[Discuss] NAS: lots of bays vs. lots of boxes

[John Abreau]

Google published a study a number of years ago, based on statistics they
gathered of drive performance in their enormous collection of servers over
many years.

One of their conclusions was that hard drives tend to have a useful life of
three years: the odds of catastrophic failure were very low for the first
three years, and after that the odds start climbing.

Based on the statistics they gathered, they recommended a policy of
replacing drives every three years regardless of whether they're failing
yet. The idea is that disks are cheap these days, and the cost of losing
data far outweighs the cost of replacing drives before they fail.


On Fri, Jul 10, 2015 at 2:13 PM, Jack Coats <jack at coats.org> wrote:

> Ok, a rookie question (but real) here.  How do you know if your drive is
> near 'end of life'?  Calendar?  SMART statistics?  Hours of runtime?
>
> I have been known to wait till the 'wheels fall off', but that always
> causes minor panics and excess effort.
>
> Suggestions that are easy to follow and quantifiable?
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John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
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