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Study Finds That Humidity Has More Effect On Drive Failures Than Temperature (rackcdn.com)

Posted by timothy on from the yeah-but-it's-a-non-dry-heat dept.

AmiMoJo writes: A study by Rutgers University and Microsoft has found that hard drives are more prone to failure due to high levels of humidity [PDF] than high temperature. With a view to 'free cooling' data centres (using low external air temperature for cooling to save power), the paper notes that humidity related malfunctions of the driver controller / adapter are the dominant cause of drive failure. The good news is that while the researchers found that high relative humidity was a significant factor in drive failures, "[S]oftware availability techniques can mask them and enable freecooled operation, resulting in significantly lower infrastructure and energy costs that far outweigh the cost of the extra component failures."

85 comments

  1. The average person by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    and their drives would benefit more from just turning the computer off at night or when they leave home, instead of letting it run 24/7 which is the common thing to do.

    1. Re:The average person by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I don't believe the average person does that, so I doubt it's the common thing to do. I don't know anyone that leaves their computer on 24/7

    2. Re:The average person by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      and their drives would benefit more from just turning the computer off at night or when they leave home, instead of letting it run 24/7 which is the common thing to do.

      The average person and their drives would benefit more from just letting their computer run 24/7, instead of turning it off at night or when they leave home which is the common thing to do. Disk defragmenting, software updates, and the like are nice to do when the computer has idle time. And drives spin down when not in use anyway. The constant warmer temperature reduces heating/cooling stresses and prevents condensation.

    3. Re:The average person by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      I do both. On even days, I leave it running 24/7. On odd days, I shut it off when not using it. Best of both worlds.

    4. Re:The average person by Tx · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yeah, and that has a huge effect on the hard drives in those smartphones ... oh, wait.

      --
      Oh no... it's the future.
    5. Re:The average person by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The average computer user I know uses a laptop, not a desktop, and they close the lid at night.

    6. Re:The average person by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That would depend on your geographical area. I do shut down my computers at night and most people I know do. No need to throw money at my electrical utility needlessly.

      Plus I shut my laptop down more often than I suspend (the hard drive encryption would be useless otherwise if it gets lost or stolen).

    7. Re:The average person by Tx · · Score: 1

      At least you're marginally more relevant talking about servers than you were with you smartphones comment. However the OP said "The average person and their drives would benefit more from just turning the computer off at night or when they leave home". I've highlighted the words that should give you a little clue that we're not talking about servers here.

      --
      Oh no... it's the future.
    8. Re:The average person by castionsosa · · Score: 1

      With power suspend technology, SSDs, CPU cores shutting parts off when not in use, and other power management abilities, it really doesn't make that big a difference. For example, Macs and most laptops will suspend after a period of time idle by default. Even on, a machine doesn't take much power, especially with modern SSDs where it has no moving parts that need to be powered other than a fan or two.

      In the past, with CRT monitors and 5.25" HDDs that sucked up a large amount of power spinning the disks, it was a different story, but these days, there is a diminishing returns between powering everything off versus just letting the box suspend/idle.

    9. Re:The average person by Tx · · Score: 1

      Would you like a shovel, so you can keep digging? Nobody is saying that there aren't plenty of computers that are on 24/7. The point that the OP made, which you seem determined to miss, was that those machines that are not on 24/7, would benefit from being so. It's a really simple point, and I can't really restate it using smaller words than that. We're all aware of the existence of smartphones, and servers; they just aren't relevant to the thread.

      --
      Oh no... it's the future.
    10. Re:The average person by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The average drive spins down after a couple minutes idle, so how does it matter?

    11. Re:The average person by Coisiche · · Score: 1

      On even days, I leave it running 24/7.

      Er... surely just 24? If it's shut down on odd days then that's not even 24/2.

    12. Re:The average person by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not parent/OP here. Couldn't care less about your/OP rambling tirade... but am here to sign up for the free shovel.

    13. Re:The average person by Hussman32 · · Score: 1

      I think this is very common. I have my music library (Sonos) and network drives running all the time.

