> From: graywolf > > In case anyone is interested I finally figured out just what that MTBF > figure is. Not the number of hours the drive is designed to operate as > most folks think*, but how many drives you can run and expect to have > them fail on an average of one per hour. MTBF is misapplied to hard-drives. MTBF assumes repair. Should be MTTF - Mean Time To Failure.
And all that means is they took a bunch of drives, tested them by beating them up so they'd fail prematurely, and then extrapolated how long they thought they'd last in normal use if you don't beat them up. The only real way to figure the life expectancy of a hard-drive is to look at the warranty period. If the drive is warrantied for 1 years, the manufacturer expects it to last at least one year. If it's 2 years, ... I've been buying Seagate Barracudas with a 5 year warranty. YMMV. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
