Google Disk Failure Analysis Offers Drive Crash Insights
Tue Feb 20, 2007 12:28PM EST
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Over the weekend, Google released an interesting study of hard drive failures on its network. After all, the company has about 100,000 of the things lying around. And sooner or later, they crash.
Google did a lot of work analyzing those crashes, and there's good news and bad news about that: The good news is the company released all the information about the crashing to the public. The bad news: It's in the form of a 13-page document written for scientists and researchers, and there's no real digest available for the average reader. (Here's the full document, in PDF form.)
Well, I guess that's why I'm here, right? Here's what the study had to say about hard drives, in a nutshell.
- Drives fail all the time, even brand new ones. (Drives one year old or younger had an annual failure rate of about 6 percent. That means about 1 of 17 new PCs will have a dead drive within a year.)
- Once drives hit two years old, the failure rate really starts to ratchet up.
- Extremely high temperatures can lead to excessive failure rates, but only for older drives. In younger drives, the survey found that excessively cold temperatures can be a bigger problem. Overall, the old tenet that high temperature is a critical factor in drive failure can't be verified.
- SMART data (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) can be useful in determining whether a drive is going to fail. Up to 30 percent of drives that indicated SMART errors eventually failed, and the probability of crash gets worse and worse the longer an "erroring" drive is left in service. That said, many drives exhibit SMART errors at some point in their lives.
- Google didn't break out drive failures by brand or capacity. Boo!
In the end, the study found that SMART data was the best at determining whether a drive would fail soon. How do you monitor SMART data on your computer? There are many inexpensive tools available, but S.M.A.R.T. Monitor 2.1 is free. Get it here (you'll have to scroll about 2/3 of the way down the page). Give it a whirl, but remember, about half of all drives that fail don't display any problems at all before they croak. Back up, back up, back up!
Comments on Google Disk Failure Analysis Offers Drive Crash Insights
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2 Posted by josiahb217 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:41PM EDT Report Abuse
There is a very good reason as to why they crash. I can't believe that they never thought of it. I'm not saying it here though so somebody can be famous. Sorry!
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3 Posted by odonnellron on Thu Sep 3, 2009 7:43PM EDT Report Abuse
i have a 6 month old dell desk top i think its a dimension e310.what are the odds of my hard drive crashing tks ron roessr@charter.net
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4 Posted by dfrazier1957 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:42PM EDT Report Abuse
Once smart states a crash is coming, can you do anything to prevent the crash--software fix-it or something?
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5 Posted by nostechnologies on Thu Sep 3, 2009 7:41PM EDT Report Abuse
Most common brand that crash are Seagate and Maxtor. POST 1- If the PC is for school ONLY than buy a branded one. Much easier when comes to the warranty part. Gamer PC is actually for peoples who know their stuffs and I mean not just reading reviews and stuffs. A lot of money is needed to tweak here and there. Post 2- HD have moving things which eventually will fail. No one will be famous as a result. Post 3- If you read what this post is about than you should know what your odd are right? Post 4-If SMART detects a bad hd than start saving up for a new one.
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6 Posted by gayewelton on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:06PM EDT Report Abuse
I obediently went and downloaded SMART Monitor 2.1, but being a newbie computer dummie, I couldn't understand what any of the data meant. I started reading about SMART monitors online, and it seemed that a lot of other freebies were a lot more understandable than the one I had downloaded. So now I have downloaded PassMark's DiskCheckup instead. It will estimate a date for system failure (N.A. in our case) and along with all the stats, also simply says OK if each attribute is OK.
1 Posted by iatotola on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:22PM EDT Report Abuse
Hi Chris, I really don't have a comment, it's more of a questionare. I hope you don't mind. It won't take very long and it's right up your alley (I think!) 1. What would you do, Build your own computer or have one from a supplier? 2. What do you think is the benifit of your decision? 3. Depending on application what is your best pick for a "gamer" or a "office pro"! This is for school and I would greatly appreciate your feedback. Thanks for your time Chris.