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Are larger HDs more susceptible to failure?

O

Old Hippie

Diamond Member
Are larger HDs more susceptible to failure mechanically or otherwise?

I would have thought since most of these 1TB+ monsters are the 5400rpm "Green" drives, there would be less mechanical stress and longer lasting drives?

Or is it just some inherent problem with 1TB+ mechanics regardless of spindle speed?

I've only purchased 3 of these monsters and have limited experience in this area.

Anyone have any long term experience or inside info?

Inquiring old hippies just wanna know. 😀

TIA! :beer:
 
If you're concerned about drive failure (they will)... Don't bother with giant drives, go with 3 or 4 smaller in RAID 5.
In this you get a large storage area and some redundancy, WHEN one of the drives fail.

Longitudinal recording = Drives nice and relaxed, living a long healthy life. 🙂
Perpendicular recording = Drives packed tight, stressed out and dying young :Q
 
I have a WHS machine and luckily can fit everything on a 1.5TB external drive for a backup.

My music folder is duplicated. Between that and my external backup, I feel pretty secure I can handle a single drive failure.

I'm just wondering if there is something inherent in the construction of these larger drives that makes them prone to failure.

I do like your analogy and wonder if that's a possible inherent electronic flaw, not only in larger drives but any size drive.
 
Maybe it has something to do with density? As you pack things closer, they are more susceptible to shock and vibration since the heads require more accuracy to read/write.
 
gonna quote Russwinters from another thread that knows a lot more than me
Simple.


Higher speed = more vibration and more air moving inside the HDD.



What does this mean?


Sectors are written in tracks, the density is consistant from the outer edge to the inner most tracks, but the amount of sectors per track will shrink as you move inward more (because there is less circumference as you move inward)

This is also why the outer most tracks are the fastest, thus your OS and games written on the out tracks =)

(you can check this by running hdd tune, watch you MB/s slowly drop as it moves through the LBAs, this is because the higher the LBA, the further in the heads are moving)


Ok so, I mentioned density. To make hard drives larger, they are cramming more sectors on a platter, to do this they are making the magnetic domains "sectors". smaller then ever. this also means that the tracks have more sectors per track, and are thinner then before.

The heads are far from perfect, inside when the platters are spinning there is significant air hitting them, this is actually how they manage to not touch the platters, on the heads there is a component called the slider (little black thing) looking at a high megapixel pic, or a microscope you will see aerodynamic ridges in it, used to catch the air and float above the platter surface at ~4nm)

Ok so the wind is knock the heads around, making it hard for them to stay on track. Now throw in some vibrations, even subtle to our touch, but very large in scope of a hard drive (sectors are very small. you would need a unbelievably powerful microscope to see a sector)

Hard drives implement a "Closed loop system" to help with this. It's called Servo. Servo is written at the factory after the hard drive is fully assembled. it is written on the platters and can never be changed. it is written by a servo writer, it enters the hard drive through the side, notice the silver rectangular sticker on the side of the drive covering a mysterious opening, now you know why its there.

The servo utilizes "gray code" - you can google that.

This gray code is a signal, it is written in between the tracks, and is used to tell the heads if they are staying on track. Without going in to too much detail, a very basic expanation would be to think of bumper bowling, with the bumpers to make sure the bowling ball stays in the lane, its kind of like that, only the bumpers are two different signals, if the heads sense too much of a certain signal then it adjusts itself to be in the middle again.


It really is much more complicated then this, but its too much to type in a single post, maybe I will write a book someday.


I hope this sort of clears things up for you, but it probably just makes everything more confusing. I was really trying to keep it simple =)



Enjoy,
Click to expand...
 
sure it could be that higher density platters require more precise tolerances, but usually a smaller HDD within the same line has fewer platters of the same density, I think... right?
 
pretty much. remember every extra piece of gear inside the drives adds another point of failure. heat vibration etc.

 
That "simple" explanation Ben quoted gave me one of those "Who thinks of this stuff" moments.

That kind of stuff makes me realize that the total amount of my knowledge isn't even the size of a grape pit in Ohio Stadium. :laugh:
 
Originally posted by: ChaiBabbaChai
sure it could be that higher density platters require more precise tolerances, but usually a smaller HDD within the same line has fewer platters of the same density, I think... right?
Click to expand...

Correct, if there are a family of drive (lets take WD BLACK for example)


There is a 500, 640, 750, 1TB, and 2TB version of this disc.


the 500, is currently 2 platters/3 heads

the 640 is 2platters/4 heads

the 750 is 3platters/5 heads

the 1TB is 3 platters/6 heads

the 2 TB i believe is 4 platters/8 heads


the reason the 2TB on needed 2 more heads to get to 2TB is because since it's release WD has increased the GB/inch density more to ~500GB per platter

I can confirm this because I am currently doing some testing for a film company (who stores film digitally) that sent me the new WD Caviar blue drives (new 5000AAKS)

these are all 500GB, with 1 single platter. There DAMN fast to, considering they arn't even the performance series.


So expect to see new revisions of all the black series drives soon, with less platters/heads.





On to the answer to Hippies question: Are higher capacity drives less reliable.

The short answer is yes.


The longer answer is: Basically what Ben linked above, plus this: More platters and more heads means more stress on the motor because of more weight, and also more surfaces a potential head crash can occur. The high amount of force that occurs when the platters are spinning CAN cause the spindle to bend over time, due to weight imbalances present in all platters from the factory (nothing is ever perfect, even hard drives)

Luckily WD remedied this to an extent on their Black series drives by securing it on the bottom AND the top (yay WD)



again as I have said before, Backup your important data, and buy that 2TB drive, just make sure you have enough backup space to fit all that data =) (also: dont keep your backup in the same pc as your main, otherwise your backup may suffer the same fate at the same time as your primary, negating the point of backing up.)
 
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