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Hardware

What's Worse for Hard Drives: Heat or Vibration? 146

Posted by Cliff from the light-em-on-fire-and-shake-things-up dept.
gottabeme asks: "I turned on my computer the other day and all of a sudden the BIOS said the S.M.A.R.T. status was "Bad: backup and replace." The drive has continued working in PIO mode (instead of DMA) long enough for me to get a new drive and copy everything over. When I finished copying and put the new drive in the cage where the old one was, I realized that the fan at the front of the cage which was keeping the drive cool to the touch was causing a fair amount of vibration to be transferred to the hard drive. The other 7200rpm drive without a fan was pretty warm, but had no vibration at all. The bad drive is only a few years old, and I've never had a drive fail on me in around 10 years of computer use, until now. And until I got this case and drive I'd never had a fan blowing on a drive before. Who knows what caused the problem, but all this has made me wonder: Which is worse for a hard drive? Heat that's fairly warm to the touch, or constant vibration from a case fan right next to it? Any readers care to offer their experiences and knowledge?"
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What's Worse for Hard Drives: Heat or Vibration? More

What's Worse for Hard Drives: Heat or Vibration?

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  • Vibration is probably the worst (Score:5, Informative)

    by stevew ( 4845 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @03:30PM (#5211115) Journal
    Vibration is probably the worst enemy to the drive since it can send the head crashing into the drive surface. Modern drives have a pretty high shock rating, but this is substantialy reduced if they're operating. Even then they are considerably better than they were even 5 years ago.

    That being said - head is more an issue for the drive electronics than it would be for the physical drive.

    Summary - drives have moving parts - they wear out for lots of reasons. Vibration and heat should be avoided to prolong their service life.
    • IMHO, I don't see how fan-induced vibration can cause a head to go crashing into the platter. It's just not significant enough to do this. A good swift kick on the other hand can certainly do some damage. A good swift kick on your computer can, too.

      That's not to say that fan vibration is not a problem. It indeed may be. The vibration, though small, won't have enough displacement to crash a head, but it could be enough to induce excess wear on the bearings in the drive. This in turn could cause the platters (or the head) to wobble or bind, eventually leading to seek errors, even a head crash. (Think: if the platter's wobbling, the data's physically not where it should be.)

      But no, fan vibration won't directly cause a head crash.

      Probably the best solution is to look for a smooth-running fan and shock mount it.

  • Vibration (Score:4, Informative)

    by TheCrimsonUnbeliever ( 638597 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @03:31PM (#5211117) Homepage Journal
    Vibration is the killer - knocking heads about all the time - Heat is something that can be bad - but only in extremes (70 C+)

    Move the fan - Or screw it in better to kill the vibration
    • "Or screw it in better to kill the vibration"

      In many cases that just couples the vibration to the chassis better. However, if the fan is vibrating the hard drive severely enough to cause damage then there is something wrong with the fan.

      • Damned if I can remember what they are called right now - been up too long for that - but they are like rubber washers on crack. Using them to mount fans will significantly reduce vibration.

        Of course, if you have the time, you can use this same principle to isolate the drive, or drive cage, from the chassis.

        Doing this could not only reduce the vibration experienced by your drives, but you can probably reduce noise.

        Sorry for the vague post.
      • Vibration definitely is the killer here. Most people just screw in their drives with 2 screws. Everyone who can install a hard drive should have enough brains to figure out that it needs to be as secure as possible.

  • Heat vs. Vibration (Score:2, Interesting)

    by david4286 ( 73213 )
    In one of my computers with relatively low ventilation, the relatively old (only 4-5 years) harddrive is in perfect condition. However, in my newer computer, things weren't as perfect. I have a fan on one of the drives (rather loosely conneted, open to vibration), which recently began to malfunction.

    However, I believe that the cause of this was overwork and stress on an old and rather weak drive. Have you recently put excessive stress (such as copying entire file systems) on the drive? In all, it seems that heat hasn't played a major factor in disrupting quality in my experiences.

  • Silly question (Score:3, Informative)

    by MerlynEmrys67 ( 583469 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @03:36PM (#5211142)
    What is stopping you from replacing the fan, replacing it with a low vibration replacement and then you have low heat, AND low vibration.

    The other thing is newer drives seem to be quite a bit more prone to failure than drives even 5 years ago, don't know if that is because of cost reduction, or higher speeds

    • Certainly true. In my ten years of computing I've had... let me count... 1...2 drive failures. That's out of maybe a dozen drives. The ones which failed had capacities of respectively 8.6Gb and 4Gb.

