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

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."

Comments

Re:The average person

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

new recommendations for drive health also out.

[nimbius]

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.