[linux-lvm] hard drive shock tolerance

[zoo1 at corecomm.net]

On Wed, Jan 10, 2001 at 01:39:13AM +1100, Russell Coker wrote:

[...]
>My "gut feeling" is that drives are more susceptible to damage now.  I know 
>of cases of older 3600rpm drives being dropped, being hit by a car while 
>operating (car entered building through the wall of the computer room), and 
>suffering numerous other mechanically damaging events without data loss.  I 
>belive that modern 10K rpm drives are not as solid.

speaking as someone who has personally dropped (and destroyed) 36GB 10K
rpm SSA disk drives, i can attest that modern-day disks are sensitive.
those disks i mentioned fell about 20-30cm onto concrete, and were
toast.

(in all fairness, other identical drives that fell right with them
survived, so that shock must have been just on the boundary. i ended up
avoiding the blame, due to the unreasonable and careless way the disks
had been packaged and shipped - which was lucky for me, genuine IBM
disks of this type cost around $1600 USD apiece...)

hit by a car? you're serious? i can't even imagine a modern disk
surviving that! i've seen 9GB SCSI disks destroyed by an approximately
60cm drop onto wooden benchtop, covered with a (thin) antistatic rubber
mat; that wasn't me dropping those, though - about $800 apiece, IIRC...

>Also drives are more susceptible to heat problems.  3600rpm drives
>could operate with all their air-holes blocked and while surrounded by
>other hard drives without problems.  You can't stack two new 10K rpm
>drives without good fans.

i'll take your word for it. myself, i never see drives like that in
PCs, just in workstations and RAID arrays with more than adequate
cooling; but then again, i don't see PCs much these days anymore.

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