RE: upgrade advice / Disk drive failure rates - real world

["Max Waterman" <davidmaxwaterman@fastmail.co.uk>]

On Thu, 18 Dec 2008 13:14:27 -0600, "David Lethe" <david@santools.com>
said:
snip
>
> So aggregate walk-away
>  - Keep disks in 36-42 degrees C for maximum life up to year 2, where
> they should be run cooler.
>  - New disks are 5x more likely to die in first 3 months with high vs.
> low workload.

I wonder if you can use this fact to make drive which are more likely to
fail later, actually fail sooner.

I'm thinking that I could run my new drives in a fridge for a month or
two or three - if they fail, I'll return them, else I can be more sure
they'll last their expected life and not give me any trouble.

Does that make any sense?

Also, I see people recommending enterprise disks, which makes me think
that those same people have forgotten what the 'I' stands for in 'RAID'.
Of course, 'inexpensive' is relative - probably to one's income and it
seems some people are paid more than others....it almost suggests we
should have another acronym - RADCD - redundant array of dirt cheap
disks. :)

Max.