Google surprised by hard disk tests


The impact of heavy use and high temperatures on hard disk drive failure may be overstated, says a report by three Google engineers.


The impact of heavy use and high temperatures on hard disk drive failure may be overstated, says a report by three Google engineers. The report examined 100,000 commercial hard drives, ranging from 80GB to 400GB in capacity, used at Google since 2001.

“Our data indicate a much weaker correlation between utilisation levels and failures than previous work has suggested,” the authors noted.

There is a widely held belief that hard disks which are subject to heavy use are more likely to fail than those used intermittently. It was also thought that hard drives preferred cool temperatures to hotter environments.

“We expected to notice a very strong and consistent correlation between high utilisation and higher failure rates. However our results appear to paint a more complex picture. Only very young and very old age groups appear to show the expected behaviour.”

I like that they collect data about all their systems “every few minutes” and store it “essentially forever”. Sounds like my email filing system.

Posted: Mon - February 19, 2007 at 11:37 AM