Cold hard drives this morning

Posted on February 17, 2010 | Category: Informational, Linux, Terminal

I am a bit of a stickler when it comes to hard drive (hdd) temperature. The major predictor of hdd failure is heat. You understand that these disk drives are spinning at over 7,000 RPM when not at idle right? Bearings are awesome, but after so long of a period, they simply fail. As a general rule, production server hdd’s need replacement at 3 years of constant use. Or, if you have a matching pair of drives, your RAID array can handle the fault of 1 drive missing.

Anyways, I forgot to turn on the heater this morning. When I awoke, it was a bit cold in the house. The outside temperature at the Olympia, WA airport was 30.9 degrees F as reported by NOAA. The internal house temperature read 59 degrees F.

After recently installing 2 more fans in my server tower, I wonder what my hdd temp is this morning. It was bound to be chilly. So, I opened up my Terminal and checked it out. Brrr, it sucks to be a hdd this morning. For that matter, it sucks to be a person in my house this morning. My fingers are stiff from being so cold on my keyboard. The last hdd (/dev/sdd) is my external backup drive, which does not have fan cooling. It will naturally operate at higher temps than the rest. For those who do not convert Celcius in your head (me either):