5 ms·

With how widespread both SQLite and WD are wouldn't half the world have apps crashing left and right, if just the hard drive brand was the cause of the problem?

tyingq 7y ago
It's somewhat implied it was one specific WD consumer drive model.
- mirimir 7y ago
  I used WD RE3s back then, and never had problems.
inetknght 7y ago
See also: counterfeit SD cards.
jmull 7y ago
Yes, I think it's possible (likely, even) that there was at least one more factor.
adrianN 7y ago
Apps are in fact crashing left and right.
- brewdad 7y ago
  My Materialistic app crashed about 30 seconds prior to opening this thread. I probably average about 5 "noisy" app crashes a week on my phone. No idea how many may be failing silently.
  - ShamelessC 7y ago
    I had to give up on Materialistic because of the frequency of crashes. It's a shame because the hn website is really difficult to navigate on mobile (collapsing threads with that tiny + is a nightmare). Do you know of any better alternatives that let you log in and post from the app?
    - stallmanite 7y ago
      I have no issues with this guy’s client and have been using the free version for 3+ years. https://github.com/premii https://github.com/premii
      - ShamelessC 7y ago
        Hmm, I checked that one out and it is indeed pretty nice but I don't think I can log in to my account with it. Just lets me view the public interfaces.
        stallmanite 7y ago
        I login on the iOS app every day. There's a login option in the settings menu near the bottom.
        ShamelessC 7y ago
        Ah, I was using the webapp which doesn't have that functionality. Hmm, it appears the Android app is no longer in the play store. There's a dead link and a GH issue with no comments for two years. I'll try to build the APK myself when I get some spare time.
  - giancarlostoro 7y ago
    Curious what kind of phone do you have? Its not very common for Materialistic to crash on me. It does happen but not that often.
    - brewdad 7y ago
      Materialistic doesn't crash very often. When I say I have an app crash 5 times a week, I mean any one of my installed apps. If I ever come across a particular app that is crashing regularly, I'll look for an alternative and/or report the bug if the developer makes it easy to do so.
    - beart 7y ago
      I have a one plus 6 and materialistic crashes almost every time I open it from a previous session. It also often crashes when reading articles even on a fresh instance
wolf550e 7y ago
The case of the disks not honoring fsync is famous. I learned about it from Brad Fitzpatrick, author of LiveJournal (later on the Go team at Google) writing about it in 2005: https://brad.livejournal.com/2116715.html https://brad.livejournal.com/2116715.html
- da_chicken 7y ago
  One of the first optimizations at basically every level is to not honor fsync requests. Network file systems lie. Operating systems lie about local volumes. RAID controllers lie. On-disk controllers lie. That's because these lies are caches, and cache buffers are one of the easiest ways to boost performance.
cpuguy83 7y ago
I doubt most consumer applications write to the database nearly as often as we were. Also very likely a particular model of the drive and also sheer luck that one worked and one did not.
fpgaminer 7y ago
GP mentioned digital signage, so probably some displays at a business. Unlike a computer which would mostly either be left on (asleep) or shut down properly, I'm sure users had no qualms about killing power to these displays as they closed up every night. Write flushing problems would be exacerbated in that environment.
nothrabannosir 7y ago
I had consistent problems with WD in that same era. Switched to Seagate as well, and my problems disappeared. Just another datapoint.
crtlaltdel 7y ago
a couple of years prior to that era i worked for a Giant Electronics manufacturer who used WD desktop class drives in RAID and CCTV/DVR systems. we had insane corruption issues, burnout issues and so on with a large number of our devices. at the time i was running an rma shift for the product line so this was notable to me. we also had devices come in with Seagate drives, but they had been in operation much longer before they showed any issue and were from a few previous model releases. at some point the drives were "value engineered" and WD was selected. in the end they had to suck it up and put in a server class drive (something with a high duty cycle rating). once they did the fails slowed dramatically. when we went over the data it looked like all most of the failing devices were installed in 24/7 video monitoring applications, and several were installed in poorly (or not at all) ventilated spaces. after a while we put temperature tags on the inside of the chassis to get a sense of the max environmental temp (yeah, didn't work if it had been on a truck for week in transit, but at least a field tech could check). if i had to guess, i'd say that the digital signage company was "value engineering" the system components ;) i was in industrial controls and never had a sense that the signage folks were laughing on the way to the bank...

