(dws - on a boat?)Re: Web Hosting for Monks

[dws]

... I live on a houseboat

Cool. But that brings up one concern: Does the (gentle?) rocking of a houseboat affect the half-life of disk drives? Spinning drives have gyroscopic properties, which you can feel by playing with a spun-up drive. (You can just barely feel the effect by applying pitch or yaw to a laptop). If the rocking of the boat continually takes drives off-axis, is the resulting strain going to reduce their reliability or longevity?

Does anyone have info on the half-life of hard disks on boats? Are there special hardened-for-Naval-use drives that are more boatworthy than off-the-shelf drives?

[chromatic]

If I played Half-Life on a house boat, I'd surely be seasick.

I'm feeling queasy for thinking it.

Seriously, I doubt the effect on the drive will take it below the replacement date of the drive. I'd be surprised if jcwren didn't replace them within two years.