Link http://www.extremetech.com/article/0,3396,s=201&a=23799,00.asp
March 8, 2002
IBM Soothes Concerns Over New Hard Drive Spec
New "Power On Hours" Spec Worries Some; Can A Desktop Drive Operate More Than 11 Hours Straight?
By Mark Hachman
New posts: 1
Executives at IBM's Storage Systems Division and analysts say there's no cause for concern over a new "power-on hours" specification that IBM has added to its line of disk drives.
Recently, noted storage testing site StorageReview.com published a review of the IBM Deskstar 120GXP hard drive, a 120-Gbyte 7,200 RPM drive designed around the ATA-100 interface for PCs. Concerned readers wrote in, asking if a 333-hour "recommended power-on hours (monthly)" description listed under the drive's specifications meant that the drive wasn't designed to operate more than an average of 8 hours per day.
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"It's clear that our recommendation of the Deskstar 120GXP for server uses is misguiding since servers usually must remain up 24 hours a day," StorageReview.com concluded.
Analysts, and IBM executives, say that IBM's only fault may be in providing too much information. Historically, drive manufacturers characterized the reliability of their drives in terms of Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF), often classified in hundreds of thousands of hours.
But the MTBF numbers grew too high to be meaningful, analysts said, and manufacturers stopped quoting them years ago. MTBF numbers also became an opprtunity for "gamesmanship," according to Shiv Shivaji, director of IBM's desktop hard drive business in San Jose, where customers couldn't be sure how drive manufacturers arrived at their results.
Analysts supported Shivaji's position.
"I can tell you that when drive makers stopped quoting (MTBF figures), they were quoting normally 300,000 hours for a desktop disk drive and normally for servers in the neigborhood of 1 million hours," said Jim Porter, who founded the disk-drive analyst firm DISK/TREND Inc., Mountain View, Calif., and now serves as an industry consultant. "That's something like 114 years without turning the drive off, and 300,000 hours is about 35 years straight. I can assure you that disk drives are built to a solid reliability standard."
IBM added that "power-on" figure to its spec sheets to give customers a sense for the expected usage pattern, Shivaji said, adding that customers are buying the drives for other applications besides PCs. IBM drives carry a three-year warranty; in case of failure, IBM will replace the drives free of charge, he said. Shivaji declined to comment on the progress of a class-action suit against the company, alleging that the IBM 75GXP hard drives are unreliable.
The 333-hour figure is derived from an estimated 11-hour-per-day, 30-days-per-month usage pattern, according to an IBM spokeswoman. "And even that's pretty generous," she said. "It's like a car or a television. You can run it 24 hours a day, but if you do so your usage life will go down."
But the usage pattern is not absolute, Shivaji said. "If you run it more than 11 hours per day, that doesn't mean it's not going to work," he said.
Instead, drive makers now quote reliability in terms of the likelihood that an unrecoverable error will occur in terms of the number of bits read. According to IBM, the 120GXP will return an unrecoverable error on average once every 10E13 bits, or 1.25 terabytes, of data that is read.
Maxtor Corp.'s 120-Gbyte DiamondMax D540X, which is available using an ATA-133 interface, is rated at 1 non-recoverable error per 10E14 bits read. However, Maxtor still has yet to determine the warranty period of the drive, according to the company.
***WOW Now it will last 114 years or 35 years ????***
But now up to 11-hour-per-day, 30-days-per-month.....
<font color=blue>**VIA has forced Me to the dark side of INTEL, sorry AMD**</font color=blue>
March 8, 2002
IBM Soothes Concerns Over New Hard Drive Spec
New "Power On Hours" Spec Worries Some; Can A Desktop Drive Operate More Than 11 Hours Straight?
By Mark Hachman
New posts: 1
Executives at IBM's Storage Systems Division and analysts say there's no cause for concern over a new "power-on hours" specification that IBM has added to its line of disk drives.
Recently, noted storage testing site StorageReview.com published a review of the IBM Deskstar 120GXP hard drive, a 120-Gbyte 7,200 RPM drive designed around the ATA-100 interface for PCs. Concerned readers wrote in, asking if a 333-hour "recommended power-on hours (monthly)" description listed under the drive's specifications meant that the drive wasn't designed to operate more than an average of 8 hours per day.
ADVERTISEMENT
"It's clear that our recommendation of the Deskstar 120GXP for server uses is misguiding since servers usually must remain up 24 hours a day," StorageReview.com concluded.
Analysts, and IBM executives, say that IBM's only fault may be in providing too much information. Historically, drive manufacturers characterized the reliability of their drives in terms of Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF), often classified in hundreds of thousands of hours.
But the MTBF numbers grew too high to be meaningful, analysts said, and manufacturers stopped quoting them years ago. MTBF numbers also became an opprtunity for "gamesmanship," according to Shiv Shivaji, director of IBM's desktop hard drive business in San Jose, where customers couldn't be sure how drive manufacturers arrived at their results.
Analysts supported Shivaji's position.
"I can tell you that when drive makers stopped quoting (MTBF figures), they were quoting normally 300,000 hours for a desktop disk drive and normally for servers in the neigborhood of 1 million hours," said Jim Porter, who founded the disk-drive analyst firm DISK/TREND Inc., Mountain View, Calif., and now serves as an industry consultant. "That's something like 114 years without turning the drive off, and 300,000 hours is about 35 years straight. I can assure you that disk drives are built to a solid reliability standard."
IBM added that "power-on" figure to its spec sheets to give customers a sense for the expected usage pattern, Shivaji said, adding that customers are buying the drives for other applications besides PCs. IBM drives carry a three-year warranty; in case of failure, IBM will replace the drives free of charge, he said. Shivaji declined to comment on the progress of a class-action suit against the company, alleging that the IBM 75GXP hard drives are unreliable.
The 333-hour figure is derived from an estimated 11-hour-per-day, 30-days-per-month usage pattern, according to an IBM spokeswoman. "And even that's pretty generous," she said. "It's like a car or a television. You can run it 24 hours a day, but if you do so your usage life will go down."
But the usage pattern is not absolute, Shivaji said. "If you run it more than 11 hours per day, that doesn't mean it's not going to work," he said.
Instead, drive makers now quote reliability in terms of the likelihood that an unrecoverable error will occur in terms of the number of bits read. According to IBM, the 120GXP will return an unrecoverable error on average once every 10E13 bits, or 1.25 terabytes, of data that is read.
Maxtor Corp.'s 120-Gbyte DiamondMax D540X, which is available using an ATA-133 interface, is rated at 1 non-recoverable error per 10E14 bits read. However, Maxtor still has yet to determine the warranty period of the drive, according to the company.
***WOW Now it will last 114 years or 35 years ????***
But now up to 11-hour-per-day, 30-days-per-month.....
<font color=blue>**VIA has forced Me to the dark side of INTEL, sorry AMD**</font color=blue>
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