Another Reason I hate Win 8 (Failing Updates that Bog System Down)

[Jay Stew]

So earlier this weeks I wrote about how I got screwed over by MS with Windows 7 WGA and how after 3 years of installed Genuine operation and cloning my OS drive and putting installing my new SSD Windows 7 WGA decided that all the sudden my OS wasn't genuine and because I could not find my Windows 7 OEM disc I had to install my OEM copy of Vista Ultimate in order to get an OS that could load an ISO file of Windows 7 in order to install that as a clean install since it was the only way it was going to work. Now you would think the fools at Microsoft would have at least helped me arrive at this solution or talk me through it, since I was forced to communicate with them via chat help on my Windows XP netbook but all they wanted to do was sell me Windows 8. I write in more detail about that here...

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2190360/ssd-clone-horror-story.html

Wednesday the sole Windows 8 computer in the house began to exhibit the signs of a failing harddrive. Obviously I was very suspicious as this is the newest computer in the house and MTBFR on a
new 400GB harddrive on a Win 8 computer should be less than 1% per year. In fact less than 1/10 of 1%

Symptoms, system locking up showing harddrive utilization at 100% but not attributing this to any particular program or folder. System would run fine for a few minutes then all the sudden do this, and it would do this irregardless of when it had been just rebooted.

Diagnosis Steps

I downloaded GPU-Z and MSI Afterburner to verfiy it wasn't a gpu problem and its not as the GPU
temps were as before.

I performed chkdsk using an elevated command prompt (sort of a bitch in Windows 8 to figure that out, why doesn't it just work like Windows 7/Vista/XP/2000/98/95/3.MOFO1? Hmmmm microsoft?

With the /f /r /x modifiers which effectively took between 6 and 12 hours. At least six hours because I started it monitored the progress and only saw that it hit 2% and then hours later 27% and then no additional progress before 6 hours and then boom it was done. However, this did not fix the issue. So HD was fine, GPU fine, CPU intergrated with GPU not showing bottlenecks so have to assume fine. Not a power or RAM problem so what the hell could be causing the Foxtro Uniform HDD performance. The one key observation I made was that when I put the Laptop in Airplane mode which disables the network connection it did not exhibit the issue. So then I concluded it might be some sort of virus. Ran a V scan turned up negative ghostrider.

ITS A VIRUS ALRIGHT VERSION 8.0/8.1 LOL

Windows 8 has a few monitoring tools and a clue that I got was that the monitoring tool was detecting a pattern of HDD inaccessiblity some of those were "Critical" rated events meaning exactly that the OS was trying to access the HD but it was locked up and unable. Of course now for those of you who have been there you know what this issue is with Windows 8. But having never been there all I could do was search the net.

Guess what seems everybody's favorite Windows Operating System Windows 8 ( NOOOOOOOOT!) chokes on its own updates, and chokes hard, so bad in fact it doesn't even recognize it as an issue but never the less after following the below linked procedure the system is functioning as intended without any freezes.

Seems about every hour or more frequently Windows Update hijacks the Harddrive without reporting to the task manager that it is doing it and does it so hard it completely locks up the system to the extend the display the cursor the desktop everything just freezes, after about a minute you get the silly. Microsoft Windows has crashed, click me to restart MS windows, from within the desktop and Update goes right back into the cycle. Thanks but you can keep this pile Microsoft I'll stick with 7 until you guys learn how to code again. Or at least how to test your FU code before you publish it and break your own OS through its update process.

THE FIX
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1873536/windows-update-showing-download-percentage.html

What you need to do is download a simple batch file which clears your Update cache, then delete everthing in the update folder, and start fresh. Cross your fingers and download the important updates. Then reboot, then download the optional updates, issue solved.

People Windows 8 is not superior to Windows 7.

 

[Alpha3031]

This isn't a place for you to rant you know.

 

[Jay Stew]

Oh geeze you are so right. Except I'm not. I'm being through. This post is a response to this particular issue.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2193268/laptop-freezing.html#xtor=EPR-8809

The original titles to the fix threads are not very clear about the issue the fix pertains to or awareness of issues on the not so perfect Windows 8 platform everybody thinks is all unicorns and cotton candy.

 

[Alpha3031]

You said the problem was solved.

 

[Jay Stew]

Yeah I solved it.

 

[Alpha3031]

So you could have just posted a link in whatever thread this pertains to instead of making one here.

 

[Jay Stew]

I could just ask every Windows 8 user to roll back to Win 7 too but why dont you go troll your own thread.

 

[Alpha3031]

If you wanted to do that, write a tutorial. I'm sure someone would like to read it.

