Couple of disk drive war stories from the short time I worked at Intel:

They were shipping a server system with a 4-drive raid.  Before
shipping, that system had to pass a 24 (or 48?) hour burn-in test.
Because of the 2-3% disk drive failure rate, up to 10% of the systems
were failing, and then having to go thru the test process with new
drives - production was backing up in test.  They had hired a disk drive
guru who had HALT tested hundreds of drives to select the best one.  He
assured management that all the drives considered had approximately the
same 'industry standard' failure rate and that changing disk drive
suppliers probably wouldn't change anything.

Against his advice, management finally blew up and ordered a disk drive
change anyway.  The new drive was smaller capacity, slower access, cost
more,... And wound up having the same failure rate.  The disk drive guy
quit.


On another occasion they were having an inordinately high disk drive
failure rate; well above the regular 2-3%.  Drives were delivered to an
Intel warehouse, and then shipped to the production floor as needed.
They tried an experiment of having the manufacturer delivering directly
to the production site.  The failure rate went back to 'normal'.

Gary







> -----Original Message-----
> From: piclist-bounces@MIT.EDU 
> [mailto:piclist-bounces@MIT.EDU] On Behalf Of Apptech
> Sent: Saturday, February 23, 2008 10:53 PM
> To: PIC List
> Subject: [EE]:: Hard Drive failure rates
> 
> Some first year hard disk failure rates from a desktop PC 
> seller
> 
>     
> http://storagemojo.com/2007/04/05/finally-some-drive-model-fai
> lure-numbers/
> 
> Numbers after drive type are quantity in sample and dead 
> drives
> 
> A "safe" conclusion is failure rates in the 2% to 4% range 
> can be expected overall and that your single drive may have 
> a 100% failure in the first year.
> (You could guesstimate that it has about a 1:30 chance of 
> 100% failure in the first year but that's pushing the data a 
> little.
> 
> Whatever, it certainly shows that backup is needed if you 
> value your data.
> 
> I have here two x Seagate 320 GB Barracuda 7200.10 drives. 
> Both failed in about a year. One is mine and one is a 
> friend's. Mine MAY possibly have some photos with no copy 
> elsewhere, and may not. My friends has (or had) valuable 
> business data on it. Both drives seek forlornly every few 
> seconds forever. In both instances, swapping the on board 
> controller card for a known good one does not alter the 
> behaviour. Anyone had any experience of this type of fault 
> in this model of drive.
> 
> ____________
> 
> Hard Drive Model# of UnitsFailure %
> Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 250GB SATAII    280    3.21%
> 
> Seagate SATA Barracuda 80GB    271    2.58%
> Western Digital SATA Raptor 74GB    592    2.03%
> Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB SATAII    202    1.98%
> Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 160GB SATAII    265    1.89%
> Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 80GB SATAII    403    1.74%
> Western Digital ATA100 80.0GB WD800JB    290    1.72%
> Western Digital SATA Raptor 150GB    278    1.44%
> Total # of drives    2581    2.05%
> 
> 
>         Russell
> 
> 
> -- 
> http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
> View/change your membership options at
> http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist
> 

-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist