From todays "Internet Tourbus" Newsletter.
http://www.internettourbus.com/

--------------------------------------
What really causes hard drives to fail
Audience: Everyone
--------------------------------------

Conventional wisdom states that the more you use your hard drive --
or, for that matter, the hotter your hard drive gets -- the more  
likely it is to crash.  That certainly sounds plausible, but is it
true?  According to Google, the answer is a resounding "NO!"

How would Google know?  Well, remember that when you use Google to
search the internet you aren't really searching the internet.  You're
searching Google's copy of the internet, the files that Google's
spiders [a.k.a., "Googlebots"] find, vacuum up, and send back to the
Google mothership.  To store all of this data, Google uses a gozillion
hard drives [100,000 or more] in its data centers scattered around the
world.  And like any well-run data center, Google's data centers
constantly monitor and record data on the health status of every hard
drive.  

Google employees Eduardo Pinheiro, Wolf-Dietrich Weber, and Luiz Andre
Barroso gathered in-depth data from over 100,000 disk drives deployed
throughout Google and discovered that

    * Contrary to previously reported results, there is very little
      correlation between failure rates and either elevated
      temperature or activity levels.

    * However, some SMART parameters (scan errors, reallocation
      counts, offline reallocation counts, and probational counts)
      have a HUGE impact on hard drive failure probability.

    * Given the lack of occurrence of predictive SMART signals on a
      large fraction of failed drives, it is unlikely that an accurate
      predictive failure model can be built based on these signals
      alone.

Google's complete report, titled "Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive
Population", is a 241 KB, 13 page Adobe Acrobat file that you can
download at

     http://216.239.37.132/papers/disk_failures.pdf

The bad news is that this report reads a bit like stereo instructions.  
If you aren't a techie, skip the PDF and check out Gizmodo's or
StorageMojo's summaries instead at

     http://tinyurl.com/yw7db8
     http://storagemojo.com/?p=378

Long story short: Most of what we know about hard drive failure rates
and causes is wrong.

Whiterabbit, what temp is HDDlife showing? As well, something I have done for years and some are still figuring out is, have the exhaust fan blowing OUTWARDS. If you have two , one blowing in, one out. Many people have one or both blowing in which only circulates warm air and with the CPU fan, can actually create a pocket around the cpu where the air is not flowing. If your hdd is showing between 50\55 c this is typical but extra cooling won't hurt. This is based on 7200 rpm standard ide drives. 60 is pushing it and should be dropped. Mine runs at 39 without moving cables, etc...a simple exhaust fan exiting the air dropped it about 12 c. HDDlife seems to do a fairly good monitoring job.

Paul

This software has been one of the best (apart fronblind write and a few others)so far for me as i can now monitor the HDD's health more easily than ever before. I couldn't understand why my HDD's were marked as badly damaged by a previous give away, so when this was given way i immediately checked my HDD's and found the problem. The HDD's are stacked one on top of the other with little space for air circulation. all have those wide ide cables, and i also discovered two of the fans i had installed last year were actually the wrong way around. I'm buying those slinline cables and have moved the HDD's further apart, which seems to have helped, but they do gradually creep up to unaccepatable temperatures soon, unless i keep the study window open, which at this time of year is too cold, lol. I still have to change the cables and change the fans around. thanks so much for this give away. I'll be buying an update when the time comes as this is so useful.

Anyone make a skin for HDDlife? I sent one in so we'll see if it gets put on the site. If anyone wants it, I can try to post a screenshot or link the file. Very cool that we can make our own skins, like progs like that.

Paul

Sorry to Admin, should have put this here to begin with. #8^O

Hey teem! SMART technology is kind of a new thing. If your hard drive(s) at a bit older (or not (P)ATA or SATA, USB doesn't count) it won't work.

Now I can truly thank GIVEAWAY OF THE DAY. Thank you guys! I love HDDLIFEPRO! Except I have to adjust those temps before the sirens drive me crazy!
I put my link back up at http://www.cpedley.com with links at http://www.churchpower.com.

PLEASE IF YOU ARE GOING TO BE SO NICE AS TO ARRANGE GIVEAWAY SOFTWARE PLEASE, PLEASE GIVE SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO ACTIVATE!!! PLEASSSSSSSSSSSSSSEEEEEEEEEEEE! So many people I see are annoyed instead of thankful because they think [as I did] that you are tricking us into downloading trial software.
-cp

Well praise the Lord and call me uncle. My HDDLIFE works fine when I closed it. But I have closed other software and it was still TRIAL when I re-opened. I will try to activation FIRST next time. If temp monitoring is not supported it must be something on your motherboard because my icon is actually the temperature reading. Now to just get the alarm to quit going off!
-cp

Hey, I've installed HDDlife pro with no problems and it works fine with me, but I found that (temperature monitoring is not supported) message is shown to me in the application window. I've searched the other people comments for a similar complain but I couldn't find any. could anybody help please?

