A post over at PC Pro got me wondering about the difference between “consumer” and “enterprise” hard drives. Tim Danton ask whether “Windows 7 is killing your hard disks”; while I’m sure that Windows 7 is not doing just that, there might actually be some relation between your choice of operating system and hard drive life.
The typical “enterprise” hard drive is meant to be used all day, every day. Most servers are always-on, so these have (or are supposed to have) slightly better drive motors and read/write heads. A “consumer” drive on the other hand is supposed to be off or standby most of the time, with lots of spin-up and spin-down activity. That means a drive motor that’s better at the initial spin-up when you power on your PC, and less geared towards continually rotating the platters.
At least, that’s what happened in the past. Looking at today’s ecosystem, that distinction is disappearing. The typical desktop PC is now an always-on device, providing more server-like functions such as streaming media, recording TV, downloading files and more. In fact, Windows 7 schedules several tasks at night, including defragmentation of the hard drive. And that’s just one job; there’s also the regular virus scan, Microsoft’s indexing service, and lots of other programs that keep your hard drive working.
Looking at the other side of the equation, servers are no longer always-on. Most large storage systems now offer powersaving features that spin-down idle disks. The technology is commonly known as MAID (Massive Array of Idle Disks), and makes server systems behave more like a traditional desktop by frequently powering down its disks.
If Tim’s story has some truth in it and the extra tasks that keep a “consumer” hard drive busy during the day (and often night as well) cause drives to fail faster, how long will it be before major PC manufacturers will start equipping their machines with “enterprise” drives meant for 24/7 use?
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