      --
      "Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
    14. Re:The average person by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I guess I'm above average. I done this for many years.

    15. Re:The average person by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My roommate. And I can't convince them that turning it off at night would save on the electric bill :(

    16. Re:The average person by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't believe the average person does that, so I doubt it's the common thing to do. I don't know anyone that leaves their computer on 24/7

      A NAS box is typically on 24/7. We have three Synology boxes at home.

    17. Re:The average person by MrLogic17 · · Score: 1

      That's odd. I don't know anyone who doesn't leave their devices on 24x7.

      System defaults for power save settings make it a very, very minor thing in the overall household/business power bill.
      For a business, compare the man-hours cost of waiting for computers vs the electrical costs of a low-power mode computer.

      As for life-span, that debate has been going on for longer than the +25 years I've been in the industry. It's so close between the two that other factors take priority.

    18. Re:The average person by Bengie · · Score: 1

      My wife gets pissed off if she has to reload Chrome. Screw OS up-time, she bases her system stability in Chrome up-time. She'll wait until Chrome's update icon color is red for a week before relaunching it. She used to go 2-3 months between rebooting her computer. Window's updates got mighty angry. Now Win10 reboots itselt at night, and I hear about it every time. "omg, my computer restarted! Now I gotta wait 15 seconds for Chrome to load my 50 tabs!". And I'm glad I have a low latency dedicated fiber connection with Level 3 as upstream. Opening Chrome pegs the connection for quite a bit with 50+ tabs. At least I got her a Samsung Pro M2. Freaking 2.5GiB/s and 300k IO/s, and still not fast enough.

      I've spoiled her with good computers over the years. She has come to expect the computer to be instantly ready 24/7. I've been custom building computers since a wee lad.

      What were we talking about again? Ohh yeah. I don't know anyone who doesn't leave their computer on 24/7, even my mom. Computers are appliances and need to be ready at a moment's notice.

    19. Re:The average person by jafiwam · · Score: 1

      This also depends on what type of heating you have.

      I have electrical resistance heating. So leaving lights on, fan on, TV on, computer on doesn't make any difference in my bill at all. The heat generated by those items gets spread around anyway, and makes my resistance heater run a little less.

      During heating season, a complete wash.

      Summer on the other hand, I do turn stuff off more religiously.

      I am using up the MTBF on the items I run though.

    20. Re:The average person by Bengie · · Score: 1

      I have 3 desktop computers running 24/7, and even when I turned them off at night, my $50 electric bill did not change by a statistically significant amount. My electric bill is more affected by the weather or my wife's cooking habits. All of my lights are 10watt LEDs or 12.5watt CFLs, and the 2-3 lights that we run over 80% of the time are the LEDs in our living room with the computers. 80% of my electric bill comes from the stove, clothes drier, and fridge.

    21. Re:The average person by Rising+Ape · · Score: 1

      What were we talking about again? Ohh yeah. I don't know anyone who doesn't leave their computer on 24/7, even my mom. Computers are appliances and need to be ready at a moment's notice.

      Standby mode achieves that, you don't need to actually leave the thing on burning tens of watts. With an SSD you don't even need to wait for the drive to spin up.

    22. Re:The average person by ihtoit · · Score: 1

      my laptop uses 36 Watts at full tilt, 17 at idle. And that's with an external hard drive plugged in.

      --
      Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
    23. Re:The average person by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Can someone support this claim? I leave dozens of drives on continuously, and have something like 3 failures per decade so far. And even on those drives, it's been a relatively small number of sectors, nothing systemic.

    24. Re:The average person by toddestan · · Score: 1

      How many modern OSes actually let the drive spin down? It seems there's always a constant level of some activity going to the drive which keeps the drive always spun up. I suppose in Linux you might be able to put a stop to it with some effort, but in Windows you have no hope. Yes, I know the setting is still there, but I haven't seen it be useful since Windows 3.1.

  2. In Florida... by RabidReindeer · · Score: 1

    You're screwed, either way.

