Stress Testing Hard Drives

[Jonathan Hutchins]

On Tuesday 26 June 2007 04:56:40 pm Phil Thayer wrote:

> What happens with the disk drive manufacturers is that they will test
> the HD as part of the last step in the manufacturing process.  They will
> classify them as to their reliability.  

So 'splain to me, if the only way to tell how long a drive is going to last 
before it fails is to run it until it fails, how exactly are they testing 
them?

You may hope that the drives certified for SAN have a tighter quality control 
standard, but it's not reliability testing that's used to classify them.  
That's done strictly on a sample basis, not on each piece.