We talk to Rainer Kaese of Toshiba about the right temperature to run hard disk drives at. Not getting it right risks higher failure rates than what would normally be expected
We talk to Rainer Kaese of Toshiba about the right temperature to run hard disk drives at. Not getting it right risks higher failure rates than what would normally be expected
In this podcast, we talk to Rainer Kaese, senior manager for business development in storage products at Toshiba Electronics Europe, about how temperature affects hard disk drives (HDDs).
Kaese says the thing to keep an eye on is airflow, and that hard disk drive failure rates tend to multiply significantly if they run above their optimum average temperature.
Kaese also highlights the key SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) value to monitor for good hard drive health when it comes to temperature.What does it mean for the system when a hard disk drive overheats?
The temperature of the hard disk drive is something that you should keep a good eye on in your systems. There are two failure modes for the hard disk drive, which are related to the temperature of the drive itself.
In a system, in operation, the hard disk drive heats up, and it needs to be somehow cooled. It does not overheat like other components, such as CPUs [central processing units]. We don’t need heat sinks, but at least a little bit of airflow is required in operation.
And there are two limits. One is the functional limit. So, if a hard disk drive heats up to an internal temperature of 60°C or 70°C, it is still functioning. Above this, it may not function anymore. So internal temperatures of 60°C for server hard disk drives or 70°C for client hard disk drives should be avoided by all means because this is the functional limit. You will probably immediately recognise if a hard disk drive is that hot because the system may not work anymore.
Listen to the full interview with Rainer Kaese, senior manager for business
development instorage products for Toshiba Electronics Europe, in this podcast
Also important, but not so well recognised, is the reliability limit. And there it starts way earlier. Talking about reliability, the annualised average failure rate of a server hard disk drive is 0.
