Stress Testing Hard Drives

[Billy Crook]

I think they should lable hard drives with their halflife.

On 6/26/07, Geoffrion, Ron P [IT] <Ron.Geoffrion at sprint.com> wrote:
>
>  MTBF is a measure of certainty.
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ron Geoffrion
> 913.488.7664
>
>
>  ------------------------------
> *From:* kclug-bounces at kclug.org [mailto:kclug-bounces at kclug.org] *On
> Behalf Of *Billy Crook
> *Sent:* Tuesday, June 26, 2007 11:45 AM
> *To:* Jonathan Hutchins
> *Cc:* kclug at kclug.org
> *Subject:* Re: Stress Testing Hard Drives
>
> There's nothing quite as reassuring as uncertainty.
>
> On 6/26/07, Jonathan Hutchins <hutchins at tarcanfel.org > wrote:
> >
> > I think the only thing that stress testing a drive would do would be to
> > move
> > it closer to it's failure point.  Either that will be early, in which
> > case it
> > might possibly happen while testing, not quite as early, in which case
> > it
> > will happen just after installation instead of a week after
> > installation, or
> > it will be later in the drive's life - in which case it will just happen
> > a
> > bit sooner than it would have.
> >
> > About the only use I can see for this would bet to stress test a few
> > examples
> > of a certain model of a drive to failure, and see what the MTBF is.
> >
> > There are also environmental factors to consider.  Testing the drive in
> > an
> > open, bench-configured computer really doesn't give you any information
> > about
> > how it will perform in a closed case sandwiched between two other hot
> > drives.
> > This is one reason that some manufacturer's well intentioned MTBF
> > estimates
> > are inaccurate.
> >
> > Frankly, throwing it off a high building seems just as informative.
> >
> > If you can write a pattern to the drive and it passes fsck, and you can
> > repeat
> > this two or three times, that is going to be about as good a test as you
> > can
> > usefully perform.  A drive that will function that well is an
> > unpredictable
> > distance from failure.
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> >
>
>
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