    1. Re:In Florida... by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      Isn't Louisiana considered the most humid US state? (Although, I imagine there's a lot of local variation.)

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
  3. Also, water is wet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Temperature almost inevitably creeps up or down over time, meaning that thermal shock is not happening. Temperature MIGHT cause bearing failures to go up, or bits to flip, but the most fail will come from moisture, because lets face it, water is pretty much the perfect fluid.

    1. Re:Also, water is wet by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 1

      So, what they are saying is, its not so much the heat..........

  4. outweigh the cost of the extra component failures by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    [S]oftware availability techniques can mask them and enable freecooled operation, resulting in significantly lower infrastructure and energy costs that far outweigh the cost of the extra component failures.

    This Slashvertisement brought to you by Seagate.

  5. new recommendations for drive health also out. by nimbius · · Score: 4, Funny

    Based on the recent finding, the IEEE has issued new guidelines to augment its previous best practices on disks...some of these are to be expected:

    1. the classic practice of gently simmering disks in a succulent gravy is being phased out. gravy increases humidity, and its widely expected a dry rub will not only replace this practice in the future but help flavourful juices reach the surface of the drive
    2. RAID arrays should be basted no more than every 25 minutes now, up from 5 minutes. This is partly due to the fact that RAID arrays come infused with a 15% solution of brine. ZFS arrays, as per normal, can be allowed to reduce in their own pools.
    3. caching SSD's are unaffected by this finding. A light egg wash or light coat of melted butter toward the end of the partitions is still advised for best performance.

    --
    Good people go to bed earlier.
    1. Re:new recommendations for drive health also out. by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      Where can I order that Jerk Seagate?

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
    2. Re:new recommendations for drive health also out. by bosef1 · · Score: 1

      I know this is a little off-topic, but for years I've been braising my magtapes at 375 for about an hour per pound. Do the new recommendations mean I really should be doing a high-heat / low-heat type cooking (like for DVDs), or would reducing the temperature and just planning to cook it longer give a more succulent cartridge?

    3. Re:new recommendations for drive health also out. by Zaiff+Urgulbunger · · Score: 1

      Based on the recent finding, the IEEE has issued new guideline

      FFS - my company has just spent the last year designing and rolling out Drive Marination Process (TM), and now you're saying that's out of date?!!!

  6. That explains a lot by houghi · · Score: 1

    I mean Florida is pretty humid, right?

    Yes, I only read the subject, why?

    --
    Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    1. Re:That explains a lot by twmcneil · · Score: 1

      It's only 96% relative humidity right now. Not so bad by Florida standards.

      --
      "The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
    2. Re:That explains a lot by EvilSS · · Score: 1

      A good chunk of the US east of the Rockies is pretty humid in the summer months.

      --
      I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
    3. Re:That explains a lot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's only 96% relative humidity right now. Not so bad by Florida standards.

      Ahh.. Relative Humidity the sweat that forms on your balls while fucking a family member.

      Big media headline: "All porn servers from now on avoid family fucking to increase harddisk lifespan"

  7. Gobi Desert by Flavianoep · · Score: 1

    On the other hard, on the Gobi Desert you get the best of both worlds (as long you don't want to live there). It's a cold desert, so you get low temperatures and low humidity.

    --
    Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
    1. Re:Gobi Desert by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

      on the Gobi Desert you get the best of both worlds (as long you don't want to live there). It's a cold desert

      So's Antarctica.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    2. Re:Gobi Desert by Flavianoep · · Score: 1

      But politics of building in Antarctica for anything other than research is too complicate. To build in the Gobi Desert, one has only to deal either with China or with Mongolia.

      --
      Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
    3. Re:Gobi Desert by Flavianoep · · Score: 1

      *complicated

      --
      Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
    4. Re:Gobi Desert by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So's Antarctica.

      Yes, getting up from your tent and going over to the Jamesway in the morning to find you server covered in a layer of snow is always such an improvement. Of course, you could leave the heat on, but it is harder to fix a melted server than one covered in snow.