 

[johnbl]

- windows xp is a dead product, it will cost money to get custom support now.
- your data on failure rates on a spinning hard drives is way off
- OEM versions of windows are modified and should be supported by the machine manufacture.
-windows 8.x does a lot of does background error checking and repairs on drives
and attempts these repairs on drives the the machine manufacture did not properly set up. This will often result in very high disk usage until the repair is complete. The repair process is moving data from sections of the hard drive while it is under contention and getting read errors. That is a slow process and can take 5 to 10 hours depending on the number of problems.
But please take note: You should be pissed, but you should be pissed at the right people. The ones that built your machine and skipped steps to save money because your time does not cost them anything.

 

[Jay Stew]

If you wanted to do that, write a tutorial. I'm sure someone would like to read it.

LOL you are hilarious. Im new here sorry if I got too long windy. Just sometimes writing helps me blow off some stuff. I honestly am just tired of Microsoft making products that are "good for them" but don't serve their customers real well. This is why monopolies are bad things for capitalism.

 

[Jay Stew]

- windows xp is a dead product, it will cost money to get custom support now.
- your data on failure rates on a spinning hard drives is way off
- OEM versions of windows are modified and should be supported by the machine manufacture.
-windows 8.x does a lot of does background error checking and repairs on drives
and attempts these repairs on drives the the machine manufacture did not properly set up. This will often result in very high disk usage until the repair is complete. The repair process is moving data from sections of the hard drive while it is under contention and getting read errors. That is a slow process and can take 5 to 10 hours depending on the number of problems.
But please take note: You should be pissed, but you should be pissed at the right people. The ones that built your machine and skipped steps to save money because your time does not cost them anything.

John might be fair to say you dont know what you are talking about. The only XP system I have is my Acer netbook and it runs ok. There is no point to upgrading it because it is a netbook only has 1 gig of ram and it will live and die out its days with XP. The computer that failed is not even 2 years old has a 400gb HD and came with Windows 8. Now this issue came less than a week after I went though another major reinstall issue prompted by another genius Microsoft design decision when I cloned a drive and then all the sudden WGA freaked out and decided after 3 years my copy of Windows was no longer genuine.

Back to the Windows 8 folly though...
The HDD and system was running fine for the duration of that time until the last few days before I had to take the better part of the day figuring it out. The issue had little to do with the harddrive except to say that is where the symptoms occurred. The chkdsk did not reveal any bad sectors at all so the drive is fine. The HDD also contains a restore backup partition however there was no guarantee that performing a restore would fix the issue so I did not pursue that path until I understood what the problem really was. For instance when in airplane mode the computer would function normally because its ability to try and download and install all windows updates at once was cock blocked so it wouldn't clog the HDD queue at all.

What exactly am I wrong about when I say MTBF being lowest for newer HDDs? Do not older drives have a higher failure rate than newer ones? Is it likely to conclude that a Windows 8 computer would be less likely to have a HDD problem than a Windows XP computer or even Windows 7 due to the fact one is older than the other? I think that is pretty sound logic but then I'm not an expert.

The Windows 8 rig is my senior mothers and what does she do all day with it. Flash games, putting virtual puzzles together, facebook, you tube, and email. The kinda 100mb/day write and read duty cycle I'd expect to let the drive outlive her most likely.

While Chkdsk was running the computer was unusable and it was performed outside the OS operation so that WinUpdate couldn't clusterfuck with the scan. The system was unusable after a few minutes from booting anyway as soon as the update cycle started.

As problematic as XP will be in the future it is because MS has decided to stop supporting it not because its a terrible OS. They can't sell XP for the same price as they sell the "latest and greatest" but that is exactly what they should do because some people would buy it. It is the same logic behind why they should continue to sell Windows 7.

What they should be doing as a software company is retrofitting that code from the latest and greatest back into the prior versions and making it look the same but work new like the latest version. That way if you prefer the UI of Windows 7 you get Windows 7. Win 7 and XP are very similar in UI appearance compared to Win 8 and Win 7. Now if you are in the minority and enjoy Windows 8 there is no reason you shouldn't pay the full price for the propped up version of Windows but the dominant group of computer users are on Windows 7 and MS should recognize that it is a great OS which serves the needs of their customers and "not MS needs to compete".

The fact you can't buy Windows 7 from Microsoft is garbage. The fact that every solution offered by Microsoft includes a suggestive selling opportunity to get Windows 8 is also garbage. Especially when most people who get Windows 8 upgrade to 7 or simply return the unit and go get an older Windows 7 rig.

