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Date:      Thu, 23 Mar 1995 20:58:09 -0800 (PST)
From:      "Rodney W. Grimes" <rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com>
To:        babkin@hq.icb.chel.su (Serge A. Babkin)
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   MTBF and what it means (Was: Re: Why IDE is bad)
Message-ID:  <199503240458.UAA02981@gndrsh.aac.dev.com>
In-Reply-To: <199503241335.IAA00423@hq.icb.chel.su> from "Serge A. Babkin" at Mar 24, 95 08:35:53 am

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[Retitled MTBF and what it means]
> 
> > On Thu, 23 Mar 1995, Joe Greco wrote:
> > 
> > > > > 4) writing the disk more may wear it out faster.
> > > > 
> > > > Now there's one for the books! :-)
> > > 
> > > With an 800,000 hour MTBF, I think that enough years will
> > > have passed that even if I reduce the lifetime of the 
> > > disk by 75%, I'll be too old and grey to care when it
> > > dies.  (yes I am sure the original comment was to see if
> > > we were all awake  :-)  but it's a good point).
> > 
> > I did once see someone wipe a disk clean, by doing continuous 
> > read/write/read cycles on it.  The first disk went in 3 months, then 
> > three months later the second disk (and the programmer, by the way) 
> > went.  So I think it can happen, but probably not with the kinda load we 
> > see. 
> 
> Some information for everybody who thinks that MTBF is equal to the lifetime:

[Good sample of how MTBF is arrived out deleted]

> Therefore MTBF 800,000 hours doesn't means that HDU will work 800,000 hours
> before a failure, it only means that if lifetime is near 10,000 hours then
> near 1/80 of all sold HDUs will die before reaching the lifetime.

And now you know why 800,000 Hour (22 years) MTBF disk drives
come with a 5 year (43,800 hours) warranty.

> I'm sorry if I had translated some terms to english wrong.

Looked pretty good to me.  So many people miss understand what all
this MTBF is.

-- 
Rod Grimes                                      rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com
Accurate Automation Company                   Custom computers for FreeBSD



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