1

In my 1.5 years at a fairly small company, I've dealt with 3-4 damaged hard drives (bad blocks mostly). Out of the 4-5 servers and 8 desktops, that's a very large percentage. Many of the drives were not past their lifespan - so the failures were unexpected. I've learned that before my time, there were several catastrophic failures to hard drives as well.

I've started wondering if this might be due to the local train's vibration. The train is roughly 100ft away from the building and the building does vibrate when it passes. It goes by fairly often - at least every half hour. I've also thought about electrical instability or magnetic interference but the train does seem like a more plausible concern.

Any ideas?

user1389579
  • 11
  • 1
  • 1
    Were the hard drives the same model (can you disclose them, as some might have some known problems, defects, etcetera)? I don't see a train passing affecting that much a hard drive (think of laptops), unless it somehow ends up resonating the platters inside. – Doktoro Reichard Sep 29 '13 at 00:51
  • Related: [How vibration sensitive are hard disk drives?](http://superuser.com/q/526896/228536). Note the answer by Daniel R. Hicks. – Doktoro Reichard Sep 29 '13 at 00:59
  • They were different models, by different manufacturers - with desktop and server variations as well. I might also add that there is an electrical switch of some sort that is shut off nightly - to power off the sections of the office that are not critical. I wonder if it could generate electrical noise disturbance with the daily on/off. – user1389579 Sep 29 '13 at 01:02
  • Are the computers still on when the power goes out? – Doktoro Reichard Sep 29 '13 at 01:06
  • (As I'm not inclined to write an answer right now) If power goes out and the drives are still working, some data could be left unwritten and as such some sectors might become corrupted. Drives do vibrate by themselves (because they have moving parts, and no physical system is 100% rigid). Current searches on the net reveal contradictory reports but nothing solid (just check [this](http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1627567/vibrating-hard-drive-damage.html) for instance, and the anecdotal Youtube video). – Doktoro Reichard Sep 29 '13 at 01:27
  • If vibrations are an issue buy SSDs instead as they have no moving parts. While more expensive they are more durable. At 2 trains an hours that is 48 trains a day, if I understand correctly. That is a lot of trains and could be related. – cybernard Sep 29 '13 at 01:33
  • Only 1 of the drives were in the power out area. The rest of them were in the area of the office that is always powered. Which leads me to wonder about the trains. – user1389579 Sep 29 '13 at 02:12
  • 1
    It's plausible that the trains could be causing a vibration that hits a resonance in the drives (or even a resonance in the floor below the systems). I would consider at least placing the stationary systems on resilient pads of some sort. Also, if there are any parts of the building where people seem to notice the vibrations more, keep the systems away from those. – Daniel R Hicks Sep 29 '13 at 03:11

1 Answers1

2

Yes this is possible especially, when the vibrations is strong enough. Imagine a needle on a record player bouncing around if you were trying to drive across town and play an LP at the same time. The same thing is about hard drives so it's possible that the train has caused the problem because of the vibrations.

As there aren't many good anti-shock-packs for internal harddisks, it will be hard to find a solution for this.

But many laptop vendors have implemented this technology under different names:

  • HDAPS, Hard Drive Active Protection System, by Lenovo (originally designed by IBM)
  • Sudden Motion Sensor by Apple Inc.
  • GraviSense by Acer
  • 3D DriveGuard, HP Mobile Data Protection System 3D and ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection by HP
  • Free Fall Sensor (FFS) by Dell
  • HDD Protection by Toshiba
Christian
  • 7,102
  • 1
  • 22
  • 36
  • If the vibrations were strong enough, the heads would hit the platters, rendering the drive completely useless. The problem described was one of a high number of bad/damaged sectors. Hard disk drives were made to be quite resilient. – Doktoro Reichard Sep 29 '13 at 00:58
  • Fair answer, but I don't believe your assertion about "anti-shock-packs" for internal hard drive is correct. If you look for HTPC cases with a focus on noise levels, you will probably find that they are designed with gromets to dampen vibrations and reduce noise, and I see no reason this would not work in the opposite direction - I have an Antec case, btw. Also worth pointing out that SSD's don't have any moving parts and will probably be immune to vibration. – davidgo Sep 29 '13 at 06:37
  • Yes you are right. SSDs would be a possibility. But i think they cost way to much to use it in a server. – Christian Sep 29 '13 at 09:24