What Microsoft does though is stupid. They put stuff in their software which is half baked half assed coding. WGA. So this was designed to detect bogus installs and of course it was circumvented by the piracy community even before Windows 7 official release. Now I've been running my Windows 7 install on my desktop that I built since 2010, and it was a legit DVD copy and genuine for the last 3 years. When I cloned my 64GB SSD onto my 250GB SSD it went fine until I went to format the original windows install and reboot. Then it freaked out and all the sudden WGA not genunie, never mind having the system write a snapshot of what it was installed on in a small text file every few months and check to see that yep I got a new SSD but everything else is the same thanks owner now I'll boot even faster. No WGA is another BS program designed to "create a need" years down the road to steer people back to Microsoft for support when they attempt to upgrade on their own. And what is Microsoft doing at every step of the way. Pushing their next Vista/Windows ME... Windows 8, that psycho OS nobody wants to take to the prom.

How about Windows 8 Update, so it chokes on its own updates, the OS porks itself.. So maybe this is an attempt by the monopoly to steer people into Windows 9, but since Microsoft can't seem to finger out ( referring to touch of course, year sure I am ) what people want they just go into a sales holding pattern. Windows 8.1 like its 1993 again and Windows 3.1 is here and its hip.

No, no its not. Bad code is bad code and WGA porking an install is shit. Windows update clogging a computer so bad it causes critical system events and crashes "Microsoft Windows" is also bad. They have 30 years of Operating System design but components of their products build out like a red wagon with 3 wheels.

 

[Alpha3031]

If you have an XP system, I suggest lubuntu. I have an 2 GB DDR2 Dell and it can still open 10 tabs on chrome And I totally agree with you point.

 

[johnbl]

- You have fundamental misunderstandings of the meaning of MTBF and failure rates. For example you could beat a hard drive to death with a hammer and it will not change the MTBF but it will not work anymore.

- I don't think you really want to understand, and you don't really have any questions and just want to be a troll.

- no point in attempting to help you

- windows xp is a dead product, it will cost money to get custom support now.
- your data on failure rates on a spinning hard drives is way off
- OEM versions of windows are modified and should be supported by the machine manufacture.
-windows 8.x does a lot of does background error checking and repairs on drives
and attempts these repairs on drives the the machine manufacture did not properly set up. This will often result in very high disk usage until the repair is complete. The repair process is moving data from sections of the hard drive while it is under contention and getting read errors. That is a slow process and can take 5 to 10 hours depending on the number of problems.
But please take note: You should be pissed, but you should be pissed at the right people. The ones that built your machine and skipped steps to save money because your time does not cost them anything.

John might be fair to say you dont know what you are talking about. The only XP system I have is my Acer netbook and it runs ok. There is no point to upgrading it because it is a netbook only has 1 gig of ram and it will live and die out its days with XP. The computer that failed is not even 2 years old has a 400gb HD and came with Windows 8. Now this issue came less than a week after I went though another major reinstall issue prompted by another genius Microsoft design decision when I cloned a drive and then all the sudden WGA freaked out and decided after 3 years my copy of Windows was no longer genuine.

Back to the Windows 8 folly though...
The HDD and system was running fine for the duration of that time until the last few days before I had to take the better part of the day figuring it out. The issue had little to do with the harddrive except to say that is where the symptoms occurred. The chkdsk did not reveal any bad sectors at all so the drive is fine. The HDD also contains a restore backup partition however there was no guarantee that performing a restore would fix the issue so I did not pursue that path until I understood what the problem really was. For instance when in airplane mode the computer would function normally because its ability to try and download and install all windows updates at once was cock blocked so it wouldn't clog the HDD queue at all.

What exactly am I wrong about when I say MTBF being lowest for newer HDDs? Do not older drives have a higher failure rate than newer ones? Is it likely to conclude that a Windows 8 computer would be less likely to have a HDD problem than a Windows XP computer or even Windows 7 due to the fact one is older than the other? I think that is pretty sound logic but then I'm not an expert.

The Windows 8 rig is my senior mothers and what does she do all day with it. Flash games, putting virtual puzzles together, facebook, you tube, and email. The kinda 100mb/day write and read duty cycle I'd expect to let the drive outlive her most likely.

While Chkdsk was running the computer was unusable and it was performed outside the OS operation so that WinUpdate couldn't clusterfuck with the scan. The system was unusable after a few minutes from booting anyway as soon as the update cycle started.

As problematic as XP will be in the future it is because MS has decided to stop supporting it not because its a terrible OS. They can't sell XP for the same price as they sell the "latest and greatest" but that is exactly what they should do because some people would buy it. It is the same logic behind why they should continue to sell Windows 7.

What they should be doing as a software company is retrofitting that code from the latest and greatest back into the prior versions and making it look the same but work new like the latest version. That way if you prefer the UI of Windows 7 you get Windows 7. Win 7 and XP are very similar in UI appearance compared to Win 8 and Win 7. Now if you are in the minority and enjoy Windows 8 there is no reason you shouldn't pay the full price for the propped up version of Windows but the dominant group of computer users are on Windows 7 and MS should recognize that it is a great OS which serves the needs of their customers and "not MS needs to compete".

