Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population

It is estimated that over 90% of all new information produced in the world is being stored on magnetic media, most of it on hard disk drives. Despite their importance, there is relatively little published work on the failure patterns of disk drives, and the key factors that affect their lifetime. Most available data are either based on extrapolation from accelerated aging experiments or from relatively modest sized field studies. Moreover, larger population studies rarely have the infrastructure in place to collect health signals from components in operation, which is critical information for detailed failure analysis. We present data collected from detailed observations of a large disk drive population in a production Internet services deployment. The population observed is many times larger than that of previous studies. In addition to presenting failure statistics, we analyze the correlation between failures and several parameters generally believed to impact longevity. Our analys...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: FAST
• Authors: Eduardo Pinheiro, Wolf-Dietrich Weber, Luiz André Barroso
• Keywords: Disk Drive, Disk Drive Population, Drive Failures, FAST 2007, Operating System