  8. Re:That's what I said when she said, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And I thought both humidity and temperature correlate positively with drive

  9. My experience this is true by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I run a server in my basement and have more trouble with its drives then any other computer I have ever owned. I have left notebooks in hot cars, outside in the sun, exposed them to extreme cold too. But my basement always maintains at least a 50% humidity level even with dehumidifier. Its temp remains between 60F in Winter and 70F in Summer. I noticed one day my router was failing and decided to tear in down, and also realized its soldered board was oxidizing badly which most likely caused the failure. I then wondered if that was the same issues with my server? I do think too little humidity can also cause spurious static charges too so you don't want to not have some. maybe its time to rethink what acceptable is in humidity? I always thought below 50% was OK? But maybe below 40% is the sweet spot?

    1. Re:My experience this is true by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I also have a number of 'servers' (really PCs) and various switches and routers in a basement that's humid int the summer. I've very rarely had a drive fail in many years. I wonder if there's something different about the air in your basement compared mine aside from humidity that makes it more corrosive. I have a litter box down there too so there must be constant but low levels of ammonia in the air.

    2. Re:My experience this is true by DigiShaman · · Score: 2

      Yes, relative humidity percentage matters to temp. Meaning, it's ok to have 50% humidity if it's 78F, but not between 60 and 70. So if you can't get rid of the water with an AC system, paradoxically having a higher ambient temp should in theory be better for your drives.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    3. Re:My experience this is true by jafiwam · · Score: 1

      Basements are also where a lot of noxious stuff is stored. A poorly sealed bottle of bleach will mess up a whole lot of metals over time.

      Getting rid of old chemicals or sealing them up better may help a lot. (Also, better air flow might help too.)

    4. Re:My experience this is true by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I can confirm this. I did a controlled experiment where I dropped a HDD in a bucket of water, and the conclusion was that 100% humidity results in a 100% failure rate.

    5. Re:My experience this is true by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you live near the ocean or other salt-water body?

  10. That's actually pretty surprising. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

    What I find rather unexpected about this paper's findings is that higher humidity caused more controller failure, rather than causing more mechanical issues. Yes, the mechanical bits are inside the enclosure with a filter to keep out dust; but they aren't fully sealed(unless new enough to be the helium filled ones) and water vapor will go right through a dust filter. The driver board is outside; but a bunch of solid-state components on a circuit board usually behave pretty well unless they are literally dripping or showing signs of corrosion. Am I just overestimating the reliability of PCBs?

    1. Re:That's actually pretty surprising. by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Am I just overestimating the reliability of PCBs?

      I'm really surprised too, because the drive electronics should be kept plenty warm by the spinning disc, and therefore there should be little or no condensation.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:That's actually pretty surprising. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The paper speaks of the placement to the back of the rack/case as being beneficial in the conditions of high humidity, which is logical as the temperatures should be higher for the disks then. A hypothetical drive with optical connector and encapsulated controller board should not suffer from the phenomenon as much. I wonder how tolerant those Ethernet connected drives are..

    3. Re:That's actually pretty surprising. by swb · · Score: 1

      I would think that the slightly increased local temperature of the drive would actually keep moisture away.

      They sell small heaters (which get no more than warm to the touch) for use in gun safes to keep the inside warm enough to ward off humidity. I have on in my safe and haven't seen any spotting problems on anything.

    4. Re:That's actually pretty surprising. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      Am I just overestimating the reliability of PCBs?

      Yes. I design products that are permanently submerged for a living. Moisture always gets in slowly, even with a metal enclosure and rubber seals. It's a question of how long your PCB can survive before it starts to malfunction.

      The malfunctions due to humidity are quite subtle sometimes. Strange readings, data corruption, things taking longer than expected because some data line is now capacitively coupled to something else. You spend ages looking for the fault and find a tiny spec of corrosion between two IC pins 0.3mm apart. It's even worse with modern no-lead parts, often you can't see anything at all.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    5. Re:That's actually pretty surprising. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      The relative humidity is a little less meaningful that everyone thinks. What matters is the availability of moisture to contribute to the corrosion process.