The fact you can't buy Windows 7 from Microsoft is garbage. The fact that every solution offered by Microsoft includes a suggestive selling opportunity to get Windows 8 is also garbage. Especially when most people who get Windows 8 upgrade to 7 or simply return the unit and go get an older Windows 7 rig.

What Microsoft does though is stupid. They put stuff in their software which is half baked half assed coding. WGA. So this was designed to detect bogus installs and of course it was circumvented by the piracy community even before Windows 7 official release. Now I've been running my Windows 7 install on my desktop that I built since 2010, and it was a legit DVD copy and genuine for the last 3 years. When I cloned my 64GB SSD onto my 250GB SSD it went fine until I went to format the original windows install and reboot. Then it freaked out and all the sudden WGA not genunie, never mind having the system write a snapshot of what it was installed on in a small text file every few months and check to see that yep I got a new SSD but everything else is the same thanks owner now I'll boot even faster. No WGA is another BS program designed to "create a need" years down the road to steer people back to Microsoft for support when they attempt to upgrade on their own. And what is Microsoft doing at every step of the way. Pushing their next Vista/Windows ME... Windows 8, that psycho OS nobody wants to take to the prom.

How about Windows 8 Update, so it chokes on its own updates, the OS porks itself.. So maybe this is an attempt by the monopoly to steer people into Windows 9, but since Microsoft can't seem to finger out ( referring to touch of course, year sure I am ) what people want they just go into a sales holding pattern. Windows 8.1 like its 1993 again and Windows 3.1 is here and its hip.

No, no its not. Bad code is bad code and WGA porking an install is shit. Windows update clogging a computer so bad it causes critical system events and crashes "Microsoft Windows" is also bad. They have 30 years of Operating System design but components of their products build out like a red wagon with 3 wheels.

 

[Jay Stew]

MTBF is Mean Time Between Failure. Now I think I have a pretty firm understanding of MTBF and also that it isn't linear. However if a HDD is running fine for a year and then all the sudden appears to fail but also works, its not typically a catastrophic failure. MTBF rates indicate how many hours a drive is expected to operate between a failure. Some drives have a lower overall failure rate. Generally the faster it spins and the more hours it is running the higher the rate. Generally.

Also Generally an older drive, i.e. a 5 year old HDD will have a higher MTBF than a 1 year old drive, both because of its age, and because the technology used to produce the new drive will be better.


"Some hard drives simply fail because of worn out parts, others fail prematurely. HDD manufacturers typically specify a Mean Time Between Failures or an Annualized Failure Rate (AFR) which are population statistics that can not predict the behavior of an individual unit. These are calculated by constantly running samples of the drive for a short amount of time, analyzing the resultant wear and tear upon the physical components of the drive, and extrapolating to provide a reasonable estimate of its lifespan. HDD failures tend to follow the concept of the bathtub curve.[dubious – discuss] HDDs typically fail within a short time if there is a defect present from manufacturing. If an HDD proves reliable for a period of a few months after installation, the HDD has a significantly greater chance of remaining reliable. Therefore, even if a HDD is subjected to several years of heavy daily use, it may not show any notable signs of wear unless closely inspected. On the other hand, an HDD can fail at any time in many different situations."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive_failure

Key points, Bathtub curve demonstrates HDD failure trends over their lifetime when averaged.
First year failure rates are lower than 5th year rates.
A windows 8 computer should have a better HDD failure rate, i.e. lower in 2014 than in 2019. In fact the lowest failure rate of a new HDD would be in its first year of operation or just after that time according to the way a bathtub curve exists.

So if a harddrive is going to fail early it is usually catastrophic, and also occurs shortly after manufacture and starting operation, not 12 months into use. In fact 12 months into use would be very close to the lowest probable time of failure given the average HDD.

So tell me where I'm wrong...

- You have fundamental misunderstandings of the meaning of MTBF and failure rates. For example you could beat a hard drive to death with a hammer and it will not change the MTBF but it will not work anymore.

- I don't think you really want to understand, and you don't really have any questions and just want to be a troll.

- no point in attempting to help you

- windows xp is a dead product, it will cost money to get custom support now.
- your data on failure rates on a spinning hard drives is way off
- OEM versions of windows are modified and should be supported by the machine manufacture.
-windows 8.x does a lot of does background error checking and repairs on drives
and attempts these repairs on drives the the machine manufacture did not properly set up. This will often result in very high disk usage until the repair is complete. The repair process is moving data from sections of the hard drive while it is under contention and getting read errors. That is a slow process and can take 5 to 10 hours depending on the number of problems.
But please take note: You should be pissed, but you should be pissed at the right people. The ones that built your machine and skipped steps to save money because your time does not cost them anything.