      Since the 8.6Gb one I don't trust single hard drives as a reliable storage medium anymore (ie I backup all my mp3's onto CDs). Daniel
      • 2 failures out of 12 drives? That's a 16% failure rate - no small number!
        • yeah no joke. Those aren't good stats. I have been working with computers for 12 years and have gone through numerous drives (more than I can count), and I think my stats are a good deal lower than that. The only ones that ever crash are the work-horse ones. But we expect them to crash every so often. I have rarely ever seen a standard computer users drive fail (unless it was because of old equipment). It seems to me we can expect around 3 or so years for hardware after that your chances of failure are high.
          • Well, maybe I'll be lucky in the future as I've used up my statistical bad luck for the next 10 drives at least :-P *hopes*

            Daniel
    • Well my case is an Antec SX830, and the fan mount in the hard drive cage is just a plastic snap-in holder. It sure is convenient, but perhaps in the end it's not as good as screw-in mounting. It doesn't hold the fan tightly, so it's a lot easier for it to vibrate.
      • Sounds like you need to modify the fan mounting. You could make up little brackets, or just use hot-melt glue on it. Hot-melt glue is usually strong enough to hold things but weak enough to be peeled off.
  • I don't think that either of those should cause any problems.

  • Solution: Don't use front fans (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tuxinatorium ( 463682 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @03:48PM (#5211219) Homepage
    A single 120mm fan, or two 80mm fans in the back, in addition to the power supply fans, are enough to provide plenty of air circulation and keep everything well below temperature tolerances, unless your case's front ventilation passages suck. I don't understand why the heck people try and put 5 or 6 loud fans in their case to drop the operating temperatures from 34 degrees to 30 degrees when the damn things were made to operate up to and above 50 degrees.

    PS: For those who can't grasp the obvious, yes, I'm talking celcius here. The Imperial system should be abolished because it's so damn inefficient to work with. But that's another rant for another day.
    • It's common knowledge that for hard drives, temperature and drive life are inversely proportional.
      • >It's common knowledge that for hard drives, temperature and drive life are inversely proportional.

        On a logarithmic scale, I certainly hope. Otherwise, why did the 10 year old Full Height SCSI server drive I dug out of the old parts bin at my college work, considering parts of it outputted enough heat to burn me?

    • My drives are cooled by 3 small (40mm) fans right in front of the drive itself. It's a mounting bracket for 3.5 inch (88.9 mm) drives to fit in 5.25 inch (133.35 mm) drive bay and includes the fans in the bracket assembly. The temperature drop on these is enormous, going from "can't touch for more than 2 seconds" to "can hardly tell if they are on". It's more like a drop from 70 degrees (158 F) to 20 degrees (68 F). Fortunately the vibration is quite small (can only hear it, not feel it) and I haven't had a drive die in these assemblies, yet (9 drives total across 5 machines going 3 years now).

      • Well, in my Antec SLK3700 case, there's constantly a 5mph breeze blowing past the hard drives, with just one 120mm back fan plus the power supply and some good vents in front. If your case doesn't get enough ventilation because the vents aren't big enough, make them bigger :). No reason to add to the noise with a front fan.

        • The problem is the cases are too small and don't even have a place to put a fan in the back. And even then, there would be the problem that there are too many holes in the front which are not in front of the drives.

    • Give me a break. The metric system is a system of measures designed by committee.

      Celsius temperatures are just a hack to make it easier for people to switch from the standard systems.

      If you are going to be a measurement elitist, go all the way and add 273.16 to all celsius measurements.

      PS For those who can't grasp the obvious, yes, I'm talking Kelvin here.
      • Shall I point out that the SI (what is most frequently meant by "metric") uses Kelvin and not Celsius?
      • I think his point is that most of the world does not use Imperial measurements, and the scientific community definitely does not (with some exceptions, of course), so why is it still around?

        The Celcius scale is more straightforward than the Farenheit scale, while the Kelvin scale is more tedious to work with. If you need a really stable scale that won't change appreciably in different environments then Kelvin is the scale of choice.

        Hence, for accurate measurements & calculations we use Kelvin but for everyday work, ie. "reflux solution at 120degC", we use Celcius. Another reason no one in science uses pounds/ounces or feet/yards because it is easier to work with units that follow a base 10 system.

        And what is the problem with having a system of measures designed by committee? That doesn't mean that there isn't good reasoning behind most of the choices!
        • The thing is, it's extremely easy to convert from celcius to kelvin and back (just add/subtract ~273 degrees) because the units are the same order of magnitude. Thus, it is perfectly acceptable to define both scales as standards. To conver from Celcius to Farenheight however not only involves addition and subtraction, but also converting the magnitude of the unit (1 deg. F != 1 deg. C).

          As for all the other units, using imperial is just a boneheaded and stubborn refusal to accept a more universal and practical system.
      • Give me a break. The metric system is a system of measures designed by committee.

