Why do hard drives crash??

hertz

Apart from getting wet, static shocks, being dropped why do hard drives crash and fail? Reason I ask is one of my hard drives failed and popped other week for no reason!! Its a seagate 40gig, only 2yrs old. WHY, WHY!!!

hertz

Oriel

I've only had a problem with a 40Gb IBM Desktop (aka "DeathStar"), which got the old "click of death". A friend of mine went through 3 of these disasters in a year.
The main reason for data curruption has to be Windows itself, but I've seen the same thing happen in Linux. Apart from RAM, hard drives seem to be one of the most reliable data storage devices around, even one of the most reliable compoments of a PC.

I guess physical age takes its toal on them too. After doing the same thing, time and time again, something's going to wear away. I'm presuming the actual platters themselves revolve on ball bearings or something?

As I type, I've been waiting on a brand new install of Windows XP to finish a ChkDisk scan of a brand new hard drive (the reason for which confuses me), on which I have everything that is "my life" for the past 6 years. I'm just hoping it's not deleting everything just because it feels like it, or has a hangover or something...

/me crosses his fingers.

po0k

Thermal expansion and contraction during use loosens solder contacts, varies the minute distance between the heads and the platters, causes each to increase and decrease in size and all it takes is for one head to make contact with the surface of a spinning platter to total the drie.
Tbh, you should have a 7200rpm+ drive well colled and left on 24/7 if possible, or at least decent lengths of time between spin-ups and spin-downs.

The thermal expansion/contraction (ie "creep") happens mainly in monitors aswell, leading to dodgey signals, gun mis-alignment and general degrading image quality.

BTW, ram is hardly the most reliable piece of kit in a PC.
expansion boards and the motherboard (and a CPU as long as it's treated right) I've found to last the longest, though in fairness EDO RAM was built like a brick shithouse.
Haven't had a stick die on me yet and I've put some of em though some horrendous abuse.

leeroybrown

All the technical issues aside the main reason that drives fail is that they're highly sensitive piece of equipment that are designed to last approximately 3 to 5 years because anything more is too expensive for the consumer market. Obviously a reasonable percentage will fail before the expected life.

whosurpaddy

Originally posted by SyxPak
Tbh, you should have a 7200rpm+ drive well colled and left on 24/7 if possible, or at least decent lengths of time between spin-ups and spin-downs.

wow. ive never heard that before, so what your saying is long term it can do your HDD damage/make it more likely to fail by powering on and off for short periods of time?

OfflerCrocGod

The're Mechanical.

po0k

whosurpaddy - if you keep flicking a light-switch on and off really quickly do you expect the bulb to be fine?
It's simply an accelerated example of what's happening inside your hard drive/all electronic components.

And like Offlercrocgod said, because they're mechanical they will wear down eventually.

Why do you think SCSI disk cost so much?
They run at 10K/15K+ speeds and have to last for ages while being used and accessed heavily 24/7/365

Duffman

What about laptop HDDs? They're constantly spinning up and down to save power.. Standby and all that..

Capt'n Midnight

Assume 3% of hard drives will fail per year - MTBF figures are for Marketing purposes / don't apply to bad batches / don't apply to real world usage of pc's / ideal conditions with ESB filtering / no vibration or mechanical shock.

Lots of design flaws don't help - burnt out chips on Quantum Fireballs etc. - some problem with terminating resistors on IDE (not scsi !) on some

With very old drives the lubricating oil evaporates.

As technology advances - computers are used more in the design process - so the tolerances are tighter - ie a lot less overdesign than before. -shorter product cycle lifes = "if it works it's obsolete" or by the time they have sorted out the bugs the model is discontinued.

Manu's sell more drives if they fail earlier / cheaper to replace drives than make all to proper quality etc.

People move computers with drives on - heads bounce - like the needle on a record player can scratch the record etc.

Laptops tend to have a higher g rating than desktop drives - they are designed to be transoported by road and used in a train - ie not designed to be used in a car/bus - and defo not designed to take into account Irish roads.

SCSI - lots of drives use the same chassis for IDE - not sure if the heads and platters are different , otherwise the only difference would be the electronics.. (Anyone remember the old ST140's (?) you could get that drive in IDE / SCSI / RLL )

Overall drives used to be more reliable in the days before ISO 9000 etc.

Drazhar

Sunspots, Putting Data on them, the color purple, take your pick. Its just good manufacturing practice that the device you buy can, and will break down, necessitating the purchase of a replacement.

So, what have we learned, Money is the reason that HD's break down. Oh, and the color purple. And dont even mention purple money!!!

unkel

Originally posted by leeroybrown
that are designed to last approximately 3 to 5 years because anything more is too expensive for the consumer market.

Modern drives are designed to last more than 50 years (MTBF 500000 hours, which is about 100 years if you have your pc switched on for an average of 13 hours per day)

Originally posted by Capt'n Midnight
Assume 3% of hard drives will fail per year - MTBF figures are for Marketing purposes / don't apply to bad batches / don't apply to real world usage of pc's / ideal conditions with ESB filtering / no vibration or mechanical shock.

Lots of design flaws don't help - burnt out chips on Quantum Fireballs etc.

Yes presuming you operate the drive normally it is most likely that once it's made it to the end of the warrantee period, it will then last for a very long time

Best not take any chances and back up