Hard Disk Drive Myths Debunked!

Discussion in 'Reviews & Articles' started by Adrian Wong, Mar 16, 2004.

  1. charge-n-go

    charge-n-go Newbie

    Formatting can increase ur PC performance when there are too many junks hogging ur system and u dunno which one is the culprit. Formatting just make ur PC having a clean start again.
     
  2. Brian

    Brian Newbie

    well, what about the myth of drive temperature vs failure rate?

    extracted findings from this page: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6376021.stm

    comment: unfortunately, very high temperatures isn't defined, but I would think of it at being above 45-50c

    well, it's always argued in forums that no one has a sufficient sample size to make generalisations, but surely google would have a large enough sample size to say with some confidence that this is possibly the case?

    edit: link to the report itself: http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf

    edit no 2: looks like the low temperature part appears to be higher in the report because it includes a larger range of temperatures from 15-30c while every other category only has a range of 5c, but this still does not explain the minimum failure rate for the first 3 years at the 35-40c level

    it looks like the 30-45c region(well, i'm extrapolating this to only apply to malaysia's temperatures) is the optimal temperature to store the drives in from the report itself
     
    Last edited: Jun 10, 2007
  3. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    Hmm.. That's in reference to server hard drives, which by default, are designed to be a lot more robust than desktop drives. Also, it refers to server room conditions where systems are kept cooled below ambient temperature.

    Since we are mostly desktop users, it's unlikely for us to achieve lower temps like 15oC unless it's winter and we refuse to turn on the heat. :haha:

    When I wrote about heat killing hard drives, I was really referring to high drive temperatures, not high ambient temperatures. Drives are more likely to die if they are continuously operating at a high temperature (around 70-80oC?).

    The point is not to achieve a temperature that's below ambient but to lower down the drive's temperature to as close to ambient as possible. I would personally be happy if I can keep my hard drives below 45oC.
     
  4. Brian

    Brian Newbie

    the thing is, simply quoting from the report:

    The disks are a combination of serial and
    parallel ATA consumer-grade hard disk drives, ranging
    in speed from 5400 to 7200 rpm, and in size from 80 to
    400 GB. All units in this study were put into production
    in or after 2001. The population contains several models
    from many of the largest disk drive manufacturers and
    from at least nine different models. The data used for
    this study were collected between December 2005 and
    August 2006.

    and while it may be true that there are those RE(enterprise edition series by western digital) editions and stuff, somehow i believe that they're referring to the hard drives that are used by us consumers as i don't believe there are any RE editions of hard drives which are 3 or more years old

    i don't dispute the 75-80c level, but i'm just questioning the logic of worrying about temperatures say, for a typical system in malaysia, 40c-50c for hard drives and people recommending others to get hard drive coolers as it will supposedly lengthen the lifespan of the hard drive while this report points out otherwise

    edit: drive temperatures are taken from SMART
     
  5. 64bit

    64bit Newbie

    The guide did not mention the type of format used. There's a "Quick" and "Full" format in Windows. As I know, quick format does not detect bad sector. Does quick format erase the location of the bad sectors previously detected? Which type of format is recommended when doing a reformat?
     
  6. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    Hmm.. I spoke to a Seagate rep about this. He says that desktop consumer drives were not designed to run 24/7. That's what server-grade drives are for. Also, they do not tolerate rotational vibrations quite as well as server-grade drives.

    In any case, while the report has may drives in its database, it only has nine different models and even includes 5400 RPM drives which are slow and cool enough for heat not to be a problem. In fact, heat only became a real issue with the introduction of the 7200 RPM drives.
     
  7. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    The type of format didn't matter. In the cases we have seen, the user usually did not know about Quick and Full format or even low-level formatting. All they heard was that ANY formatting inevitably "kills" the hard drive.
     
