Verily I say unto thee, that Roy Schestowitz spake thusly:
> Vista Damaging Hard Drives?!
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | I have just learned from several readers who have just bought new
> | computers from Best Buy within the past week or so that Best Buy
> | is warning their customers that Windows Vista might physically
> | damage their hard drives if they are not perfectly careful.
> `----
>
> http://www.tipsoftheweekonline.com/vistadamage.html
If this *really* is a case of "physically damage(ing) their hard
drives" then that must be a driver issue. Filesystem corruption is
another thing, unless the Dilberts at Best Buy are confusing the two.
Even pulling out the plug while a HDD is performing a write operation
will not damage modern hard drives, since the actuators smoothly
return the heads to the park zone, even without power, thanks to the
voice coil.
I can imagine a disk interface driver (of one kind or another) that
makes requests out of spec, but then either the interface or the drive
itself would tend to ignore such requests, unless the drive's firmware
had some exploitable vulnerability.
Anyway, presumably Vista is actually *installing* during this
estimated half hour wait - i.e. HDD based install process, which seems
a bit like a step backwards compared to the OEM imaging methods
employed up to now. Another "security" feature (of the "security
*against* the customer" variety)?
There were also warnings about Fedora (FC4 IIRC) that basically it
"ate hard drives". It turned out to be filesystem corruption due to a
combination of a new kernel (2.6 series) with a new SCSI subsystem,
and a version of parted that had not been updated to use that new
system. Fairly major oversight on behalf of the Fedora maintainers,
but shit happens eh?
Frankly, I think this is a bit of a non-story, unless Microsoft really
*have* figured out a way to *physically* destroy hard drives *just*
using software. I think the Na-Na's at Best Buy are just being
sensationalist. A sign reading "Maybe switching off your PC while it's
still writing to the disk, is not such a great idea, eh?" would
probably suffice ... well that, and a brain implant for the average
Best Buy Windows customer.
Of course it's not made absolutely clear, but I take it that Vista is
actually giving some progress feedback on what it's doing during this
"process"?
--
K.
http://slated.org - Slated, Rated & Blogged
.----
| "Future archaeologists will be able to identify a 'Vista Upgrade
| Layer' when they go through our landfill sites" - Sian Berry, the
| Green Party.
`----
Fedora Core release 5 (Bordeaux) on sky, running kernel 2.6.18-1.2849.fc6
00:25:56 up 89 days, 16:47, 3 users, load average: 1.02, 1.05, 1.01
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