Stress Testing Hard Drives

[Jonathan Hutchins]

On Tuesday 10 July 2007 10:19:44 pm Jack wrote:

> the best bet is to buy a pair or three, do frequent
> backups, don't run 24/7, occasionally mirror to a
> spare.

While I agree that there's little point in stress testing a drive that's going 
to be used, I find some of your other assertions would be a lot more credible 
if you cited some references for them.  I have had SMART monitoring catch a 
drive that was starting to go bad, and I am reasonably certain that there are 
certain classes of hard drive that do receive better quality control than the 
commodity drives we get at BestBuy or through the local OEM suppliers.

That said, you can't simply rely on price or the fact that a drive is SCSI or 
sold as a "server drive", you need to know what is actually done by the 
manufacturer to provide improved reliability.

As far as running 24/7 though, I really have to disagree there.  For 99% of 
electronic devices, the greatest stress they undergo is at start-up, where 
cool, idle parts are spun up to speed and temperature, and surges of 
electrical and magnetic force apply physical stresses to the components.

In about 20 years of maintaining PC's, I've seen more component failure, 
including hard drives, in systems that were switched on and off every day 
than in ones that ran 24/7.

Good, tested restorable backups are the only way to be sure.