Study: Hard drives fail more than vendors claim

Just how fail-safe are your hard drives? Sure, you've got those assurances from the vendor that their drives are built to last--but is it really true? A recent study conducted by Carnegie Mellon University seems to suggest that a vendor's claims about the lifespan of a hard drive should be taken with a huge grain of salt. The study examined large production systems running SCSI, FC and SATA drives. The data sheets for the drives included in the study boasted mean time to failure (MTTF) rates between 1 million and 1.5 million hours, which translates into a mean annual failure rate "of at most 0.88 percent," according to the authors of the study. However, the study found typical annual replacement rates of between 2 percent and 4 percent, "and up to 13 percent observed on some systems." The moral of the story? Never take the lifespan of a hard drive for granted.

For more on the study:
- see this ComputerWorld article