Disk Failure Rates More Myth Than Metric

Lucas123 writes "Using mean time between failure rates suggest that disks can last from 1 million to 1.5 million hours, or 114 to 170 years, but study after study shows that those metrics are inaccurate for determining hard drive life. One study found that some disk drive replacement rates were greater than one in 10. This is nearly 15 times what vendors claim, and all of these studies show failure rates grow steadily with the age of the hardware. One former EMC employee turned consultant said, 'I don't think [disk array manufacturers are] going to be forthright with giving people that data because it would reduce the opportunity for them to add value by 'interpreting' the numbers.'"

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Re:Temperature is the key

[ABasketOfPups]

Google says that's just not what they've seen. "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 the very high temperatures is there a slight reversal of this trend."

On the graph it's clear that 30-35C is best at three years. But up until then, 35-40C has lower failure rates, and both have lower rates by a lot than the 15-30C range.