Google has issued a paper on the reliability of certain types of hard drives named Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population. Engadget sums up the study via Slashdot saying the following:

• Studied a hundred thousand SATA and PATA drives with between 80 and 400GB storage and 5400 to 7200rpm
• 56% of failed drives did not raise any significant SMART flags
• Patterns showed that failure rates are indeed definitely correlated to drive manufacturer, model, and age
• Failure rates did not correspond to drive usage except in very young and old drives
• There is less correlation between drive temperature and failure rates than might have been expected
• Drives that are cooled excessively actually fail more often than those running a little hot

Related Topics: Google: Other

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz

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