        Much like a blind pig sometimes finding an acorn, sometimes committees get things right. Or do you think that making an inch dependent on the size of 3 seeds (why 3? why not 1, 2, or 5?) and making a foot 12 of those (why not 10? why not 14?) and a mile based on 52xx of those is the only logical why to do it? The metric system's advantage is that it is based on easily remembered numbers (water freezes at 0, boils at 100), and on powers of 10. The only reason it seems hard is that we aren't taught it when we are kids, so we try to translate it as we go.
        • Yeah, that's what I hate about the imperial system: too many superfluous and pointless units, all having different conversions to the next larger unit. It's a lot more complicated and less efficient to work with than metric. Ex: ton = 2200lbs, lb=16oz, oz=42grains? Volume-- hogshead = 55 gal gal=4qt=8pt=16cup cup=16fl.oz fl.oz=4?Tbsp Tbsp=3tsp and I can't even remember how the hell you convert cubic inches to fluid ounces, if there is even an integer conversion, which I doubt. There's no systematic approach to it. All the units and conversions are arbitrary and trivial.
          • The customary system has much more convenient units than the metric system...

            The rigidity of the metric system leads to absurd units... a cup is like 253 mL, 1/3 of a liter is 333 mL, etc...

            The units may seem trivial, but really make intuitive sense. a foot is roughly the length of a man's forearm. customary units are designed to be divided or cut into fractional parts. people think in terms of "one-half" or "two-thirds" not .33 or .4

            • The customary system has much more convenient units than the metric system... The rigidity of the metric system leads to absurd units... a cup is like 253 mL, 1/3 of a liter is 333 mL, etc... The units may seem trivial, but really make intuitive sense. a foot is roughly the length of a man's forearm. customary units are designed to be divided or cut into fractional parts. people think in terms of "one-half" or "two-thirds" not .33 or .4 I don't think many people are dumb enough to have trouble converting fractions to decimal, i.e., 1/3 L = 0.333L = 333mL. And the coversino from cups to mL is irrelevant because all conversions between different systems of measurement come up with weird numbers like that and if we were all using metric it wouldn't matter anyway. Try converting a cubic yard into gallons in the conventional system... it's a pain in the ass. There are no easy to remember equivalents for converting from cubic distance units to volume units in that system. But in metric it's extremely easy because 1ml = 1cm^3 and all the unit conversions are base-10 (so you don't have to memorize a whole lot of bizarre and unsystematic ones like 1 mile = 352 rods, 1 rod = 3 yard = 9 feet = 108 in
            • The rigidity of the metric system leads to absurd units... a cup is like 253 mL, 1/3 of a liter is 333 mL, etc...
              and the use of both systems at the same time yields to planetary probes losses and all (zillions USD worth)
      • I'm glad Tuxinatorium used metric and celcius measurements, because they're all I know. I don't see why I should learn a measurement system that's only used in UK & USA just so I can participate in /. discussions. I don't know why duffbeer703 thinks it elitist to use measurements that most of the world understands. Maybe duffbeer703 was trolling.
    • My hard drive (formerly hard drives) is mounted right behind a ~5" high-speed fan at the front of my 4U rack case. (I got it not so much because it was rackmount as because it was aluminum and quite large meaning no straining to get my large hands into tight spaces. Rackmount was just bonus.) However, the disk itself is in a removable cage which holds it sideways (both for space considerations and for airflow) and the cage has rubber isolation between it and the rest of the chassis.

      Keeping your drive at room temperature significantly extends its service life. This is why people make cases like this.

  • I'm sure it depends on the drive and situation, but think of it this way. Would you want your data that's spinning round-n-round at 7200 RPM hot to the touch, or would you want it vibrating, possibly throwing off the constant spinning? I'd say fan be damned, keep it still.

  • My experience has been heat (Score:4, Informative)

    by Zeio ( 325157 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @03:52PM (#5211238)
    My experience has been that heat causes more problems over the long haul. Also, any time a hard drive is at an angle from level that isn't 0 or 90 degrees that is very bad. As far as vibration goes, I usually make an effort to fasten the drive firmly to the case (use all 4 screws), so like a seatbelt, this would prevent the hard drive from vibrating much unless the whole case it vibrating.

    The new Cheetah 15.3 drives are double the density per platter, faster, give off less noise and dissipate less heat then previous generations. Less heat dissipation is the most impressive attribute moving forward. Any time you do see fast server drives implemented by vendors or in storage cabinets you notice the ventilation is superior, and that they suggest operating them in environments under 80 degrees F. (I prefer 72, low humidity).

    The asics and electronics on the drive probably like cold temperatures rather than low vibration, and the speed of the platter's rotation created a gyroscopic effect meaning you would have to jar the drive well beyond the specified maximum (hard drive manuals list a maximum G shock while in operation). If you are vibrating the dive out of the specified limits, most likely a conservative figure, you are essentially intentionally trying to damage the disk.
    • Also, any time a hard drive is at an angle from level that isn't 0 or 90 degrees that is very bad.

