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Are Newer And Faster IDE Drives Troublesome?

Posted by timothy on from the what's-the-real-spin dept.

viperjsw writes: "Earthweb is running an interesting article on how there seems to be a failing trend in newer 7,200 RPM IDE hard drives. I am the lead hardware engineer for my co with four thousand 7,200 RPM ATA100 Maxtor and IBM hard drives. I have not seen any failure trends, though failure rates are at about 5-10%. Are Earthweb's reports verifiable?"

4 of 48 comments (clear)

  1. heat and noise problems by crow · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm not sure about failure rates, but heat and noise can be problem with the faster drives. That's the general consensus among people upgrading ReplayTV and TiVo units. Granted, that's a special case where the extra speed is of no value, whereas acoustics are very important. Anyway, the point is that you don't get the extra speed for free.

  2. IDE Disks in General by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    For enthusiasts (and anyone serious about reliability and speed), to lovingly configure a high-end Pentium 4 or Athlon system and then throw a bunch of IDE devices in it is absolute idiocy.

    I've learned the hard way to cut corners somewhere else if you have to, but always buy SCSI drives.

    I would take a Pentium 100 with SCSI disks over any Athlon/P4/whatever system with IDE disks. Spinning faster may make IDE disks fail sooner, but they're going to fail sooner anyway. The rule of thumb, I've found, is generally true: IDE drives are shoddily engineered, slow, and prone to failure. You get what you pay for.

    SCSI disks aren't perfect, of course, but I would never trust anything important (much less a server of any significance) to IDE disks.

  3. I want last year's model by hamjudo · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I want last year's model, but not just any year old model. I want a model that has had a low failure rate.

    Where would I find reliability ratings for disks?

    Actually, for me, two year old models should be fine. 40 Gbytes is way more than I need for most of my systems. But, I want a new drive, not one that's been sitting on a shelf for 18 months. An old drive probably has some new failure modes, hardening of the lubricants or something.

  4. HDD failure due to mounting angle by E-prospero · · Score: 3, Interesting

    On a somewhat related note, does anybody have any experience with drive problems resulting from the physical mounting of drives at unusual angles (i.e., at a 45 degree roll or pitch, rather than horizontal or vertical)? Should one expect higher failure rates, or lower drive lifespans, as a result of unusual mounting arrangements?

    Manufacturer specifications always state that drives must be mounted horizontal or vertical, but who ever pays any attention to the manufacturer.... :-)

    Similarly for CD and DVD drives - are there any potential problems with mounting these drives at an angle? I have played around with mounting drives at angle; the drive trays etc seem to work fine when the drive is on an angle, but it is difficult to test long term performance or failure likelyhood when you only have one drive to play with.

    The reason I'm interested: I'm working on a case mod, but it looks like I will have to mount the drives at wierd angles to accomodate the case geometry...

    Thanks,
    Russ Magee %-)

    --
    ... and never, ever play leapfrog with a unicorn.