Misperceptions about hard disk drive MTBFs

Mean Time Between Failure ratings, usually calibrated in hours, are an index of the general lifetime of the item in bulk. So if a hard disk drive has an MTBF of 300,000 hours, that means if you run a batch of them for that long, at least half will have failed after 300,000 hours of use.

People have four misperceptions about Mean Time Between Failures when using it as a gauge to make hardware buying decisions.

In short, an Mean Time Between Failures rating for a piece of hardware is best applied when buying many units at once. If you're equipping 1,000 desktops with hard disk drives, or creating a drive array, the MTBF for a given hard drive will give you a fairly good idea of how many of those drives are likely to fail in a given period of time.

But if you're buying one hard disk drive, the Mean Time Between Failures is not going to be of much use to you. You'll be better off relying on good backup and data retention practices than you are throwing yourself on the mercy of statistics. Sur

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e, it wouldn't hurt to opt for a piece of hardware with a better MTBF, but don't assume that a longer MTBF will automatically protect you from mishap.

About the author:
Serdar Yegulalp is editor of the Windows Insight, (formerly the Windows Power Users Newsletter), a blog site devoted to hints, tips, tricks and news for users and administrators of Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Vista. He has more than 12 years of Windows experience under his belt, and contributes regularly to SearchWinComputing.com and SearchSQLServer.com.

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[IMAGE]Hard disk drive management technical guide
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[IMAGE]  Introduction
[IMAGE]  Be wary of preformatted external hard disk drives
[IMAGE]  Hard disk drive MTBFs: The four biggest misperceptions
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