🚀 go-pugleaf

Centre Parting wrote:
> Paul wrote:
>> Franc Zabkar wrote:
>>> On Mon, 6 Apr 2009 11:24:53 +0100, "Centre Parting"
>>> <nokia.account@ntlworld.com> put finger to keyboard and composed:
>>>
>>>> The Google study presumably polled a lot of PC users about HDD
>>>> failures.
>>> The Google study concentrated on Google's own huge installed base of
>>> hard drives spanning several manufacturers, models, and generations.
>>>
>>> Nobody was polled.
>>>
>>> Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population:
>>> http://research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf
>>>
>>> - Franc Zabkar
>> What struck me about their study, is the word "humidity"
>> doesn't appear anywhere in the report. And humidity is a
>> factor in disk reliability.
> 
> Not heard that touted before.
> 
> You sure you're not just confused about the air conditioning issue ?
> Reasoning that since big installations are kept in a/c'd rooms (dry 
> atmosphere), non-a/c'd (relatively humid atmosphere) installations must be 
> less reliable ?
> 
> Big installations aren't air-conditioned because of humidity.
> They're a/c'd because that's the only way TO cool a room.
> Humidity is purely incidental.
> 
> That's some pretty weird-ass reasoning you've got.
> 
>>    Paul 
> 

I judge studies by their attention to detail.

Without knowing what combination of temperature and humidity
is present in each facility, there is no way to judge whether
the missing factor is important or not.

If you download an OEM spec for a disk drive, there is
a temperature/humidity graph in it. It documents the allowed
values of temperature and humidity for a disk drive. Which
means in any study, humidity should be documented (because the
disk manufacturer acknowledges it is a factor). Or at least the
word should appear in the study at least once, as in
"we chose to ignore humidity".

    Paul