Alan McKinnon wrote: > 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 >
I think that is one reason I have had some pretty good luck with that. I might also add, I have actually only had one computer that failed. That includes the ones that folks just gave me which is quite a few. Most of them just get to slow to use. The ones I build, I build them like a tank. I put coolers on everything that is even a little warm. My CPU cooler on my current rig is pretty large. Case fans blowing a lot of air, quiet if possible. For this drive that I have going out now to go out, it has to have a issue not related to cooling and such. Unless it was somehow handled badly while being shipped to me, its never been dropped or anything either. This is a desktop, with wheels since it is on carpet, and it rarely goes anywhere. It doesn't get rattled around like a laptop or something. My old rig, AMD 2500+ in a old full tower case still runs good. I booted it a month or so ago. I had a Volcano 11 or 12 on the CPU which is solid copper. I replaced the northbridge cooler with a copper cooler with a fan. The mosfets close to the CPU, I added coolers to them too. It had 5 case fans. It wasn't quiet but it ran cool. The mobo temps were usually just a couple degrees above room temp. CPU never got over 100F. Heck, the CPU in my current rig has never seen 110F. The highest I have ever seen was 107F and that was when I was compiling and had power to blink just enough to cut off my A/C for a hour or so. Maybe I need a UPS for my A/C too. :-D It seems the best thing WE can do, good power, good cooling, don't drop it and keep backups. I went back through the error logs and found this: Jun 12 23:30:36 localhost smartd[2688]: Device: /dev/sdc [SAT], 104 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors Jun 12 23:30:36 localhost smartd[2688]: Device: /dev/sdc [SAT], 104 Offline uncorrectable sectors That's the first error I could find. It went from nothing to that in one huge jump. I also found this: Jun 8 03:10:02 localhost sSMTP[7164]: Unable to locate mail Jun 8 03:10:02 localhost sSMTP[7164]: Cannot open mail:25 Jun 8 03:10:03 localhost CROND[7145]: (root) MAIL (mailed 57 bytes of output but got status 0x0001 ) It seems it is trying to mail something. I need to work on that when I get the new drive set up. I already have smtp installed. Dale :-) :-)
