>Note that we are continually swapping drives. No SCSI drive has survived more than 8 Months.
CHECK THE DRIVE CASE TEMERATURE!!
Check the ambient temperature inside the case too.
> We are now checking out how the
>situation is with IDE drives for a newsserver spool.
IDE drives won't survive as long as SCSI, mainly because the cheap ones
aren't engineered as well as scsi drives. (good, fast, cheap, pick any two)
Keeping drives cool is the secret. If the room's ambient temperature is 20C,
the temperature inside a case with average airflow and a few drives
installed can quite easily reach 40C, and the drives themselves may well
exceed 60C.
At temperatures like that, lifespans are measured in months, sometimes weeks.
Remember that every 10C increase in semiconductor junction temperature
halves the device's operating life, and much the same applies to drive
bearings (platter and servo).
Seagate won't warranty a Barracuda which hasn't been installed in
compliance with their required airflow specifications. The number of
failed 4Gb units I've seen which were in tiny boxes with no airflow is
astronomical, whereas ones installed with decent amounts of air flowing
across them last for a few years. It just goes to show that people never
RTFM, even when doing so would have saved them a few thousand dollars in
time and replacement costs.
There's a reason the old-style mainframe rooms were kept cold enough to
require a woollen jumper to work in them for any length of time. It's a
pity more people setting up PC based servers don't realise it applies as
much now as it did 20 years ago.
AB
-- If you go down to the woods today you're sure for a big surpise: Teddies in leather who bang heads together, with black liner round their eyes.