Re: PATA/SATA Disk Reliability paper

[Al Boldi <a1426z@gawab.com>]

Mark Hahn wrote:
> > In contrast, ever since these holes appeared, drive failures became the
> > norm.
>
> wow, great conspiracy theory!

I think you misunderstand.  I just meant plain old-fashioned mis-engineering.

> maybe the hole is plugged at
> the factory with a substance which evaporates at 1/warranty-period ;)

Actually it's plugged with a thin paper-like filter, which does not seem to 
evaporate easily.

And it's got nothing to do with warranty, although if you get lucky and the 
failure happens within the warranty period, you can probably demand a 
replacement drive to make you feel better.

But remember, the google report mentions a great number of drives failing for 
no apparent reason, not even a smart warning, so failing within the warranty 
period is just pure luck.

> seriously, isn't it easy to imagine a bladder-like arrangement that
> permits equilibration without net flow?  disk spec-sheets do limit
> this - I checked the seagate 7200.10: 10k feet operating, 40k max.
> amusingly -200 feet is the min either way...

Well, it looks like filtered net flow on wd's.

What's it look like on seagate?

> >>    Doe anyone rememnber that you had to let you drives acclimate to
> >> your machine room for a day or so before you used them.
> >
> > The problem is, that's not enough; the room temperature/humidity has to
> > be controlled too.  In a desktop environment, that's not really
> > feasible.
>
> 5-90% humidity, operating, 95% non-op, and 30%/hour.  seems pretty easy
> to me.  in fact, I frequently ask people to justify the assumption that
> a good machineroom needs tight control over humidity.  (assuming, like
> most machinerooms, you aren't frequently handling the innards.)

I agree, but reality has a different opinion, and it may take down that 
drive, specs or no specs.

A good way to deal with reality is to find the real reasons for failure.  
Once these reasons are known, engineering quality drives becomes, thank GOD, 
really rather easy.


Thanks!

--
Al