John might be fair to say you dont know what you are talking about. The only XP system I have is my Acer netbook and it runs ok. There is no point to upgrading it because it is a netbook only has 1 gig of ram and it will live and die out its days with XP. The computer that failed is not even 2 years old has a 400gb HD and came with Windows 8. Now this issue came less than a week after I went though another major reinstall issue prompted by another genius Microsoft design decision when I cloned a drive and then all the sudden WGA freaked out and decided after 3 years my copy of Windows was no longer genuine.

Back to the Windows 8 folly though...
The HDD and system was running fine for the duration of that time until the last few days before I had to take the better part of the day figuring it out. The issue had little to do with the harddrive except to say that is where the symptoms occurred. The chkdsk did not reveal any bad sectors at all so the drive is fine. The HDD also contains a restore backup partition however there was no guarantee that performing a restore would fix the issue so I did not pursue that path until I understood what the problem really was. For instance when in airplane mode the computer would function normally because its ability to try and download and install all windows updates at once was cock blocked so it wouldn't clog the HDD queue at all.

What exactly am I wrong about when I say MTBF being lowest for newer HDDs? Do not older drives have a higher failure rate than newer ones? Is it likely to conclude that a Windows 8 computer would be less likely to have a HDD problem than a Windows XP computer or even Windows 7 due to the fact one is older than the other? I think that is pretty sound logic but then I'm not an expert.

The Windows 8 rig is my senior mothers and what does she do all day with it. Flash games, putting virtual puzzles together, facebook, you tube, and email. The kinda 100mb/day write and read duty cycle I'd expect to let the drive outlive her most likely.

While Chkdsk was running the computer was unusable and it was performed outside the OS operation so that WinUpdate couldn't clusterfuck with the scan. The system was unusable after a few minutes from booting anyway as soon as the update cycle started.

As problematic as XP will be in the future it is because MS has decided to stop supporting it not because its a terrible OS. They can't sell XP for the same price as they sell the "latest and greatest" but that is exactly what they should do because some people would buy it. It is the same logic behind why they should continue to sell Windows 7.

What they should be doing as a software company is retrofitting that code from the latest and greatest back into the prior versions and making it look the same but work new like the latest version. That way if you prefer the UI of Windows 7 you get Windows 7. Win 7 and XP are very similar in UI appearance compared to Win 8 and Win 7. Now if you are in the minority and enjoy Windows 8 there is no reason you shouldn't pay the full price for the propped up version of Windows but the dominant group of computer users are on Windows 7 and MS should recognize that it is a great OS which serves the needs of their customers and "not MS needs to compete".

The fact you can't buy Windows 7 from Microsoft is garbage. The fact that every solution offered by Microsoft includes a suggestive selling opportunity to get Windows 8 is also garbage. Especially when most people who get Windows 8 upgrade to 7 or simply return the unit and go get an older Windows 7 rig.

What Microsoft does though is stupid. They put stuff in their software which is half baked half assed coding. WGA. So this was designed to detect bogus installs and of course it was circumvented by the piracy community even before Windows 7 official release. Now I've been running my Windows 7 install on my desktop that I built since 2010, and it was a legit DVD copy and genuine for the last 3 years. When I cloned my 64GB SSD onto my 250GB SSD it went fine until I went to format the original windows install and reboot. Then it freaked out and all the sudden WGA not genunie, never mind having the system write a snapshot of what it was installed on in a small text file every few months and check to see that yep I got a new SSD but everything else is the same thanks owner now I'll boot even faster. No WGA is another BS program designed to "create a need" years down the road to steer people back to Microsoft for support when they attempt to upgrade on their own. And what is Microsoft doing at every step of the way. Pushing their next Vista/Windows ME... Windows 8, that psycho OS nobody wants to take to the prom.

How about Windows 8 Update, so it chokes on its own updates, the OS porks itself.. So maybe this is an attempt by the monopoly to steer people into Windows 9, but since Microsoft can't seem to finger out ( referring to touch of course, year sure I am ) what people want they just go into a sales holding pattern. Windows 8.1 like its 1993 again and Windows 3.1 is here and its hip.

No, no its not. Bad code is bad code and WGA porking an install is shit. Windows update clogging a computer so bad it causes critical system events and crashes "Microsoft Windows" is also bad. They have 30 years of Operating System design but components of their products build out like a red wagon with 3 wheels.

 

[johnbl]

You are just not being critical enough. Look at the MTBF and how it is calculated.

MTBF is Mean Time Between Failure. Now I think I have a pretty firm understanding of MTBF and also that it isn't linear. However if a HDD is running fine for a year and then all the sudden appears to fail but also works, its not typically a catastrophic failure. MTBF rates indicate how many hours a drive is expected to operate between a failure. Some drives have a lower overall failure rate. Generally the faster it spins and the more hours it is running the higher the rate. Generally.

