On Tue, 2003-01-07 at 10:52, Tom Brinkman wrote: > On Monday January 6 2003 08:00 pm, Andrew Miller wrote: > > I built a server recently for web server, email server, file server > > and other uses and am running Mandrake 9.0 on it. I used a pair > > of 100 GB IBM Deskstars (120GXP's I believe). IBM is having > > problems with these drives failing and now recommends only using > > them 330 hours a month, something less than 50% of the time (see > > http://www.sheller.com/ibmpress.htm). My question is whether my > > use of these drives in a server application is something I should > > avoid? Also, is there a setting for power savings that would sleep > > the drive when it is not getting any hits (most of the time). > > Looks l could add a decent SCSI drive that is meant for always-on > > use. Your feedback is welcome. > > There's two schools on this, I side with those that believe > spinning the drives down is a bad idea. Sort'a like a lightbulb, > they last longer if you're not always turnin 'em off and on ;) > -- > Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas
I'm in the school that turns stuff off. I'm very uncomfortable with the idea of comparing a hard drive with a short circuit. I'm more amiable to thinking of a hard drive as having "miles", like a car; which is a much closer anology. It's closer because of bearing surfaces; the number of rotations that the bearings have is finite, just as the number of rotations that your car crankshaft has is finite. You don't want to leave your car running all the time just to keep it operational. Most of the time a drive fails not from it's controller electronics, but rather from sealed bearing failure. I know a fellow in the data recovery business, and he is constantly getting old drives spinning long enough to extract the data. He does not spend a comparatively long time replacing drive electronics. Yes the temperature differentials have an impact, but only in those cases that don't have good enough ventilation. Also the impact of temperature differentials is directly proportional to the scope or variation bandwidth of those temperature differentials. In a light bulb scenario you are talking about probably the most extreme variance possible in an appliance, since it goes from room temperature to several hundred degrees in a fraction of a second within power-on. In a direct current solid state device, such as a hard drive, this is far from the case, and even less so with adequate airflow. I've been involved with hardware since the late 80's, and I still have hard drives operational from that time. They are not powered on 24/7. Just my wooden nickel... --LX -- ��������������������������������������������������� Kernel 2.4.18-6mdk Mandrake Linux 8.2 Enlightenment 0.16.5-11mdk Evolution 1.0.2-5mdk Registered Linux User #268899 http://counter.li.org/ ���������������������������������������������������
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