      I agree! I once mounted a 40GB drive 180 degrees (in the last possible space in a small case) instead of just buying a new case. It died in about a month, I presume due to the grease settling the wrong way, and no longer lubricating the bearings, indirectly increasing the heat.

      So these days, I won't mount a hard drive at 90 degrees either. It's worth $60 for a new case, to ensure they are mounted at 0 degrees.
  • Vibration is something you may want to avoid as much as possible. Heat isn't such a problem with disks IMHO. You might have to worry though if you live in a country where environmental temperatures are 30 or more degrees C.

  • trick question (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 02, 2003 @03:59PM (#5211269)
    Trick question... heat is vibration.
  • Which is worse for a hard drive? Heat that's fairly warm to the touch, or constant vibration from a case fan right next to it?

    Leakage of inert gas inside. A well-made drive can endure heat and vibiration you mentioned, but it can't stand a single day after its gas leakage(can live a week if the leakage is not severe).

    The cause of it might be extreme mishandling, but most of the case is the faults in the manufacturing process.

    • Re:My take (Score:3, Informative)

      by unitron ( 5733 )
      There is no inert gas inside a hard drive, it's just plain ol' air, albeit extremely clean air. Hard drives have a vent (which is a filter with extremely small holes) which allows the air pressure inside and outside of the drive to remain equalized.
      • >Hard drives have a vent (which is a filter with extremely small holes) which allows the air pressure inside and outside of the drive to remain equalized.

        Hmmm, I guess there are two types of drives then. A former supervisor of mine flew an experiment on a NASA U-2. The drives had to be in a pressure box, even though we were still a ways from the vacuum of space. The problem was that the HD's cases would bulge, just enough to screw up head tracking.

        • Re:My take (Score:2, Informative)

          by plsander ( 30907 )

          It is the lower of density in the atmosphere.

          Remember, HD heads "fly" above the platter -- if the air pressure (density) is too low, the head does not produce enough lift and will crash.

          Most HD specs will list an altitude or pressure range where operation of the drive is supported.

    • There is no 'inert gas' inside a HDD that can leak in or out. Essentially all consumer HDDs operate in normal air at normal atmospheric pressure. (The HDD even has a breather that allows in filtered air from the outside, so that the drive can equalize with the external pressure. Manufacturers vary, but the filtering typically comes from a paper filter and/or a "maze" (like the lines at Disney World) that impedes the flow of dust and particles into the drive.) The motion of the heads combined with the Winchester effect tend to sweep any particles that do get into the drive toward the outside edge of the platter.
    • Inert gas leakage! I'll have to remember that one. Ranks right up there with the Magic Smoke and Sand-Fleas-In-The-Network-Cable stories!

      ...you were just being facetious, weren't you?

  • Heat or Vibration? Neither! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @04:11PM (#5211326) Journal
    5400 RPM drives -- avoid both the heat *and* vibration problems.
  • ...but I would think vibration would be worse. The drive heads sit very close to the surface of the platters, like, less than the thickness of a human hair IIRC. Heat could be bad, but the level of heat you are talking about (warm to the touch) I don't think is going to hurt anything. What you really have to worry about heat-wise is if it is HOT to the touch, so you cannot comfortably hold your finger there for an extended period of time. I know that in the case of vibration, it depends on the direction of the vibration. If it is paralell to the platters, it is not as bad as perpendicular to the platters. If the vibration is enough to cause the heads to contact the platters (head crash) then it would be quite bad indeed. However, it is more likely that you simply had a defective drive, that would have failed anyway.

  • RAID. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 3-State Bit ( 225583 ) on Sunday February 02, 2003 @04:15PM (#5211351)
    Ever since those big drives started dropping like flies (IBM ones I think? It was all over slashdot) I vowed that if my primary computer ever becomes a desktop system again, it will have at least mirrored RAID. (I just mean raid-0).

    I've had way too many hard drives fail in my lifetime. (Three).

    And I'm only 19.

    What a sad, sad, world.

    So, yeah.

    • Re:RAID. (Score:2, Informative)

      by Hex4def6 ( 538820 )
      Raid 0 is not real Raid. That doubles the speed of data transfer, by using 2 HDD, and pretending its one. You probably need Raid 0+1, which has speed benefits, and redundancy. It means of course 4 HDD, all identical...

      • Raid 0 is not real Raid

        Umm, that is completely false. RAID(Redundant Array of Inexpesive Disks) has multiple levels (1-7), multiple combinations(1+0 or 0+1), and all of them are valid RAID configurations by definition.

        That doubles the speed of data transfer, by using 2 HDD, and pretending its one.

        BTW: You can use any number of disks(implementation specific) and do RAID 0 (I have 4 disk RAID 0 sets at work).

