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Life of HDDs

everthewatcher

everthewatcher

Forum Supporter
Found a dumped VM-branded Cisco 8620 cable box with a 500GB HDD that I thought was worth bunging in the boot just for the drive.

The HDD is a Western Digital WD500AADS from July 2011, 3042 days powered on, a power cycle count of 173 and no reallocated or pending sectors. WD's long test returns no issues. Max temp appears to be 55C, cooling is by convection with lots of slots top and bottom, no fan.

So is the recipe for long disk life keep it powered up and cool?
 
Definitely, as I have always advocated. Thermal cycling is a big killer, because of the differential thermal expansion between differing materials in mechanical contact, and the primary cause of thermal cycling is turning it on and off. There is also such a thing as voltage stress.

The downside of continuous operation is bearing wear, but I have seen no evidence of that. At least one of my HDR-FOXes has been running for ten years. Cost of running is offset by cost of replacement.
 
everthewatcher said:
Found a dumped VM-branded Cisco 8620 cable box
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Are you like a Sarah Moore type character, trawling round the tips of the UK? Or just going through fly-tipped stuff somewhere? :)
So is the recipe for long disk life keep it powered up and cool?
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Yep. I get 100k+ hours out of most of my drives, by which time there's a technology change that renders the new one better than keeping the old.
Black Hole said:
The downside of continuous operation is bearing wear
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Never had that, aside from things that have been turned off for a couple of months prior to proper decommissioning after a long life then refusing to spin up.
I did have an IBM 36G SCSI that drove me mad with its noise, but it was like that from new, and it got pensioned off early.
 
prpr said:
Are you like a Sarah Moore type character, trawling round the tips of the UK? Or just going through fly-tipped stuff somewhere? :)
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It's always worth having an look at what's been dumped in the recycling area at the local Sainsbury's, which is where this had been left.

Last week I passed on an Aldi/Lidl battery-powered lawnmower complete with battery and charger that might have been worth investigating But I did take its overcentre handle clamps to replace the non-working ones on the otherwise fine Bosch mower I pulled from the bin of a charity shop I was working at, rejected by the PAT guy because it didn't have the cable.
 
Black Hole said:
Definitely, as I have always advocated.
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There's no argument about keeping the temperature low. The Start/Stop Count is 49,576 and the Load/Unload Cycle Count 49,428 so the motor hasn't been running all the time, although there's no way of knowing what the duty cycle was.
 
everthewatcher said:
It's always worth having an look at what's been dumped in the recycling area at the local Sainsbury's, which is where this had been left.
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I picked up a Sky box from where it had been left to be scavenged, and was donated another from a friend when it was replaced with SkyQ. Both had a useful HDD (same one as HDR-FOX), and many other parts (eg bare-board USB WiFi module + antennae).
 
Black Hole said:
I picked up a Sky box from where it had been left to be scavenged, and was donated another from a friend when it was replaced with SkyQ. Both had a useful HDD (same one as HDR-FOX), and many other parts (eg bare-board USB WiFi module + antennae).
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Careful with Sky HD+ HDDs - the 500GB ones are locked to SATA1 speeds. The WD 2GB used in a caddy here came from a Sky box and is fine. Also last time I looked into this the USB-looking dongle firmware is hacked so it isn't recognised by standard operating systems.
 
Pulled a Samsung satellite box out of a charity shop dumpster as it had '1TB' helpfully marked on its front panel.

It's a Seagate Pipeline ST3100424CS with 2140 POH, 351 power cycles, 31340 start-stop cycles but 3287 reallocated sectors so it's just a source of a fridge magnet or two.

Not surprised - all the drives I've had fail in service have been Seagates.

[Edit] Apologies - make that 2140 Power on Days.
 
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