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From: Andy Botterill on 23 Dec 2008 12:49 Martin Gregorie wrote: > On Tue, 23 Dec 2008 14:55:45 +0000, Andy Botterill wrote: > >> Nix wrote: >>> Not that harmful. Most desktop-class drives are only rated for ten >>> hours or so of operation a day, so they're meant for daily shutdown. >>> >>> Server-class drives are rated for more (and cost more). (They're also >>> designed to handle the extra vibration that comes from running near >>> other drives, and so forth.) >> How do I find out what the grade of a hard disk is? When I next do an >> upgrade I'd like to select something server class like. My Linux system >> is left on 24 hour a day. Andy > > I'm currently running a bog-standard WD Caviar 3.5" drive that's been > running 24x7 since September 2005. According to SMARTD reports its temp > fluctuates but nothing else changes apart from the usage counter. I have two hard disks both Seagate Barracuda 7200. I have just turned on the smartd monitoring of both hard disks. The whole system is about 6 months old so I wouldn't expect any issues at the moment. > > Possibly more to the point, there are a range of Enterprise 2.5" drives > from WD and others that may be the sort of thing that Nix means. Their > selling point seems to be high duty cycle and lower power consumption > than 3.5", so you can pack a lot more into a rack without cooling > problems. I have more disk space than I need at the moment. However when I get to the later stages of my home project any unreliability will be bad news. > > For that matter, you'll pay 173 quid for a WD Velociraptor 10,000rpm 300 > GB drive compared with 38 quid for a WD Caviar 7,200 rpm 320 GB. Both are > SATA-300 3.5" drices, so it would be interesting to know if the extra > cost of the Velociraptor means its going to last a lot longer. > >
From: Martin Gregorie on 23 Dec 2008 15:10
On Tue, 23 Dec 2008 17:49:21 +0000, Andy Botterill wrote: > > I have two hard disks both Seagate Barracuda 7200. I have just turned on > the smartd monitoring of both hard disks. The whole system is about 6 > months old so I wouldn't expect any issues at the moment. > You're right - now. Don't forget the "bathtub reliability curve" that applies to most electronic equipment. This predicts that kit is most likely to fail when its brand new and again when it is quite old. IOW, if it survives its burn-in and isn't physically damaged it should give good service until it is old enough for solder to oxidise, semiconductor dopants to migrate, electrolytic capacitor electrolyte to dry out, etc. At this stage failure probabilities will start to rise. -- martin@ | Martin Gregorie gregorie. | Essex, UK org | |