      Put another way, for a given starting point of temperature and humidity, raising the temperature decreases the relative humidity, but not the absolute humidity. It is not true that warmer air that is less saturated will "suck" moisture from an area with a lower *relative* humidity if the *absolute* humidity is the same. Osmotic influences work on absolute concentration.

      You have to actually remove moisture from the environment, reducing the absolute humidity. Increasing temperature by itself is actually bad, because the environment can accommodate a higher absolute humidity and therefore higher availability of water to contribute to corrosion.

      The best environment for electronics is cool and dry - cool so there is less availability of the atmosphere to absorb moisture, and dry for reasons already discussed.

      -GP

    6. Re:That's actually pretty surprising. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Think a hydrophobic nanocoating on the drive controller board would solve the humidity issue?

    7. Re:That's actually pretty surprising. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The humidity tolerance seems to vary between the disk manufacturers, or is a function of their shipping methods or routes. I use both Hitachi and Seagate drives and the Seagate drives never come in moisture protection bags, while the Hitachi drives always do. The one DOA Hitachi drive had very small holes at the corners of its moisture protection bag.

    8. Re:That's actually pretty surprising. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      Very interesting, thanks, I always appreciate stumbling across someone who actually knows what I'm speculating about.

      Out of curiosity: since you doing arduous troubleshooting of a failed part is presumably not the ideal outcome, I imagine that the answer is 'no'; but are the various conformal coatings and adhesives/potting materials helpful against moisture? Less so than I imagine? Would be very helpful; but cause their own problems with thermal dissipation or wonky capacitance changes?

    9. Re:That's actually pretty surprising. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Conformal coating works wondering against moisture. We don't do it for a few reasons. Cost and the fact that boards become very difficult to repair or even diagnose (can't get on test points easily). Having said that, we have kinda decided that the boards are so small and sensitive now it's not worth even trying trying to fix them, so after testing is done we might start using a cheap coating.

      A metal case, desiccant and good seals is usually enough to get to the 5 year mark without issue though, and that's what we specify for battery life.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    10. Re:That's actually pretty surprising. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      Interesting, thanks. This would probably blow the BoM in a lot of cases; but now I'm curious to try a 'test point extender' to see if I could preserve the test points and us a conformal coating. I'm thinking a gold-plated copper cylinder, same diameter as the test point and slightly taller than the expected thickness of the conformal coating; possibly with a textured indentation located partway up the cylinder(similar to the indentation used in a pulley or belt drive to keep the rope/belt from leaving the center of the cylinder) to give the conformal coating plenty of room to form a good seal with the extender and keep it from being an area of infiltration; and an expendable plug on top of the extender to make re exposing it after applying the conformal coating easy. (I apologize if my explanation is unclear, Slashdot doesn't provide a back-of-the-envelope to sketch things on, which would make this a lot easier)

    11. Re:That's actually pretty surprising. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      The best option is usually to do the testing before applying the coating. Then have some self-diagnostic capability to tell you that the board has failed and needs to be replaced. Forget repairing the board once the coating is on, you just need to know that it requires replacement.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  11. Lead-Free Solder and Humidity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    They do not get along. Corrosion in such a high silver material is easy to accomplish, especially in the presence of a high concentration of water vapor. Fine pitch BGAs are already a fucking nightmare of solderability. Add humidity and the resultant corrosion and you're begging for failures.

    I didn't even need a university study to know that. It has been known in manufacturing for years.

    1. Re:Lead-Free Solder and Humidity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What about components that are running warm? Seems that should drive off moisture. Most active spinning drives I have felt seemed warm enough for that, but maybe energy saving spinning down offsets that?

    2. Re:Lead-Free Solder and Humidity by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      I didn't even need a university study to know that.

      A quick google search will show many university studies done show that lead-free solder has BETTER CORROSION RESISTANCE than the old lead solder. Even wikipedia said alloys containing copper or lead promote corrosion on the joints.

