On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 9:37 AM, j debert wrote:

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Neil wrote: | On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 8:01 PM, Manon Metten wrote: |> Hi David, |> |> On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 11:06 AM, David Baron wrote: |> |>> Got my new WDC800 disk up and running, LVM (fantastic tool!). 2.6.26-rt now |>> boots without problems. |>> |>> I have noted that during high disk access rates, the temperature of the WDC |>> soars (from a 33c idle to up to 44c!). Such high temperatures are not |>> desirable. |> |> Quote from Wikipedia: |> |> "A common misconception is that a colder hard drive will last longer |> than a hotter hard drive. The Google study seems to imply the reverse |> -- "lower temperatures are associated with higher failure rates". Hard |> drives with S.M.A.R.T.-reported average temperatures below 27 °C had |> failure rates worse than hard drives with the highest reported average |> temperature of 50 °C, failure rates at least twice as high as the |> optimum S.M.A.R.T.-reported temperature range of 36 °C to 47 °C." |> |> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive |> |> Manon. |> | | Hi | | It is just a single sample, but I have a WD 1600JD disk for 5 years | now. Once, after 1 year or so it was so hot I burned my thumb on one. | It still works perfectly, although I have added an 120mm fan to blow | over my harddisks. | | Neil | |

Note that the Wikipedia article qualifies the assertion by stating the study was done with disks with S.M.A.R.T. so do not think that this applies to all disks.

Every single WD drive of 10Gb or greater capacity I have had has failed. Most just outright fried. The rest fail when "warm". The hottest one, a 60Gb, consistently fails when warm--not hot, despite being sinked and blown better than any CPU. Max temp ever was 45C sinked. New, just out of the bag, it was 76C unsinked and the controller exceeded 100C. It failed after 3 months.

I have never had such problems with Maxtor, Seagate, Fujitsu.

The newer drives do run quite a bit warmer, compared to a ST506. High temperature was a problem for such drives, as was a variable operating temperature, especially as the data density increased. So the thing about high temperature being a problem is not an urban legend but it generally no longer applies to the more recent drives. There is still an upper limit to operating temperature, though.

Purely anecdotal, but we bought 50 or so large drives (500GB+) in May/June for lab work. We used to just connect them up to our lab machines with a sata cable / power and set them on the tabletop next to the computer. We've been doing that for years with no ill effects, but with these 500GB+ drives, we've had a huge failure rate. Maybe 25%. In late August, we changed our practice and built little external disk racks with cooling fans. No failures since then. Greg -- Greg Freemyer Litigation Triage Solutions Specialist http://www.linkedin.com/in/gregfreemyer First 99 Days Litigation White Paper - http://www.norcrossgroup.com/forms/whitepapers/99%20Days%20whitepaper.pdf The Norcross Group The Intersection of Evidence & Technology http://www.norcrossgroup.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org