Re: [gentoo-user] smartctrl drive error @60%

[Alan McKinnon]

On 26/06/2014 13:20, Dale wrote:
> Alan McKinnon wrote:
>> My experiences aren't worth much in this case, what I had to deal with
>> was data center setups where - the power has never gone off for 6
>> years - the drives never spin down and just keep on turning year after
>> year - the servers were the nice big ones Dell makes with awesome
>> cooling - the data center feels like a fridge and the ambient temp
>> never varies more than 1 deg - the server power supplies are seriously
>> high grade, the 5V and 12V out of them are solid and do not fluctuate
>> at all Add all this up and it's an almost perfect environment for
>> drives to last a long time. You don't have that, not even close. I
>> have only 1 little bit of anecdotal data: my nas at home has 4 x 3T WD
>> Green drives in it, going on almost 2 years now. My kids hammer the
>> blazes out of that thing, and ZFS scrubs keep it real busy when the
>> kids don't. And those drives just keep on turning and turning and
>> turning, I didn't do anything special. I put it down to statistics -
>> no-one makes bad drives (or cars) these days and I haven't pulled the
>> unlucky card yet. I dunno, go figure
>
> Well, it does make good points tho.  I keep my room here pretty cool.
> It's not as cool as your data center but I have a window A/C and my own
> heater.  I don't mind it being a little cool in the winter but don't
> like it warm in the summer either.  The cooler the better.
>
> I also have the Cooler Master HAF-932 case with those really nice large
> fans.  The hard drives are right in front of the front intake fan.  I
> have a power supply that is really to big for what I have running.  I
> can't recall the brand and wattage just that it doesn't pull near as
> much power as I thought it would.  It pulls less than half what my older
> and much slower puter pulled.  Also, I rarely shut this thing down.  I
> did the other night to unplug/re-plug all the cables but other than
> that, it is usually because I have lost power from the mains.
>
> So, keep them cool, good clean power and leave them running when ya
> can.  Sounds like a plan.  ;-)


You got it :-)

hard drives are mechanical objects, not electronic ones, and they fail
for mechanical reasons. Motors fail, bearings seize, spindle arms wear
out. Transforming magnetic blobs on the platter into binary bits is very
reliable, as long as the head is in exactly the place it is supposed to
be. So the enemies of disks are environmental;

- temperature and humidity changes
- frequent spin ups and spin downs
- dust
- power dips/fluctuations and brown-outs
- being dropped, knocked and generally ubused

etc, etc, etc

Take care of the environmental factors, and statistics fall in your
favour making the odds good you'll get the life you expect




-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@×××××.com