        You probably need Raid 0+1, which has speed benefits, and redundancy. It means of course 4 HDD, all identical

        RAID 10(1+0) is better because you stripe the mirror sets instead of mirroring the stripes. You can have only 1 drive fail in a 0+1 scenario (one disk fails and the mirror fails over to the other stripe). In a 1+0 scenario you can have 2 drives fail (as long as they are on different mirrors).

    • I do not mean to be picky, but RAID-0 is not mirrored. RAID-1 is mirrored.
    • If you have raid-0, you will have an awful surprise the next time your drives fail. ;)

      Unless you can restore your volume somehow, you will lose all the drives that are raided together, since, surprise, you have absolutely no redundancy.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • i was going to look it up, but figured, whatever. I've only ever done raid-5, with various numbers of disks (3-5, but only at work). i thought I remembered that raid-0 meant "not really raid" in terms of the idea that you get no speed increase, only redundancy. i.e. I thought I remembered the mnemonic: raid-0: Not really RAID, just mirroring.

        Rather, it means "not really raid" in terms of, it's not actually (r)edundant -- you only get a speed increase (from striping) without redundancy. (Obviously,t his interpretation makes more sense than my lapse in memory).
        Because I didn't stop for a second to look up my usage (as, obviously, I would before building a raid configuration), no fewer than FIVE people corrected me (no one wrote anything else) on this one number (writing zero for one), including one who said that my bad luck is surpassed only by my stupidity. (Not knowing that MIRRORED raid is raid 1 and STRIPED raid is raid 0, off the top of your head, you STUPID goddamn MORON. I hope you get FIRED for your gross INCOMPTENCE. YOU, sir/madam, are a professional LIABILITY.)

        Yeesh.

        So, yeah: I love slashdot.

        I love you I love you I love you.

  • Don't worry about either (Score:4, Informative)

    by KevinIsOwn ( 618900 ) <herrkevin@@@gmail...com> on Sunday February 02, 2003 @04:42PM (#5211486) Homepage

    The problem probably was niether vibration nor heat. Harddrives are made so that they can withstand high g-forces. Some review sites have said you could throw a harddrive against a wall while it is running and it would be fine. How true this is, I don't know, but I know fan vibrations are no where near large enough to cause a problem. While continued fan virbrations theoretically could be bad, fans don't vibrate all that much. I've used fans missing fins (don't ask!) that virbrate like crazy and never had problems (Not for long though, I generally replace those with non-broken fans)

    Heat is one of those things computer geeks fear most. We all want to get it as low as possible. Well let me tell you a little something about harddrive heat: Unless you have a drive spinning at 10,000 rpm or higher, you really have nothing to worry about. If HDD's weren't meant to withstand a bit of heat then you would be hearing about a lot of unhappy customers. My hdd's are warm to the touch, but that is fine, they are well within the limits. Now if it burns your finger when you touch it, then you are probably going to be having problems with all the other components in your computer as well.

    Harddrives die. And they die often. If you haven't had one die in a long time, then you have been very lucky. I've had 3 drives die on me in the last 2 years. Granted 2 were IBM Deathstars, the third was a different brand. They weren't all that hot and they did not have any fans vibrating near them too much either. They just die, HDDs are not as reliable as many of us would like. (Can't wait for solid state hdd's :) )

    If you decide that everything I have just said is crap and want to take the paranoid way out, that's fine! You know what they say: Better safe than sorry!

    So here's what you should do:
    1. Get some grommets for that fan. They will reduce fan vibrations to practically nothing. They'll also make the fan quieter too! You can pick these up from PCMods: http://www.pcmods.com/details.asp?ProdID=20 [pcmods.com]
    2. Get a HDD cooler. They will cool your hdd a lot more than a fan that's blowing air over it will. While I'm at the pcmods site, I might as well link there. If you shop around you will probably find better prices. Lower end cooling solution: http://www.pcmods.com/details.asp?ProdID=46 [pcmods.com] Higher end: http://www.pcmods.com/details.asp?ProdID=452 [pcmods.com] (Even has an LCD!)

    I just want to stress this again: You don't NEED these two products unless you have an ultra-fast SCSI hdd. Your hdd should be well within its limits with some small vibrations and a bit of heat. But if you want to spend some money, I'm not about to stop you!

    • Some review sites have said you could throw a harddrive against a wall while it is running and it would be fine.
      .

      Well, they're dead wrong. I kicked a computer about 2 weeks ago while it was turned on. One of the hard disks failed, ended up with lots of bad sectors, plus it lost all the data we had on it. So no, they won't be fine, altough at least it wasn't rendered completely useless.
      • No kidding. I had a hard drive fall off the top of a computer once while it was running (carelessness). $4000 later, we got the data back on CD-ROM...
    • (Can't wait for solid state hdd's :) )

      Then they wouldn't be called disk drives, now would they?

      • They would revert to the old IBM name - Direct Access Storage Device (DASD).

