DeeCee - 10:17 pm on Mar 1, 2012 (gmt 0)

@dickbaker, "cracked" likely simply means that they had a disk failure.

BUT.. That tells you right there, that they are on at least a VPS or a dedicated server setup. The larger shared hosting setups would have at least RAID 1 (probably better) - disk mirroring, and customers would never see a "disk cracking".

It also tells you, that they chose to buy a cheaper setup, where they have no disk redundancy. If they had chosen a server setup with for example just 2 disks in a RAID 1 mirror, the bad disk would have simply been swapped out and the server would have continued trucking. So, I would guess they must have saved the few dollars to lease that RAID card and the extra disk. Not an unusual mistake for non-techies to make. Maybe they just did not understand what that selection on the configuration screen meant to them.

That does not say much really about the hosting company.

News: All disks fail eventually. I buy new ones quite often for my test and data servers. My main data server alone pulls around 20+ disk drives of varying sizes and ages, and I have had to replace quite few over time. It is VERY hard on disk-drives, as it processes large amounts of data 24 hours a day.
Fortunately they all have redundant little buddies, so I have never lost data when a drive takes to "cracking". I just pop in a new drive, let it rebuild the data, and continue on.

It says more about either the technical abilities or the financial choices of the people purchasing the service. :)