Google Hard Drive Failure Study

[Reuven Steinberg]

Google released a report about hard drive failure as experienced with the more than 100,000 units they used. Highlights of the results:

1.      Annual failure rate is about 8.5% or 1 in 12 hard drives die annually.

2.      Drive mortality is highest in the first six months and after three years.

3.      SMART technology is not predictive and more often provides inaccurate predictors. More than 56% of hard drives died without alerting SMART. More than 50% of drives that indicate replacement time has come do not die for years.

4.      Heat is bad for hard drives and reduces life expectancy.

The first three were unexpected and the last was expected. Carnegie Mellon did a large study of hard drive life expectancy without considering SMART and came up with similar findings.

 

SMART monitoring takes a good deal of performance. You may consider disabling it. Backups are very important.

 

Link to paper: http://216.239.37.132/papers/disk_failures.pdf

 

Reuven Steinberg

 

[Marc Gottlieb]

My boss at Con Ed's hard drive failed so bad, that the tech couldn't hold it from the heat, and it even heated up the surface of the desk after he put it down. Thanks, Michael Dell, you'll keep us all in business forever!

Speaking of which, I have a clicking laptop HD.. I only have normal size spares. Anyone have/can procure a new 40/80 GB 2.5?

Should I announce this list to the main nevedaniel and LNO lists yet?

Marc Gottlieb
Owner
JMAI Technologies

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