From: Bill Morrow (penzance_at_icanect.net)
Date: Mon Aug 30 1999 - 00:09:39 EDT
Steve...
1. Current travelstar drives are WAY better than those manufacturered
several years ago..
2. I have ONE, very old, 340meg (yes, MegaBytes) notebook drive, running in
one of my office computers in an office, 24/7 for at least the last 2
years...
3. I sell these things, as you know, and MOST of the few drives that have
been returned for warranty, were mistreated.. that is dropped, crushed and
the like..
(i can show you pictures, if you wish)
4. If you read further in the specs, you'll see the MTBF of either 300,000
hours or 500,000 hours.. of course, this is an interpolated time, since
even the lower number yeilds ABOUT 34 years, and the entire industry has
not been around that long (referring to small, winchester technology drives
now) and PC's are only, what 20 years since the very first one..?!
Personally, i would not loose too much sleep over this one, just do your
backups and relax... :-)
hard drives are SO CHEAP these days and so darn perfect that it continually
amazes me..!
you already know most of this anyway..! :-))
STeve Andre' wrote:
> In looking at the IBM site on Travelstar drives, I noticed something
> that I found distrubing.
>
> In the product summary area for each disk that I looked at, there
> is a section called "drive usage conditions". These are the conditions
> that the drive should be operated under. Most of them are entirely
> reasonable, specifiying voltage conditions, etc.
>
> One part however disturbs me very much. Listed there is
>
> "The drive is operated within the specification of less than 140
> power-on hours per month. Seeking, Writing and Reading operation
> of the drive should be no more than 20% of power-on hours".
>
> What? 140 hours of actual disk usage IN A MONTH? I don't know how
> the average user uses their ThinkPad, but thats about 4.5 of the disk
> spinning a day. If one uses their TP for just working hours, thats 8
> to 10 hours a day of potential use.
>
> Granted, thats "power on" hours, but nowhere that I saw in my TP
> 1451 Series i documentation did I see a mention of this little fact.
> Obviously people will want to conserve their disk-on time when on
> batteries, but when attached to the AC mains, it isn't so obvious that
> the disks shouldn't be spinning.
>
> Even knowing about this now as I do, running software like a POP
> mail client that checks for mail every minute means that a significant
> amount of power-on time can be accumulated. Normally I leave this
> laptop connected to the net at all times. If I check for mail every
> minute and get mail during off peak times every 15 or so, that means
> I'm going to be spinning the disks about 12 minutes each hour.
>
> Of course a part of me wonders how serious IBM is about this disk
> usage. Has anyone seen this talked about in any TP literature? I
> haven't, but I'm going to go and look at my documentation again.
>
> Do other small disks have this kind of duty cycle associated with
> them?
>
> How long have travelstar drives been out?
>
> I must say, I'm not happy reading this. Using a TP for any kind of
> development work is going to eat up that 140 hours of power-on time.
> If folks think I'm out of line here, please tell me. You can look at
> the documentation by going to
>
> (http://www.storage.ibm.com/hardsoft/diskdrdl/prod/travelstar.htm)
>
> --STeve Andre'
> andres_at_pilot.msu.edu
-- Live Long and Prosper, Happy trails...** Bill Morrow ** :-) WEB page http://thinkpads.com Thinkpad User Community: http://thinkpads.com/enter.html Compuserve Thinkpad(c) Forum Sysop e-mail: bill_at_thinkpads.com, penzance_at_icanect.net 770Z-8AU, 760ED, 760CD, (5)701C, 560E, 755CE, 750C et al...
Including, but not limited to, Subject to prior sale, Your mileage will vary, Done on a closed road with a professional driver AND Do not try this at home..
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