        • Actually DASD were not solid state (3350's and 3380's sorry I cannot remember any other models). Typically, they came in one of two flavours, mountable and non-mountable (mountable meant you could change the media/diskpack). The non-mountable group was broken down into two sub-catagories. The first was fixed-head and the second mobile-head (sorry I cannot remember extacly what the IBMism was).

          The non-mountable devices were/are very similar to todays harddrives. A stack of magnetically coated platters accessed via electronic heads. The fixed-head group offered remarkable performance as there was NO armature required to move the head to the correct track. Instead the device was built with one head per track. This resulted in only rotational latency. Even as 3600RPM devices, they offered concurrent access that is only approached today by RAID configurations. One the down side, they were VERY pricey and most likely consumed the same energy as a clothes dryer.

          So this brings up the question, what would cost to produce a low-RPM, fixed-head harddrive for todays PC's? Given todays storage densities, it would seem the cost of the control mechanism required to correctly position the head must be a significant portion of the cost of the drive.

          • So this brings up the question, what would cost to produce a low-RPM, fixed-head harddrive for todays PC's? Given todays storage densities, it would seem the cost of the control mechanism required to correctly position the head must be a significant portion of the cost of the drive.
            That sounds about right, considering the 10 EUR difference between a 60 and a 120 G drive in the same brand/series ;-)
    • (Can't wait for solid state hdd's :)

      One of the serious problems that solid state storage has is that the transistors which hold the data lose their capacity to store information after a few hundred thousand writes. So sorry, to date, hdd's are more reliable.
  • Turning the system on and off all the time is bad as well. Power surges for the device powering up and also shutting down. I had a Seagate 15K rpm Cheetah that recently took a dump. No special filtering, no real cooling scheme to speak off. It ran for 4 years almost to the day. Then during a load of windows, it said bye-bye. Found out the motor crapped out.

    IMHO, I don't think that the conditions drives are subjected to in everyday home computers will make that much of a difference. It would take continued extremem heat or continued extreme vibrations to really affect the drives perfomance or longevity. The vibrations from an 80 mm fan would not be enough to really be a determining factor. Might be ancillary but I don't think so.

    • Turning the system on and off all the time is bad as well.

      Well, your half right. IDE drives are designed for MANY power on/off cycles (as the typical home or office PC is turned on and off at least once a day) but not for continuous operation. SCSI drives on the other hand are designed for continuous operation, and NOT for many power on/off cycles.

      I had a Seagate 15K rpm Cheetah that recently took a dump. No special filtering, no real cooling scheme to speak off. It ran for 4 years almost to the day. Then during a load of windows, it said bye-bye. Found out the motor crapped out.

      I'm willing to bet it's because you turned your PC on and off each day, and you didn't have adequate cooling. The original 15k cheetahs were DAMN hot and without active cooling, they ran above the manufacturer's operating spec. Remember, SCSI drives are designed to be in Servers where noise is not an issue, and they expect to be cooled with fans! And before some AC jumps in with a "your full of crap!" post, I'm a data storage engineer for a large storage vendor so I know what I'm talking about.

      Your 15k cheetah BTW should have a 5 year warranty. Not sure if that was voided because you probably overheated it or exceded it's rated number of power on/off cycles.
      • Actually, my systems run 24/7. I do my best never to turn them off. Thanks for the info on the warranty. I will check seagates site. I thought 4 years was pretty darn good for a hard drive. Another question: Is running IDE drives 24/7 bad for them when, as you say, they are designed for multiple power on/off cycles?

        • Another question: Is running IDE drives 24/7 bad for them when, as you say, they are designed for multiple power on/off cycles?

          I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's bad for them, however the motor in most IDE drives is not as robust as the motor in most SCSI drives is. This is a significant portion of the additional cost of a SCSI drive (the more robust motor).

          In your specific case, the motor probably crapped out due to heat. Newer drives using the fluid bearings produce less heat (and noise) but the 4 year old cheetah's have standard ball bearings. I use the Lian-Li aluminum PC cases for all 3 of my home PC's (which BTW have a mix of 10k and 15k SCSI drives - no IDE for me) due to their dual cooling fans in front of the drive bays. Even when packed with 15k drives, these fans keep them cool to the touch. (I have no affiliation with Lian-Li other than being a pleased customer.)

          Heat really is a big enemy of 10k and 15k SCSI drives since they run so warm. Have a look at large enterprise storage solutions from HP, IBM, EMC, or Sun. They have dozens of very loud noisy fans blowing many many CFM of air over the drives. I used to work for Compaq/DEC and the drive carriers in their enterprise storage systems had been revised several times as faster drives became available over the years. The reason for the revisions was to provide a better cooling solution to cope with the increased heat of the faster spinning drives.