  8. harddiskbug

    harddiskbug Newbie

    Quote:

    Sir, I would like to point out here, that there is something can be called as "Virtual" or "Logical" bad sectors. As I am a data recovery and hard drive professional, I can sort this out. See, A logical or virtual bad sector is mainly caused by software malfunctions and/or other software related issues. In this case, the sector has no physical problem, but the data on that perticular sector gets currupted sometimes, and when OS or other utitilities issue the command to read that perticular sector, they get negative response from there and show that sector as bad. These type of sectors can be made easily accesible by some "software" or even by formatting (depends, what do you assume by "formatting" here). As, all one need to do is simply re-write that sector by zero or any other byte, and it will be fully accessibe after this rewriting procedure. However, the data will be wiped of that perticular sector. So, If somebody does a formatting (something like zero filling), then he can get rid of those logical bads, without assigning them to any valuable spare sector.

    And, even physical bad sectors can be removed !. Well, not just by rewriting, but by adding them into either user level G-List/SMART or factory level P-List (in case of no spare sectors available). Or by editing the drive's zone table. (I did not need to say this, but as you said, that they can't be removed by any "software", So I had to say that :mrgreen: ).

    So, It's my humble request to edit that info, as it is creating another myth in an attempt to debunk a myth !

    Regards
    [email protected]
     
  9. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    Hello harddiskbug,

    Thank you for writing in. We will look into the matter ASAP and have the error corrected! :thumb:

    Do let us know if you know of any other hard drive myth that needs correcting or adding to the guide. :beer:
     
  10. Dashken

    Dashken Administrator!

    Hard Disk Drive Myths Debunked Rev. 2.1

    This guide was written in response to the numerous fallacies about the hard disk that are still being propagated in many forum discussions. Although many articles have covered these topics, it is apparent that hard disk urban legends are still more popular than the simple truth.

    So, let's get down to basics and examine some of these common fallacies or myths and debunk them!

    Here's a quote from the article :-
    [​IMG]

    Link : Hard Disk Drive Myths Debunked Rev. 2.1
     
  11. alpaja

    alpaja Newbie

    I heard that the size of the partition formatted effects the performance of a hd, ie 1gb, 2gb, 4gb, 8gb, 16gb, 32gb,64gb,128gb .... partitions perform better
     
  12. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    Hmm.. You mean the more partitions you have, the better? That's interesting. :D
     
  13. harddiskbug

    harddiskbug Newbie

    Quote:

    Thanks for your kind consideration and quick reply. I will surely think over the matter and will find some more myths to be debunked. As well as, the corrections, which should be made to existing stuff. Anyways, thanks once again to consider it.

    Meanwhile, as I can see everywhere on your site (and in your signature too), that you are currently in search for some technical writers. :think: . Well, As I told you previosly, I am in the Data Recovery and Hard Drive related bussiness, so, maybe having some stuff of your interest.:D . Not a bad idea for the free time. So, do let me know sir, if there is some space in TechARP, where I can do something.:beer:
     
  14. alpaja

    alpaja Newbie

    No, that if the partitions were binary like memory they performed better?
     
  15. nexus

    nexus Newbie

    i heard that deep freeze can damage the hard drive

    probably myth
     
  16. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    Binary? You mean like dual-channel?? That's different... :think:
     
  17. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    Do you mean deep freezing it during operation? Hmm, even for storage, why would anyone do that? :think:
     
  18. Dashken

    Dashken Administrator!

    Hard Disk Drive Myths Debunked Rev. 3.0

    We have just updated the guide! :wave:

    This guide was written in response to the numerous fallacies about the hard disk that are still being propagated in many forum discussions. Although many articles have covered these topics, it is apparent that hard disk urban legends are still more popular than the simple truth.

    So, let's get down to basics and examine some of these common fallacies or myths and debunk them!

    Here's a quote from the article :-
    [​IMG]

    Link : Hard Disk Drive Myths Debunked Rev. 3.0
     
  19. hjlavery

    hjlavery Newbie

    You might also want to mention in this one that the more stuff windows loads into memory (particularly at startup) the slower your computer will run, and as formatting your system drive will reset windows back to its default state it will appear to start up much faster :thumb:
     
    1 person likes this.
  20. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    Hmm.. That's true, plus the problem of fragmentation after a long time. Thanks, will add that to the next update. +rep! :thumb:
     

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