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Virtually any personal computer user who uses contemporary software probably needs a huge hard disk storage drive that holds 6, or 10 or more gigabytes (remember, a gigabyte is 1000 million bytes). For example, if you store the popular Microsoft Office ‘97 software package in your computer, you'll need about 100 megabytes for that package alone. If you want a computer that uses Windows '98, you will have to provide over 500 megabytes just for the Windows software. By the time you have installed a few standard packages, plus some software for applications like library operations and database access, the first gigabyte of hard disk space has probably been filled. If the computer is used for Internet access, additional large blocks of storage will soon be filled with pages downloaded from the World Wide Web. A huge disk drive can be a wonderful asset if you use your computer to manipulate very large database files, or large graphics/picture files, or if you want to store historical files that can be expected to continue to grow in the future.

If your hard disk is (soon to be) installed, you're ready to learn about hard disk management. In this article, I'll attempt to briefly define hard disk management and why it's important. I'll outline one method of organizing a hard disk and explain each step. I've included a short glossary of terms that may not be familiar and a bibliography of several articles that present different approaches to the same process (I found Nieburg's article especially helpful). When you've completed this article, I hope you'll have a clearer understanding of what a hard disk can do for you and what you must do to achieve that usefulness. If you choose to follow me step‐by‐step, you'll also have a menu‐driven hard disk system that can manage your functional requirements easily.

The reliability of hard disk drives (HDDs) is dependent on the drive construction, as well as the operational and environmental conditions, in which the drive is used. Self-monitoring, analysis and reporting technology (SMART) continuously provides attribute information on HDD usage and degradation characteristics.

This paper aims to analyze the reported failures Backblaze data set for ST3000DM001 HDDs intended for desktop applications within a data center application. SMART attributes used for predicting failure are discussed and analyzed over the life of many hard drives. A case study on the actual use of SMART and the limitations of the SMART attribute information, the data center’s information and the use of desktop drives in a commercial application are also presented.

The analysis showed that when Backblaze started to record the data, the hard disk drives had already worked for a while with power on hours mean and standard deviation of 6,683 and 365 h, respectively. Therefore, it is possible that some SMART attributes have experienced critical values that have not been recorded by Backblaze. Additionally, 8% of all ST3000DM001 drives that Backblaze labeled as failed did not have raw values above zero for the five attributes that were considered critical. Backblaze recorded 25 SMART attributes in total for all hard disk drive brands where ST3000DM001 having 83.3% of the attributes ranked as the drive with the most attributes recorded. Having more recorded attributes with critical values leads to label more ST3000DM001 drives as failed while there might be the hard drives from the other brands or part numbers that experienced more critical SMART attributes but were not labeled as failed because of the lack of records.

It is an original work carried out at the Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering, University of Maryland.

Motivated by recent research indicating the significant challenges posed by imbalanced datasets in industrial settings, this paper presents a novel framework for Industrial Data-driven Modeling for Imbalanced Fault Diagnosis, aiming to improve fault detection accuracy and reliability.

This study addressing the challenge of imbalanced datasets in predicting hard drive failures is both innovative and comprehensive. By integrating data enhancement techniques with cost-sensitive methods, the research pioneers a solution that directly targets the intrinsic issues posed by imbalanced data, a common obstacle in predictive maintenance and reliability analysis.

In real industrial environments, there is a critical demand for addressing the issue of imbalanced datasets. When faced with limited data for rare events or a heavily skewed distribution of categories, it becomes essential for models to effectively mine insights from the original imbalanced dataset. This involves employing techniques like data augmentation to generate new insights and rules, enhancing the model’s ability to accurately identify and predict failures.

Previous research has highlighted the complexity of diagnosing faults within imbalanced industrial datasets, often leading to suboptimal predictive accuracy. This paper bridges this gap by introducing a robust framework for Industrial Data-driven Modeling for Imbalanced Fault Diagnosis. It combines data enhancement and cost-sensitive methods to effectively manage the challenges posed by imbalanced datasets, further innovating with a bagging method to refine model optimization. The validation of the proposed approach demonstrates superior accuracy compared to existing methods, showcasing its potential to significantly improve fault diagnosis in industrial applications.

As CDROMs become a mass medium for entertainment and reference, the prices of CDROM discs have been dropping while the speed of CDROM drives has been increasing. For example, Essex Entertainment is now marketing 50 CDROM titles through music, book and budget retail stores at $9.95 per disc. Two years ago, the street price of single‐speed single‐disc CDROM drives was in the range of $200–400. Today, a similar drive that runs four times as fast (quad‐speed) can be purchased for about the same price. Meanwhile, sextuple‐speed drives are already available and there is no indication that the limits of CDROM drive speed have as yet been reached. This article discusses both quad‐speed and sextuple‐speed CDROM disc drives, and it also takes note of the many types of multiple disc drives that are being offered — some able to deploy hundreds of CDROM discs for almost instant use by equally large numbers of users.

Portable computers have been around just about as long as personal computers, and have always involved serious compromises. The compromises continue, but the computers have improved enormously in true portability, power, and price. You always pay a premium for portability, and more of a premium for the ability to actually work on the road. While the premium has come down, it's still there—but now, you can get almost as much power as you need, if you pay the price. In his second look at the last eight years in DOS computing, Crawford shows how conservative choices in portable computing have evolved, and discusses why conservatism makes more sense when buying a portable.

Plus Corporation, working with a leading‐edge Japanese manufacturer, is rushing a unique product to market. The principals must manage the joint venture, survive a competitive crisis, and keep their parent corporation happy. It's easy to empathize with the line managers, but try taking the perspective of the CEO of the parent firm.

Beck discusses the need to improve library and information services for the deaf community. The technological support available to libraries to serve the deaf is identified and described. Turnkey systems are found to be lacking in applications devoted to those who cannot hear or who are hard of hearing. Other technologies, like captioned videos, TDDs, and assistive listening systems, are examined for levels of service and excellence as well as cost. Examples of technology in transition and for the future are offered, along with experiments on speech and sound. These include inner ear implants, the “data glove” experiments, and tactile translators. Technological conflicts that may arise due to one person having multiple disabilities are presented with a discussion on the prevention of dangerous or difficult situations. Possible difficulties and ways to handle opposing technologies are examined briefly. Appropriate sections of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Guidelines are grouped with the technologies that aid compliance. Additional laws are mentioned where their inclusion is appropriate. Suggested guidelines for serving the deaf/disabled community are offered for librarians working in all library types.

Libraries need to provide general purpose CD‐ROM workstations to make the large numbers of publications distributed on CD‐ROM disks available to the public. Setting up and maintaining those workstations can be greatly simplified by standardizing the hardware and software used on all workstation PCs; by organizing software on the hard disk using subdirectories; and by using utility programs, DOS batch files, and a shell program. Organization of the search software for the numerous Bureau of the Census CD‐ROM disks is used as an example. The article is intended for users of IBM‐compatible PCs. While the general principles should be readily understandable to anyone, a knowledge of DOS is required for a thorough understanding of the article. The shell program PreCursor and the hypertext program PC‐Browse are discussed.

Several systems, ranging in price from about $30 000 to over $200 000, are now available to aid database publishers and other organizations in disseminating information products on CD‐ROM media.