          Just my personal experience here with keeping drives cool: I currently have 12 drives (10k and 15k) that I keep powered on 24/7. I've had these running for a little over two years now, and not a single failure. I attribute this partly to the good cooling that they all receive.

          Good luck!

  • Hammers. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by stienman ( 51024 ) <adavis@@@ubasics...com> on Sunday February 02, 2003 @05:55PM (#5211866) Homepage Journal
    Definitely hammers.

    Aside from hammers, though, heat and vibration, taken together, cause serious problems.

    The systems I work on, however, have to deal more more heat than vibration. Badly made hard drive motors, such as those in late model Fujitsu hard drives, create ton of heat - you would burn yourself on them if they didn't have a fan.

    If your drives are below 60 degrees celsius (hot, but you won't get burned) then you really don't need to worry about heat.

    Vibration is not nearly an issue with today's computers as it was when items were socketted to printed circuit boards and connectors were manufactured to loose tolerances. Now everything is soldered, and if it isn't soldered it uses a tight connector that requires forces measured in kilograms to remove.

    Vibration is rarely an issue. Even in a hard drive where magnetic and air forces keep the head microns away from the platter, vibrations are still measured in G's - not fractions of G's. Prolonged constant vibrations can cause increased wear and tear, but not by a lot. In order to make an operating hard drive crash it's heads with the vibration of a fan, you'll have to attach it to the equipment tie down point of an industrial cement kiln fan, and attach a 50lb weight to one of the blades at the edge. Even then, I'd bet on the heads not crashing before the fan bearings break. You're piddly little fan is no match for my flying head air bearing technology!

    So, in short, take care of the heat first, but only if it's very hot. Don't worry about warm. If your fan is vibrating then it needs to be cleaned. If you've cleaned it and it is still vibrating, get a new fan - they aren't expensive.

    If you're playing the cost tradeoff game then you're playing it wrong. When the question is "What's cheaper: a new vibration free fan, or replacing my hard drive every other year..." the answer is always the new vibration free fan.

    Lastly, expect new hard drives to last exactly the length of their warranty, regardless of how you treat them. The profit margin for hard drives today is so thin that it's not worth making one that will last longer than the warranty.

    -Adam
    • Now everything is soldered, and if it isn't soldered it uses a tight connector that requires forces measured in kilograms to remove.

      But force isn't measured in kilograms, it's measured in newtons!
    • > In order to make an operating hard drive crash it's heads with the vibration of a fan, you'll have to attach it to the equipment tie down point of an industrial cement kiln fan, and attach a 50lb weight to one of the blades at the edge.

      Attention case modders: I believe we have a challenge. *g*

  • I've seen here [mp3car.com] where people have mounted desktop hard drives on their side to avoid the read/write heads from banging against the drive platter.

    Laptop Hard Drives?

    What kind of a hard drive configuration would you use in automobiles?

    Just curious,

    -- Joshua

  • Don't forget to run SpinRite [grc.com] on the drive (after replacing or otherwise dealing with the fan), you might get a few more years or sectors out of tha sucka. [SpinRite, as you probably know, can magically transform bad sectors into good ones.]
    • Great, if you use FAT or FAT32. If you use NTFS, Linux FS's, etc, SpinRite won't work. You'd have to move all your data off the drive or partition in order to use SpinRite. $90 for a program that won't do anything but FAT seems a bit much nowadays.

  • Personal Experience (Score:4, Informative)

    by JWSmythe ( 446288 ) <jwsmythe@nospam.jwsmythe.com> on Monday February 03, 2003 @03:15AM (#5213770) Homepage Journal
    Well, here's what I've learned from personal experience. I've bought no less than say 300 drives over the last few years, for servers and workstations.

    We'll start with what lives longest.. Machines that we have in our colo's, kept under 75 degrees F, and they are very rarely moved. Some of the machines don't have physical interaction for over a year at a time. These live virtually forever.. We've had less than 1% failure rate over 5 years. We've retired more, simply because they're no longer big enough for our purposes, rather than because they've failed.

    We recently shipped 20 of those old drives from New York to Los Angeles, via FedEx. They were all working at the time they were shut off, and packed in a shipping crate. I've only tested 4 so far. 2 were completely dead.. One wouldn't spin up. The other spun, but "knock"ed, and was completely worthless. The other two worked fine. So, the physical abuse of just being shipped was enough to kill them.

    Now, consider the drives that haven't been in nice colo conditions. Some have been in offices where the staff seems to think 80 degrees is cold. At 80 degrees F, we have something like a 25% failure rate over 1 year. 25% of the machines will have a drive failure in a year. I can only name off two machines in that environment that haven't had a drive failure in 5 years, one of them being an extraordernarly cooled case (6 case fans, plus 2 small fans on each drive).

