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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. 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
  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. 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.