Google Issues Paper On Hard Drive Failures

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 […]

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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

About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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