Also Generally an older drive, i.e. a 5 year old HDD will have a higher MTBF than a 1 year old drive, both because of its age, and because the technology used to produce the new drive will be better.


"Some hard drives simply fail because of worn out parts, others fail prematurely. HDD manufacturers typically specify a Mean Time Between Failures or an Annualized Failure Rate (AFR) which are population statistics that can not predict the behavior of an individual unit. These are calculated by constantly running samples of the drive for a short amount of time, analyzing the resultant wear and tear upon the physical components of the drive, and extrapolating to provide a reasonable estimate of its lifespan. HDD failures tend to follow the concept of the bathtub curve.[dubious – discuss] HDDs typically fail within a short time if there is a defect present from manufacturing. If an HDD proves reliable for a period of a few months after installation, the HDD has a significantly greater chance of remaining reliable. Therefore, even if a HDD is subjected to several years of heavy daily use, it may not show any notable signs of wear unless closely inspected. On the other hand, an HDD can fail at any time in many different situations."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive_failure

Key points, Bathtub curve demonstrates HDD failure trends over their lifetime when averaged.
First year failure rates are lower than 5th year rates.
A windows 8 computer should have a better HDD failure rate, i.e. lower in 2014 than in 2019. In fact the lowest failure rate of a new HDD would be in its first year of operation or just after that time according to the way a bathtub curve exists.

So if a harddrive is going to fail early it is usually catastrophic, and also occurs shortly after manufacture and starting operation, not 12 months into use. In fact 12 months into use would be very close to the lowest probable time of failure given the average HDD.

So tell me where I'm wrong...

- You have fundamental misunderstandings of the meaning of MTBF and failure rates. For example you could beat a hard drive to death with a hammer and it will not change the MTBF but it will not work anymore.

- I don't think you really want to understand, and you don't really have any questions and just want to be a troll.

- no point in attempting to help you

- windows xp is a dead product, it will cost money to get custom support now.
- your data on failure rates on a spinning hard drives is way off
- OEM versions of windows are modified and should be supported by the machine manufacture.
-windows 8.x does a lot of does background error checking and repairs on drives
and attempts these repairs on drives the the machine manufacture did not properly set up. This will often result in very high disk usage until the repair is complete. The repair process is moving data from sections of the hard drive while it is under contention and getting read errors. That is a slow process and can take 5 to 10 hours depending on the number of problems.
But please take note: You should be pissed, but you should be pissed at the right people. The ones that built your machine and skipped steps to save money because your time does not cost them anything.

John might be fair to say you dont know what you are talking about. The only XP system I have is my Acer netbook and it runs ok. There is no point to upgrading it because it is a netbook only has 1 gig of ram and it will live and die out its days with XP. The computer that failed is not even 2 years old has a 400gb HD and came with Windows 8. Now this issue came less than a week after I went though another major reinstall issue prompted by another genius Microsoft design decision when I cloned a drive and then all the sudden WGA freaked out and decided after 3 years my copy of Windows was no longer genuine.

Back to the Windows 8 folly though...
The HDD and system was running fine for the duration of that time until the last few days before I had to take the better part of the day figuring it out. The issue had little to do with the harddrive except to say that is where the symptoms occurred. The chkdsk did not reveal any bad sectors at all so the drive is fine. The HDD also contains a restore backup partition however there was no guarantee that performing a restore would fix the issue so I did not pursue that path until I understood what the problem really was. For instance when in airplane mode the computer would function normally because its ability to try and download and install all windows updates at once was cock blocked so it wouldn't clog the HDD queue at all.

What exactly am I wrong about when I say MTBF being lowest for newer HDDs? Do not older drives have a higher failure rate than newer ones? Is it likely to conclude that a Windows 8 computer would be less likely to have a HDD problem than a Windows XP computer or even Windows 7 due to the fact one is older than the other? I think that is pretty sound logic but then I'm not an expert.

The Windows 8 rig is my senior mothers and what does she do all day with it. Flash games, putting virtual puzzles together, facebook, you tube, and email. The kinda 100mb/day write and read duty cycle I'd expect to let the drive outlive her most likely.

While Chkdsk was running the computer was unusable and it was performed outside the OS operation so that WinUpdate couldn't clusterfuck with the scan. The system was unusable after a few minutes from booting anyway as soon as the update cycle started.

As problematic as XP will be in the future it is because MS has decided to stop supporting it not because its a terrible OS. They can't sell XP for the same price as they sell the "latest and greatest" but that is exactly what they should do because some people would buy it. It is the same logic behind why they should continue to sell Windows 7.

What they should be doing as a software company is retrofitting that code from the latest and greatest back into the prior versions and making it look the same but work new like the latest version. That way if you prefer the UI of Windows 7 you get Windows 7. Win 7 and XP are very similar in UI appearance compared to Win 8 and Win 7. Now if you are in the minority and enjoy Windows 8 there is no reason you shouldn't pay the full price for the propped up version of Windows but the dominant group of computer users are on Windows 7 and MS should recognize that it is a great OS which serves the needs of their customers and "not MS needs to compete".

