WDC Reds Not Suitable?

StephenB wrote:
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~gurumurthi/papers/acmtos13.pdf finds that disk failures increase as temperature rises. Per Table 3, disks that run at 40C or more fail at a higher rate. Disks running at 50C fail about 1.50 higher rate more often than drives that are < 40C.

Good gosh, how do you find these things? Did you go a-searchin' just for this topic or is it something you already had on hand?

StephenB wrote:
But the downside is potentially shorter drive life.

Bingo. Reds it is then.

StephenB wrote:
There are plenty of ReadyNAS owners using 7200 rpm drives that report temps ~50C.

And all due respect and friendship to them. I'll be taking the road less traveled by, on this one at least.

StephenB wrote:
Increasing the fan speed (not possible in the UI today) would also help, but the study didn't find that to be cost effective in a data center environment (figure 14). Though the NAS used in data centers are quite different from home NAS. Their test servers held 35 drives each, and they were increasing fan speeds from 7000RPM to 12000RPM. That increase only reduced drive temps by 5C.

Sounds like too much trouble and expense for too little gain. Plus wear-and-tear on the fan. (Not a big one, I know, but why enhance the risk?)

StephenB wrote:
InteXX wrote: What would the ReadyNAS Maniac do? I'm using mostly WDC Reds (11 altogether, in 4 NAS), and see temps around 30C in those systems. The performance is good enough for me (generally my systems are either CPU bound or network bound).

Sounds good. Performance isn't a big deal for me--natch, I've got a 104--so I'm confident I'll be OK with the Reds.

StephenB wrote:
I plan to stick with WDC REDS for now. If I start seeing a lot of failures, I'll reassess.

If you come to different conclusions I'd be pleased to know about it, if you happen to think of it at the time.

StephenB wrote:
If I were running a business

Which I am... (one-man dev shop)

StephenB wrote:
(or had the NAS in an environment with conditioned air)

Which I don't... (high on a warm shelf presently, w/plans to move it down toward the cooler floor soon)

StephenB wrote:
I'd probably use RED Pro drives in one or two systems, and see how they worked out.

Which I won't... (for now)

Thanks,
Jeff Bowman
Fairbanks, Alaska