Massive Google hard drive survey

@ 2007/02/19
Google releases data of their HDD experience:

"One of those we thought was most intriguing was that drives often needed replacement for issues that SMART drive status polling didn't or couldn't determine, and 56% of failed drives did not raise any significant SMART flags (and that's interesting, of course, because SMART exists solely to survey hard drive health); other notable patterns showed that failure rates are indeed definitely correlated to drive manufacturer, model, and age;

Comment from jmke @ 2007/02/22
Quote:
Originally Posted by lazyman View Post
I am in trouble; my Hitachi 160GB SATA is running at 27°C normally and never exceeded 33°C in the last two years. I'd better put a heater there.
no you're not in trouble, averages are just that: averages
Comment from wutske @ 2007/02/22
Quote:
Originally Posted by lazyman View Post
I am in trouble; my Hitachi 160GB SATA is running at 27°C normally and never exceeded 33°C in the last two years. I'd better put a heater there.
You could glue it to your CPU heatsink, keeps the cpu cool and the hdd warm
Comment from Sidney @ 2007/02/22
I am in trouble; my Hitachi 160GB SATA is running at 27°C normally and never exceeded 33°C in the last two years. I'd better put a heater there.
Comment from SuAside @ 2007/02/22
Quote:
Originally Posted by HardFreak View Post
okay, but SMART can't detect everything. It only detects whether your hard disk is wearing out or not. It can't predict a sudden failure.
i wasn't talking about sudden failure and i doubt all the google ones were either.
Comment from wutske @ 2007/02/20
okay, but SMART can't detect everything. It only detects whether your hard disk is wearing out or not. It can't predict a sudden failure.
Comment from SuAside @ 2007/02/19
My hdd's are between 28°c and 34°c with two quiet 92cm fans running at 6V. Cant really put the lower than that (or they wont start)...

As for SMART: indeed, it's not really a good diagnostic tool. I've had 2 defective hdd's lately and both were pronounced in pristine health by SMART.
Comment from jmke @ 2007/02/19
not quite, as without active HDD cooling I see temps between 45-50, which is where the failure rate gets higher in the charts; most HDDs with active cooling are between 30-35... almost perfect
Comment from Rutar @ 2007/02/19
that pretty much kills the business of harddrive coolers
Comment from jmke @ 2007/02/19
Quote:
We first look at the correlation between average temperature
during the observation period and failure. Figure
4 shows the distribution of drives with average temperature
in increments of one degree and the corresponding
annualized failure rates. The figure shows that failures
do not increase when the average temperature increases.
In fact, there is a clear trend showing that lower
temperatures are associated with higher failure rates.
Only at very high temperatures is there a slight reversal
of this trend.
interesting data! The colder the HDD, the higher the failure rate, sweet spot for HDD temps seems between 35-40°C; between 15-30°C the failure rate is noticeably higher


Too bad they don't include company names & drive models...