The fact you can't buy Windows 7 from Microsoft is garbage. The fact that every solution offered by Microsoft includes a suggestive selling opportunity to get Windows 8 is also garbage. Especially when most people who get Windows 8 upgrade to 7 or simply return the unit and go get an older Windows 7 rig.

What Microsoft does though is stupid. They put stuff in their software which is half baked half assed coding. WGA. So this was designed to detect bogus installs and of course it was circumvented by the piracy community even before Windows 7 official release. Now I've been running my Windows 7 install on my desktop that I built since 2010, and it was a legit DVD copy and genuine for the last 3 years. When I cloned my 64GB SSD onto my 250GB SSD it went fine until I went to format the original windows install and reboot. Then it freaked out and all the sudden WGA not genunie, never mind having the system write a snapshot of what it was installed on in a small text file every few months and check to see that yep I got a new SSD but everything else is the same thanks owner now I'll boot even faster. No WGA is another BS program designed to "create a need" years down the road to steer people back to Microsoft for support when they attempt to upgrade on their own. And what is Microsoft doing at every step of the way. Pushing their next Vista/Windows ME... Windows 8, that psycho OS nobody wants to take to the prom.

How about Windows 8 Update, so it chokes on its own updates, the OS porks itself.. So maybe this is an attempt by the monopoly to steer people into Windows 9, but since Microsoft can't seem to finger out ( referring to touch of course, year sure I am ) what people want they just go into a sales holding pattern. Windows 8.1 like its 1993 again and Windows 3.1 is here and its hip.

No, no its not. Bad code is bad code and WGA porking an install is shit. Windows update clogging a computer so bad it causes critical system events and crashes "Microsoft Windows" is also bad. They have 30 years of Operating System design but components of their products build out like a red wagon with 3 wheels.

 

[Jay Stew]

You are just not being critical enough. Look at the MTBF and how it is calculated.

You aren't making any sense or a point you are just trolling now.

MTBF is Mean Time Between Failure. Now I think I have a pretty firm understanding of MTBF and also that it isn't linear. However if a HDD is running fine for a year and then all the sudden appears to fail but also works, its not typically a catastrophic failure. MTBF rates indicate how many hours a drive is expected to operate between a failure. Some drives have a lower overall failure rate. Generally the faster it spins and the more hours it is running the higher the rate. Generally.

Also Generally an older drive, i.e. a 5 year old HDD will have a higher MTBF than a 1 year old drive, both because of its age, and because the technology used to produce the new drive will be better.


"Some hard drives simply fail because of worn out parts, others fail prematurely. HDD manufacturers typically specify a Mean Time Between Failures or an Annualized Failure Rate (AFR) which are population statistics that can not predict the behavior of an individual unit. These are calculated by constantly running samples of the drive for a short amount of time, analyzing the resultant wear and tear upon the physical components of the drive, and extrapolating to provide a reasonable estimate of its lifespan. HDD failures tend to follow the concept of the bathtub curve.[dubious – discuss] HDDs typically fail within a short time if there is a defect present from manufacturing. If an HDD proves reliable for a period of a few months after installation, the HDD has a significantly greater chance of remaining reliable. Therefore, even if a HDD is subjected to several years of heavy daily use, it may not show any notable signs of wear unless closely inspected. On the other hand, an HDD can fail at any time in many different situations."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive_failure

Key points, Bathtub curve demonstrates HDD failure trends over their lifetime when averaged.
First year failure rates are lower than 5th year rates.
A windows 8 computer should have a better HDD failure rate, i.e. lower in 2014 than in 2019. In fact the lowest failure rate of a new HDD would be in its first year of operation or just after that time according to the way a bathtub curve exists.

So if a harddrive is going to fail early it is usually catastrophic, and also occurs shortly after manufacture and starting operation, not 12 months into use. In fact 12 months into use would be very close to the lowest probable time of failure given the average HDD.

So tell me where I'm wrong...

- You have fundamental misunderstandings of the meaning of MTBF and failure rates. For example you could beat a hard drive to death with a hammer and it will not change the MTBF but it will not work anymore.

- I don't think you really want to understand, and you don't really have any questions and just want to be a troll.

- no point in attempting to help you

- windows xp is a dead product, it will cost money to get custom support now.
- your data on failure rates on a spinning hard drives is way off
- OEM versions of windows are modified and should be supported by the machine manufacture.
-windows 8.x does a lot of does background error checking and repairs on drives
and attempts these repairs on drives the the machine manufacture did not properly set up. This will often result in very high disk usage until the repair is complete. The repair process is moving data from sections of the hard drive while it is under contention and getting read errors. That is a slow process and can take 5 to 10 hours depending on the number of problems.
But please take note: You should be pissed, but you should be pissed at the right people. The ones that built your machine and skipped steps to save money because your time does not cost them anything.

