Failure curve of hard drives
"Mark M" wrote in message
... I would guess that the failure curve of a hard drive is much like that for a lot of electronic equipment. It is probably a sort of wonky "U" shape. It's called the "bathtub shape" Lurch |
On Thu, 23 Oct 2003 12:09:21 +0100, Mark M
wrote: I would guess that the failure curve of a hard drive is much like that for a lot of electronic equipment. It is probably a sort of wonky "U" shape. If it fails then the drive is likely to fail quite early on in its life. After it passes this period then it is more likely to fail after some years as it gets older. Does anybody know approximately how long this period is of relatively high risk of early failure? This must vary from one model of hard drive to another but, very approximately, after what period of time would it be? I may be wrong but I would guess there is a bit of a "knee" in the shape of the reliability curve where the risk of failure changes. If I get a new ATA/IDE hard drive I don't like to use it for live data until it has been running on test for a while. But how long is sensible for this test period? At a usage pattern of 10 hours a day for the hard drive, would this period be three or four days? A week? Three weeks? Mostly what I hear about is situations where the drive is bad right at the start, or works fine for at least a few months. Unles you hear strange noises coming from the drive right away it's unlikely you'd benefit from an extended burn-in of a few days to weeks. There isn't really much you can do beyond keeping it cool and using a decent power supply, but if you're that concerned about it then run a Raid mirror. If wouldn't hurt to check the drive with the manufacturer's diagnostics right after installing it, and using a disk scanner to do thorough write/read tests for a few pases, but otherwise all you can do is replace the drive by the time it's expected lifespan has elapsed, which used to be 3-4 years, though that might've changed by now. Dave |
kony wrote:
On Thu, 23 Oct 2003 12:09:21 +0100, Mark M wrote: I would guess that the failure curve of a hard drive is much like that for a lot of electronic equipment. It is probably a sort of wonky "U" shape. If it fails then the drive is likely to fail quite early on in its life. After it passes this period then it is more likely to fail after some years as it gets older. Does anybody know approximately how long this period is of relatively high risk of early failure? This must vary from one model of hard drive to another but, very approximately, after what period of time would it be? I may be wrong but I would guess there is a bit of a "knee" in the shape of the reliability curve where the risk of failure changes. If I get a new ATA/IDE hard drive I don't like to use it for live data until it has been running on test for a while. But how long is sensible for this test period? At a usage pattern of 10 hours a day for the hard drive, would this period be three or four days? A week? Three weeks? Mostly what I hear about is situations where the drive is bad right at the start, or works fine for at least a few months. Unles you hear strange noises coming from the drive right away it's unlikely you'd benefit from an extended burn-in of a few days to weeks. There isn't really much you can do beyond keeping it cool and using a decent power supply, but if you're that concerned about it then run a Raid mirror. If wouldn't hurt to check the drive with the manufacturer's diagnostics right after installing it, and using a disk scanner to do thorough write/read tests for a few pases, but otherwise all you can do is replace the drive by the time it's expected lifespan has elapsed, which used to be 3-4 years, though that might've changed by now. Dave HDs seem to have MTBFs of ~1 MHrs or so; roughly ten years. Other than infant mortality (the steep end of the bathtub curve), PC HDs are usually replaced long before they fail, since few folks keep a PC for a decade. -- Cheers, Bob |
Mark M wrote in message ... I would guess that the failure curve of a hard drive is much like that for a lot of electronic equipment. It is probably a sort of wonky "U" shape. If it fails then the drive is likely to fail quite early on in its life. After it passes this period then it is more likely to fail after some years as it gets older. Does anybody know approximately how long this period is of relatively high risk of early failure? This must vary from one model of hard drive to another but, very approximately, after what period of time would it be? I may be wrong but I would guess there is a bit of a "knee" in the shape of the reliability curve where the risk of failure changes. If I get a new ATA/IDE hard drive I don't like to use it for live data until it has been running on test for a while. But how long is sensible for this test period? At a usage pattern of 10 hours a day for the hard drive, would this period be three or four days? A week? Three weeks? The short story is that while that bathtub effect is certainly seen, it isnt a lot of use for a particular new drive, even if you have the full stats the manufacturer has for that particular model, with one they have been producing for a few months etc. You've basically just got to recognise that the risk is unquantifiable higher and that you should be fully backed up anyway with the stuff you'll slash your wrists if you lose, because you might be the sucker that ends up with the 1 failure in 10K that fangs you on the arse etc. Fortunately hard drives are now so cheap that you can afford to have full backups of what is essential, and full image backups or RAID for convenience on hard drive infant mortality too. You should also consider running continuous protection like PowerQuest's V2i Protector. |
In my view, the statistics don't mean very much. If a hard drive fails
early, it is still under warranty. As for failing late, it will. |
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