[OmniOS-discuss] Overheating faults with ST4000NM0023

[Thibault VINCENT]

On 08/06/2013 11:55 AM, Jim Klimov wrote:
> Unfortunately, I can't really help about the main subject; but I can
> speculate that the vendor knows about "fragility" of the disks against
> temperature and spec'ed their self-diags accordingly? After all, that
> is what they are for?..

That's right but 40°C or lower is impossible to maintain for a busy disk 
in a dense environment and even with good A/C. That value can't be 
right, and looking at the specs from Seagate you'll see the disk 
operation can range from 5°C to 60°C. That makes sense because the trip 
temperature from other Seagate disk is actually 60°C not 40. This was 
also verified under Linux with no expander and other controller.

So there's something wrong going on with the ST4000NM0023 (firmware 003) 
and I've opened a ticket at Seagate. I'll let you know when I have news.

> That is, even if you find ways to override the failsafes, you might
> substantially reduce the lifetime of devices...
> Perhaps, investment in an air-conditioner would pay off better? ;)

Well my lab room doesn't have datacenter class A/C but it's cold enough 
for any other system, and to get sick :) As I said the conditions are 
good and faults should not happen here.

I invite you looking at the report from Google "Failure Trends in a 
Large Disk Drive Population" (2007) in which they found 45°C was the 
best compromise for lifetime. Going lower or higher will increase 
different kind of failure. Colder is not the best!


Cheers

-- 
Thibault VINCENT - Infrastructure Engineer
SmartJog | T: +33 1 5868 6238
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