      Also solder isn't a "fucking nightmare of solderability". In fact lead free solder only needs a slightly different temperature profile during the baking process and a change in the flux used and any manufacturer who doesn't have an army of small immigrants in the basement hand soldering will really notice no change in difficulty in the use of lead-free solders.

      Hobbyists notice. Repairers notice. Engineers notice (but only because they need to change component stress equations). But that's about it.

      Maybe you really should read some of those studies every so often.

    3. Re:Lead-Free Solder and Humidity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dammit, I replied this to the wrong post, but here it goes again:

      The relative humidity is a little less meaningful that everyone thinks. What matters is the availability of moisture to contribute to the corrosion process.

      Put another way, for a given starting point of temperature and humidity, raising the temperature decreases the relative humidity, but not the absolute humidity. It is not true that warmer air that is less saturated will "suck" moisture from an area with a lower *relative* humidity if the *absolute* humidity is the same. Osmotic influences work on absolute concentration.

      You have to actually remove moisture from the environment, reducing the absolute humidity. Increasing temperature by itself is actually bad, because the environment can accommodate a higher absolute humidity and therefore higher availability of water to contribute to corrosion.

      The best environment for electronics is cool and dry - cool so there is less availability of the atmosphere to absorb moisture, and dry for reasons already discussed.

  12. You Insensitive clod! by PPH · · Score: 1

    That would ruin my uptime statistics.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  13. Nice research, but too late. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This would have been useful to know 20 years ago. The entire world is switching to SSDs. Even for big data and SANs, the performance and reliability gains combined with the space and power savings are impossible to ignore. The decision is easy.

  14. Desiccant? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    So should I take those silica gel sachets that come with everything, dry them in the oven and put them in my external HDD cases?

  15. Re:outweigh the cost of the extra component failur by Coren22 · · Score: 1

    Yeah, brought to you by the company that has to replace those drives under warranty...sure...

    --
    APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  16. I'm confused by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Are not Winchester drives sealed? Are they not immune to room humidity?

    1. Re:I'm confused by Khyber · · Score: 1

      The controllers are typically not sealed, which means that inherent atmospheric moisture, which would include corrosive stuff like sweat from humans that has evaporated into the atmosphere, etc., would kill those.

      I suspect (without RTFA) that the platters are fine, it's the controller boards, or rather, the solder joints/traces, or poorly-sealed IC packaging, that died over time due to corrosion.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    2. Re:I'm confused by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "... corrosive stuff like sweat from humans that has evaporated into the atmosphere,..."
      Seriously? The only component that would evaporate would be water, and any other elements should remain behind as a dry residue just as with seawater desalinization.

  17. This just in! by Khyber · · Score: 1

    Conductive atmospheric material is bad for electronics.

    Welcome to the EARLY 1990s, where we had already determined this before. Humidity kills most EVERYTHING.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    1. Re:This just in! by 1u3hr · · Score: 1

      1990s?

      Welcome to 1800. As soon as people made machines out of metal, humidity was fucking them up.

      I live in Hong Kong where for half the year we have humidity over 90% every day.

      Everything either rusts, corrodes or goes mouldy. Bicycles turn to piles of rust in a few months. Fungus grows in your crotch. The many and various colours of corroded metals on electronics are marvellous to behold.

  18. Conformal Coating by flyingfsck · · Score: 1

    This is very well known in military circles. They should conformally coat the drive controllers to protect them against moisture.

    --
    Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
    1. Re:Conformal Coating by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are there suitable aftermarket electronics potting epoxy materials to do this yourself? Good thermal transfer is key since the makers were counting on air cooling...

  19. Am I the only one...... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...that read the article title as "Study Finds That Humanity Has More Effect On Drive Failures Than Temperature"? :)

  20. Re:VALD by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 1

    suck my pines 256 colors whore


    "Well if it isn't Mr. Look-at-me-I'm-in-VGA! What'sdis? 256 colors for a little bitmapped wimp? Whatta waste of VGA, har har har!"

    Heh. Nerd elitism is a funny thing.

    --

    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)