[linux-lvm] hard drive shock tolerance

[Russell Coker]

On Thursday 11 January 2001 11:54, zoo1 at corecomm.net wrote:
> 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.
>
> hit by a car? you're serious? i can't even imagine a modern disk

An idiot in the drive of the next house mistook the accelerator pedal in an 
automatic car for the brake, she kept pressing it harder when the car didn't 
stop.
The car entered through a solid brick wall that the computer had been in 
front of.  The computer ended up on the floor at the far side of the room (~4 
meters away).
The car was stopped from going further through the house by rubble which 
supported much of the weight of the car and prevented the rear wheels from 
gaining traction.  For some time the car was burning rubber on the spot...

> >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.

Most hardware work I do is with PCs.  When dealing with rack mounted server 
equipment I generally do the software and someone else deals with the 
hardware.
Given a choice I prefer hard drives with lower rotational speeds because of 
the lesser heat production.  Read the spec sheets and you'll see that as a 
general rule 10K rpm drives use twice as much power as 7200 rpm drives, twice 
the power == twice the heat!

The really worrying thing about heat death is that it's one of the few ways 
that I could imagine two hard drives in a mirrored set dieing before I get a 
chance to replace one!

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