The people at Google have compiled a report concerning hard disks using their own data they have compiled from the systems they use. The study was completed by Eduardo Pinheiro, Wolf-Dietrich Weber and Luiz Andr´e Barroso, all of Google INC. and is available in .pdf format - link below.

Some of the highlights of the report are:

• “Disk drives are generally very reliable but they are also very complex components. This combination means that although they fail rarely, when they do fail, the possible causes of failure can be numerous.
• Contrary to previously reported results, we found very little correlation between failure rates and either elevated temperature or activity levels.
• While drives with one error are more likely to fail than those with none, drives with multiple errors fail even more quickly.”

I think the best part of the Google report is that in their testing, they found that once a drive starts to exhibit drive errors, the failure rate in the following sixty days increases 39 fold. Which would suggest that when we consumers scan our disks for errors and they are reported, we should seriously consider replacing the hard disk to avoid data loss. And I know I don’t need to say this, but if your hard disk is reporting errors, backup, backup and backup before it’s to late.

Interesting point. A recent survey by Symantec reveals that almost 40% of home users do not backup their stuff. Do you?

The entire Google report in .pdf format can be found here.

Google .pdf Report

Tags: google, hard disk, failure, report