John might be fair to say you dont know what you are talking about. The only XP system I have is my Acer netbook and it runs ok. There is no point to upgrading it because it is a netbook only has 1 gig of ram and it will live and die out its days with XP. The computer that failed is not even 2 years old has a 400gb HD and came with Windows 8. Now this issue came less than a week after I went though another major reinstall issue prompted by another genius Microsoft design decision when I cloned a drive and then all the sudden WGA freaked out and decided after 3 years my copy of Windows was no longer genuine.

Back to the Windows 8 folly though...
The HDD and system was running fine for the duration of that time until the last few days before I had to take the better part of the day figuring it out. The issue had little to do with the harddrive except to say that is where the symptoms occurred. The chkdsk did not reveal any bad sectors at all so the drive is fine. The HDD also contains a restore backup partition however there was no guarantee that performing a restore would fix the issue so I did not pursue that path until I understood what the problem really was. For instance when in airplane mode the computer would function normally because its ability to try and download and install all windows updates at once was cock blocked so it wouldn't clog the HDD queue at all.

What exactly am I wrong about when I say MTBF being lowest for newer HDDs? Do not older drives have a higher failure rate than newer ones? Is it likely to conclude that a Windows 8 computer would be less likely to have a HDD problem than a Windows XP computer or even Windows 7 due to the fact one is older than the other? I think that is pretty sound logic but then I'm not an expert.

The Windows 8 rig is my senior mothers and what does she do all day with it. Flash games, putting virtual puzzles together, facebook, you tube, and email. The kinda 100mb/day write and read duty cycle I'd expect to let the drive outlive her most likely.

While Chkdsk was running the computer was unusable and it was performed outside the OS operation so that WinUpdate couldn't clusterfuck with the scan. The system was unusable after a few minutes from booting anyway as soon as the update cycle started.

As problematic as XP will be in the future it is because MS has decided to stop supporting it not because its a terrible OS. They can't sell XP for the same price as they sell the "latest and greatest" but that is exactly what they should do because some people would buy it. It is the same logic behind why they should continue to sell Windows 7.

What they should be doing as a software company is retrofitting that code from the latest and greatest back into the prior versions and making it look the same but work new like the latest version. That way if you prefer the UI of Windows 7 you get Windows 7. Win 7 and XP are very similar in UI appearance compared to Win 8 and Win 7. Now if you are in the minority and enjoy Windows 8 there is no reason you shouldn't pay the full price for the propped up version of Windows but the dominant group of computer users are on Windows 7 and MS should recognize that it is a great OS which serves the needs of their customers and "not MS needs to compete".

The fact you can't buy Windows 7 from Microsoft is garbage. The fact that every solution offered by Microsoft includes a suggestive selling opportunity to get Windows 8 is also garbage. Especially when most people who get Windows 8 upgrade to 7 or simply return the unit and go get an older Windows 7 rig.

What Microsoft does though is stupid. They put stuff in their software which is half baked half assed coding. WGA. So this was designed to detect bogus installs and of course it was circumvented by the piracy community even before Windows 7 official release. Now I've been running my Windows 7 install on my desktop that I built since 2010, and it was a legit DVD copy and genuine for the last 3 years. When I cloned my 64GB SSD onto my 250GB SSD it went fine until I went to format the original windows install and reboot. Then it freaked out and all the sudden WGA not genunie, never mind having the system write a snapshot of what it was installed on in a small text file every few months and check to see that yep I got a new SSD but everything else is the same thanks owner now I'll boot even faster. No WGA is another BS program designed to "create a need" years down the road to steer people back to Microsoft for support when they attempt to upgrade on their own. And what is Microsoft doing at every step of the way. Pushing their next Vista/Windows ME... Windows 8, that psycho OS nobody wants to take to the prom.

How about Windows 8 Update, so it chokes on its own updates, the OS porks itself.. So maybe this is an attempt by the monopoly to steer people into Windows 9, but since Microsoft can't seem to finger out ( referring to touch of course, year sure I am ) what people want they just go into a sales holding pattern. Windows 8.1 like its 1993 again and Windows 3.1 is here and its hip.

No, no its not. Bad code is bad code and WGA porking an install is shit. Windows update clogging a computer so bad it causes critical system events and crashes "Microsoft Windows" is also bad. They have 30 years of Operating System design but components of their products build out like a red wagon with 3 wheels.

 

[Alpha3031]

Can someone close this thread already?


Please?

 

[USAFRet]

This thread has ceased to serve any useful purpose.