two harddrive failures within a year?

daedalusman · 2008-05-23 22:55:18

I have had two harddrive failures within the last year. I wouldn't have thought much of this except that I have 5 harddrives and the only drives to go have been the drives I have linux installed to. The other drives are all older then the two that failed. One has windows installed on it and the other three are all for storage purposes.

Could there be a problem with linux leading to these failures? The first drive was formatted with XFS and the second was formatted with EXT3, I'm only just used the default settings that the install process provides for when mounting these drives. I use transmission to download via bittorrent with these drives if that makes any difference.

I thought this was strange so I thought I would post it and see if anyone could shade some light on this issue. Thanks.

bgc1954 · 2008-05-24 01:22:52

I wouldn't quite blame it on linux as I have three hard drives with linux installed on all with one being several years old (maybe 3 or 4) and the other two probably one or two years old. The newest one has had ten different distros on it for at least a year and I install different distros on it quite regularly (I'm a linux junkie). Perhaps it's more of a hardware problem since you've had a couple failures recently. Have all your drives been in the same box??

Aaron · 2008-05-24 02:01:50

I second that Linux is very unlikely to be at fault.

I would check your connections and such, have you been using the same IDE/SATA port on the 2 drives that failed? Were they using the same power connector? The same data cable?

Hard drives aren't the most reliable hardware, since they contain moving parts. I've had drives die out a month or two into owning them, and others I've had for at least 7 or 8 years that are still kicking.

Last edited by Aaron (2008-05-24 02:02:29)

freakcode · 2008-05-24 02:28:24

I would blame your power supply for the HD failures. Also, what is the drive's manufacturer?

daedalusman · 2008-05-24 05:41:38

This is pretty much what I was thinking as well but wanted to see if there was something that might have been at cause on the software side.

The latest drive to go was a seagate and I think the other drive was a WD but not completely sure on that. I do think they used the same data port and power cable. I went ahead and ordered an 80G drive so I guess if that one dies as well I could probably chalk it up to the either the data port or data cable. I don't think it could be the power supply as all my other drives are all in the same system and they are all connected with the power connectors of the power supply, so that seems out of the question.

staple · 2008-05-24 07:04:01

most certainly could be linux, check out this thread

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=39258

i put a fix on the bottom of the laptop wiki

bgc1954 · 2008-05-24 14:35:09

staple wrote:
most certainly could be linux, check out this thread
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=39258
i put a fix on the bottom of the laptop wiki

I believe that only relates to laptops and if daedalusman has several drives installed

I don't think it could be the power supply as all my other drives are all in the same system and they are all connected with the power connectors of the power supply, so that seems out of the question.

I wouldn't think he's running a laptop. I had quite a scare initially when I saw that post too.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-05-23 22:55:18

two harddrive failures within a year?

#2 2008-05-24 01:22:52

Re: two harddrive failures within a year?

#3 2008-05-24 02:01:50

Re: two harddrive failures within a year?

#4 2008-05-24 02:28:24

Re: two harddrive failures within a year?

#5 2008-05-24 05:41:38

Re: two harddrive failures within a year?

#6 2008-05-24 07:04:01

Re: two harddrive failures within a year?

#7 2008-05-24 14:35:09

Re: two harddrive failures within a year?

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