tyingq 7y ago

It's somewhat implied it was one specific WD consumer drive model.

mirimir 7y ago
I used WD RE3s back then, and never had problems.

inetknght 7y ago

See also: counterfeit SD cards.

jmull 7y ago

Yes, I think it's possible (likely, even) that there was at least one more factor.

adrianN 7y ago

Apps are in fact crashing left and right.

brewdad 7y ago
My Materialistic app crashed about 30 seconds prior to opening this thread. I probably average about 5 "noisy" app crashes a week on my phone. No idea how many may be failing silently.
- ShamelessC 7y ago
  I had to give up on Materialistic because of the frequency of crashes. It's a shame because the hn website is really difficult to navigate on mobile (collapsing threads with that tiny + is a nightmare). Do you know of any better alternatives that let you log in and post from the app?
  - stallmanite 7y ago
    I have no issues with this guy’s client and have been using the free version for 3+ years. https://github.com/premii https://github.com/premii
    - ShamelessC 7y ago
      Hmm, I checked that one out and it is indeed pretty nice but I don't think I can log in to my account with it. Just lets me view the public interfaces.
      - stallmanite 7y ago
        I login on the iOS app every day. There's a login option in the settings menu near the bottom.
        ShamelessC 7y ago
        Ah, I was using the webapp which doesn't have that functionality. Hmm, it appears the Android app is no longer in the play store. There's a dead link and a GH issue with no comments for two years. I'll try to build the APK myself when I get some spare time.
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  Curious what kind of phone do you have? Its not very common for Materialistic to crash on me. It does happen but not that often.
  - brewdad 7y ago
    Materialistic doesn't crash very often. When I say I have an app crash 5 times a week, I mean any one of my installed apps. If I ever come across a particular app that is crashing regularly, I'll look for an alternative and/or report the bug if the developer makes it easy to do so.
  - beart 7y ago
    I have a one plus 6 and materialistic crashes almost every time I open it from a previous session. It also often crashes when reading articles even on a fresh instance

wolf550e 7y ago

The case of the disks not honoring fsync is famous. I learned about it from Brad Fitzpatrick, author of LiveJournal (later on the Go team at Google) writing about it in 2005: https://brad.livejournal.com/2116715.html https://brad.livejournal.com/2116715.html

da_chicken 7y ago
One of the first optimizations at basically every level is to not honor fsync requests. Network file systems lie. Operating systems lie about local volumes. RAID controllers lie. On-disk controllers lie. That's because these lies are caches, and cache buffers are one of the easiest ways to boost performance.

cpuguy83 7y ago

I doubt most consumer applications write to the database nearly as often as we were. Also very likely a particular model of the drive and also sheer luck that one worked and one did not.

fpgaminer 7y ago

GP mentioned digital signage, so probably some displays at a business. Unlike a computer which would mostly either be left on (asleep) or shut down properly, I'm sure users had no qualms about killing power to these displays as they closed up every night. Write flushing problems would be exacerbated in that environment.

nothrabannosir 7y ago

I had consistent problems with WD in that same era. Switched to Seagate as well, and my problems disappeared. Just another datapoint.

crtlaltdel 7y ago

a couple of years prior to that era i worked for a Giant Electronics manufacturer who used WD desktop class drives in RAID and CCTV/DVR systems. we had insane corruption issues, burnout issues and so on with a large number of our devices. at the time i was running an rma shift for the product line so this was notable to me. we also had devices come in with Seagate drives, but they had been in operation much longer before they showed any issue and were from a few previous model releases. at some point the drives were "value engineered" and WD was selected. in the end they had to suck it up and put in a server class drive (something with a high duty cycle rating). once they did the fails slowed dramatically. when we went over the data it looked like all most of the failing devices were installed in 24/7 video monitoring applications, and several were installed in poorly (or not at all) ventilated spaces. after a while we put temperature tags on the inside of the chassis to get a sense of the max environmental temp (yeah, didn't work if it had been on a truck for week in transit, but at least a field tech could check). if i had to guess, i'd say that the digital signage company was "value engineering" the system components ;) i was in industrial controls and never had a sense that the signage folks were laughing on the way to the bank...