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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?"

9 of 48 comments (clear)

  1. Momentum and heat by Deagol · · Score: 4, Informative
    From what I gather, the speed of the drive has a positive relation to the heat of the drive. I don't know whether it's due to friction (the bearings?) or the power consumed. With increased heat comes a reduction in the life of the supporting electronics. Also, a higher temperature change when powering on and off will mean more wear-n-tear, too.

    Also, with a faster speed, the spin-up will be more harsh on those drives.

    I wonder how the failure rates of 10,000 and 15,000 rpm SCSI drives compares to those of lesser speeds.

    --
    Method of processing duck feet
    1. Re:Momentum and heat by pmz · · Score: 3

      One thing worth considering is the number of power cycles the drive sees. I think the typical installation of a 10K RPM or 15K RPM SCSI drive sees only a few dozen cycles in its lifetime, due to the "power it up and let it go" nature of servers. Real servers also tend to leave some space between the drives in an array, so that each drive is guaranteed some cooling.

      Also, I wonder if cheap drives geared to home users have sloppier tolerances built into them, where some drives are just doomed to fail. For example, I recently bought a cheap 40GB drive that vibrates noticibly (and it worries me), but all the server-grade SCSI drives I've seen run real smoothly (no worries until the bearings start grinding after a few years).

      --
      Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
  2. They have special requirements by stienman · · Score: 5, Informative

    7200 RPM drives run hotter than previous drives, and they must be cooled. Previously people rarely gave a thought to drive cooling, and if they don't take it into account now they will see large failure rates. If your drive is too hot to touch after running for an hour, then you need to cool it off.

    I've been installing 7200 rpm IDE drives into servers and workstations for well over a year now, and the only complete failure I've had was one that didn't work from the start. I've had drive errors crop up from heat (put a fan in, seperate it from other equipment (don't sandwich it between the floppy and zip), etc) and from using a 40-wire IDE cable instead of the ata-100 80-wire cables.

    FWIW, I've used Fujitsu until a few months ago, IBM, Maxtor, and few seagates. They have all been at the lower end of the price range ($99 wholesale - went from 10G to 20G and currently using 40G).

    -Adam

    1. Re:They have special requirements by stienman · · Score: 4, Informative
      You can have any two:
      • Cheap
      • Fast
      • Low to no cooling requirments
      Of course your 7.2k scsi drives run well - first of all you don't put them in cheap, poorly designed cases. Secondly they are not inexpensive, and much of that extra money goes toward making them last longer - one way to make something last longer is to lower its heat buildup.

      Cheap drives cut corners on motors, bearings, and well-engineered cases. So cool fast drives cost more money than cool slow drives or hot fast drives.

      -Adam
  3. This is to be expected by rudy_wayne · · Score: 3, Informative

    Lack of cooling is certainly an issue with 7200 rpm and faster drives. Since installing fans on all my hard drives, the number of failures has gone way down.

    However, there is a more troubling issue:
    How is it that you can now buy a 40 gig hard drive for less than $100? Simple -- the manufacturer cuts corners on quality and cranks them out by the thousands in third world sweat-shops.

    IBM is now putting disclaimers on some of their hard drives, not recommending operating them for more than 8 - 10 hours per day.

    1. Re:This is to be expected by cymen · · Score: 3, Informative

      Go see StorageReview.com's main page... No need to spread FUD.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.
    1. Re:HDD failure due to mounting angle by hamjudo · · Score: 3, Informative
      are there any potential problems with mounting these drives at an angle

      Those drives, no. Some 5 1/4 inch drives needed to be reformatted if you mounted them a different way. All the 8 inch drives were like that. I've never seen a 14 inch drive mounted anyway but horizontal. It would be bad.

      As the disk drive arms get shorter, the less the angle matters. I've never heard of a laptop disk crashing because someone turned the laptop on its side.