made sense.  But, not for a finished design!

(Yes, there are some things that are writable and need persistent
memory -- as opposed to volatile memory -- but those can be handled
by a small bit of FLASH and careful programming)