[plug] Using a HDD with Badsectors

[Bernd Felsche]

"Arie Hol" <arie99 at ozemail.com.au> writes:
>On 27 Nov 2006 at 9:04, Bernd Felsche wrote:

>> Only HALF the drives will attain the MTBF. The other have will, by
>> definition, have failed. It's the centre of the "bell curve" that is
>> characteristic of the failure rate.

>> Server drives have MTBF of the order of 5 million hours. Well over a
>> 500 years. It's not an exercise in one-upmanship that has the
>> manufacturers build such drives; it's trying to push the centre of
>> the bell curve into the distant future so that the rate of failure
>> in operational environments is 

>What does MTBF "really" mean ???

>How is the MTBF calculated ??

>How is the MTBF derived in reference to a particular usage scenario ??

>How valid is the MTBF in particular usage scenario ??

>For one way of looking at it - goto :

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTBF

The German version is more useful. For me anyway. :-)

IBM have a nice treatise:
  http://web.archive.org/web/20001202154100/http://www.storage.ibm.com/storage/oem/tech/mtbf.htm

Practically:
  http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/qual/specMTBF-c.html

Look at the warranty and the stated service life.

You will still get failures. I now have 4 out of 6 18G U329 Seagates
dead, within service life and warranty. All the same model. Looks
like a bad model or batch.

Unfortunately the retailer from whom I bought them is no longer in
business.
-- 
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