    In one environment, the staff insisted on keeping the temp at 90 F.. This was mostly because they knew the machines would fail at about 90 F, and they didn't have to work if their workstations crashed. Funny, that business went bankrupt.. Besides over a 30% drive failure rate, they also managed to cook the rest of the parts rather randomly. Motherboards would simply stop working, power supplies would get toasted, and CPU's with good CPU fans would just drop dead.

    In a computer store I worked in, when Quantum had first released their "BigFoot" drive series (5.25" wide, and maybe .5" thick), they were shipped to us as OEM parts in large boxes. There was formed sponge foam around them to keep them seperated. The shipping department would receive them, and pull them out two at a time. If we heard them "clack" into each other (it's a distinctive sound), we could pretty much guarantee the drives were both dead. Poor Quantum, they got so many RMA's from that store on those. I think we only had a 50% survival rate. They were nice drives though, in the fact that you could stack 4 of them in two 5.25" bays.

    There are always the rare exceptions that are always quoted as fact. One guy would tell everyone about how he has a machine with a SCSI drive running for 10 years, with no fans at all.. Ok, but it's not very good statistical sampling. A sample group of one doesn't show much.. Over hundreds, we get a better picture.

    So, yes, keep your drives cool.. If you don't, it will have a shorter life span.

    Don't shake your drives.. Hard impacts (less than 2" drop is enough) can destroy it, either damaging the controller board, or bumping the heads into the platters. The space is rather small (see the discussions a few months ago about removing the tops of hard drives. Smaller than a piece of dust). Constant vibration can have the same effect as a good impact. Harmonics can be evil.. Just ask any aircraft engineer.
    • Those Bigfoots had a pretty bad reputation all around. I think I have the last known working Bigfoot drive, a 4 gig model. I just retired it a couple weeks ago, but only because I needed more disk space in that computer.

      (I remember reading a computer column where the author said something along the lines that every time she had any computer problem, everyone always attributed it to the Bigfoot drive, no matter what the problem was!)

      --RJ
  • Once, years ago, I was lazy and only mounted a hard drive with one screw. It vibrated like crazy, and died after about 9 months. Thank goodness for those 5 year warentees :-P.
  • I have hard drives go bad for only one reason: shock. I work with hundreds of rack mounted systems, many which overheat, and I get RAM and circuitboard problems a lot because of it... but I have only lost a hard drive due to physical vibration or shock, and we're talking hundreds of them.

    I just lost an almost-new 60GB Deskstar because the power screwdriver I used to mount it slipped, and spun into the drive with a hard smack (one of those 1 in million chances). Six bad sectors. Hard drive utilities identify it as physical damage. I have also dropped a drive here and then in my years, and while most of them worked fine afterwards, the only ones that didn't were attributed to a recent jolt right after it was proven to work fine. Even the old MFM drives.

  • Which makes me wonder, why not install heatsinks on hard drives? They shouldn't be getting *really* hot to begin with, and being that many old CPU's only needed a heatsink, a hard-drive should be happy with that.
    With an angled heatsink, you get dissipation without vibration - enough that the internal circulation of the case should be able to take care of the rest.

  • Superstitions (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2003 @10:21AM (#5230747) Homepage
    Drives fail because the interactions of the marketplace and the technology seem to have equilibrated on drives that are cheap and unreliable. The failures occur for a variety of reasons. Some are known to the manufacturer but won't be disclosed to you. Some are _discovered_ by the manufacturer (bad batches of parts) and _certainly_ won't be disclosed to you until so many fail that it becomes a public scandal.

    From the end-user's point of view, it's all random and there's not much that can be done about it.

    You can't convince me that a well-engineered drive has such a thin margin of safety that it will have a long life at 70 degrees and fail frequently at 80 degrees. (If temperature is that much MORE critical for drives than for other components, then why don't PC's have better cooling systems and overtemperature warnings? And why are they designed to let drives be mounted in close proximity to each other?)

    You can't convince me that a drive that is doing so many seeks that it is making fizzing, buzzing head-seeking noises most of the day, creating its OWN vibrations) is going to drop dead because the fan next to it isn't vibration-free.

    Because the mind abhors a knowledge vacuum, we all create our own superstitions about drive life. OUR drives won't fail because WE (pick one) a) keep our systems powered 24 hours a day to prevent power-on stress, b) religiously turn off our systems when not in use to keep down operating hours, c) open the case and vacuum out dust and clean air filters every 60 days, d) NEVER open the case because it's human handling that does the mischief, etc. etc.

    Don't blame the victim. Drives just fail and it's not your fault.

  • Oranges.
  • After replacing an IBM 60GXP series drive with a Seagate Barracuda V, besides eliminating the last high-pitch noise generator in the PC I noticed that the sides of the midtower case vibrated less, I assume due to the layer of sound dampening foam inside the drive package, with a major assist from the fluid (?) bearings. I guess the lesson is that things spinning at high RPMs need replacement or something to compensate for their speed?

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