Hi Jez
> Conventional wisdom states that the more you use your hard drive --
> or, for that matter, the hotter your hard drive gets -- the more
> likely it is to crash. That certainly sounds plausible, but is it
> true? According to Google, the answer is a resounding "NO!"
It is still yes for heat and harddrives, it should be pointed out that
all of googles HD's in there server farms have good ventilation,
therefore harddisk failures from heat are going to be very minimal
to start with but we all know what you can do with stats dont we :-)
Heat generated from harddisk bearings in relation to the stepper
motor that keeps the platters rotating is not a good thing over a
period of time, thats a fact already established by the HD
manufacturers. I could give a rather lengthy discourse on the
subject from research papers, as well as my 25 years experience
(gosh, its been that long !) working with PC's, Mini's, and harddisk
arrays but I'm sure we have better things to talk about.
Upshot is however that as long as a harddisk is in a position
of good airflow to dissipate the heat generated from the bearings,
and the airflow isn't hot to start with, heat should not be a factor
in harddisk failures.
As to when a harddisk will fail from lack of heat dissipation is very
much a game of chance but fail it will, and my experience tells me
it will be a lot sooner than later depending on the temp of the bearings
and the length of time.
Put a harddisk in an enclosed box with no airflow or heat exchange
mechanism and see how long you can keep you finger on the bearing
mount near or under the PCB on the bottom of the harddisk :-)
I would also bet that the harddisk, if powered down after a week or
two of this, will not power up again, if it lasted that long. It's all relative
in relation to heat and bearing freeze.
The subject is still sort of on topic as you can use HD's in the E500 ;-)
Cheers
Ian Manners
http://www.comkal.net/
Open Source means "curtains" for Windows.
==============================================
List usage info: http://www.zuikoholic.com
List nannies: olympusadmin@xxxxxxxxxx
==============================================
|