Hmm.. I just logged into my computer at the office, and was able to download and install the program. The file name was still in Russian, but the installation program ran fine. I have WinRar at the office and WinZip at home so I guess that makes a difference - thanks, Jdoe!

It might be having problems copying it to your temporary folder. Do you have WinRar by any chance? If you do, you can just open up Setup.exe in WinRar and extract the HDDlife Pro 2.9.109.msi from it. You might even be able to right click on the setup file and click extract. I'm not sure if it works in WinZip, but if you have it you can try that as well.

WinRar is shareware as well, but it just gives you a small nag screen whenever you use it. It can be found on http://www.rarlab.com/ or http://rarsoft.com/ (should be the same site)

Thanks, Jdoe. However, when I double click to install it (or right click and say to run or open or whatever.. I've tried everything), the installation program doesn't start up. Instead what happens is a small box opens and I get this left-to-right blue bar that looks similar to something that shows you the progress of a download or opening of files. It is on for only 1 or 2 seconds and then it closes. The program does not show up on my start menu or in the control panel. So I am mystified. When I try downloading the program directly from the hddlife site, I tried all three languages but the same thing happens. When I point my cursor at the icon for the setup file, it identifies it in Russian. Just totally weird.. this has never happened before.

Ignore my comment about the program sending information without your consent, it clearly states that it will send statistics when installing it. It's just enabled by default.

monkuboy, just try installing it in the strange moon language and change the language in the program itself once it's installed. Installing it is fairly straightforward, just keep clicking the bottom right button, checking off the thing on the license page, and keep clicking. The default language is Russian, but I guess the installer isn't detecting your local language for some reason.

I swear I am not trying to be funny.. when I download the files, the setup.exe file is in Russian! The activate.exe file runs fine and tells me the software is activated but when I double click on setup.exe after it has been unzipped, the installation program does not start. I even went to the hddlife website and tried downloading it from there (there are options for English, Russian and German) but the same thing happens when I click on the English download link.. it is all in Russian! Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong, or are you all Russian and having a good laugh about this?

This software sends all of your hard drives information to the authors website when it is started without letting you know. Included information is the hard drives manufacturer, serial number, model, firmware version, unique identification string, and a bunch of other stuff. This data is sent directly to http://www.binarysense.com/hddstat/www/info_recieve.php in an xml format.

You shouldn't have to run the activation first, the reason why it doesn't work if you run it second is because the program is already open when GoTD makes the registry change, so it isn't recognized at first. All you have to do is exit out the program and re-open and the new changes are recognized.

When you run the setup and finish it automatically starts the program. Close the program from the system tray or file menu and then run activate.exe

Now, USB drives normally are formatted with FAT32 and I believe SMART technology is only on FileSystems after FAT32.

So any harddrive purchased after 2003 should have SMART technology. Almost all HDs after then made by SeaGate will have it.

I have an external hard drve connected to my system by a USB port. The Monitor does not list the drive on Top and gives no information on it. Though it mentions it in the bottom scroll screen. I tried to install another copy to the external drive but with no success. Any solutions or information would be appreciated. (NickSlash7@gmail.com)

HawkPunk7

You had to have run the activation first, then the software setup. If done backwards, just uninstall and run activation, then run the software, should be good to go.

Paul

Did you restart the application? The same thing happened to me, but I restart and then it was registered.

HDDLifePro installed and got usual "activation confirmation" from GOTD. I then got a message from HDDLife requesting I buy it now with a discount. I trust the GOTD activation message; but, "surprised" by the purchase request. Feedback anyone ? - Thanks

It worked for me running the activation after the installation, you just have to exit the program and re-open it!

can not activate this software.activation successful message shows up but 14 day trial message does not go away.

SCSI informational exceptions are not supported for this hard drive whate i need 2 do?

Ok, never mind. I redownloaded, installed, installed again, yes activation first, anyone who installs this, ACTIVATION.exe FIRST then run the HDD setup. I thought I was doing this wrong but wasn't. Anyway it finally decided to do away with 14 day trial and is now full. Phew! Now to see how it goes :)

Paul

Hi again all, sorry to be the Grinch yet again. Just installed HDD health, installed great, runs great but I can't activate it, there is no key, no anything. There was no registration window that came up when installing or anything of the sort. I went to the website and saw nothing to register. Any help on this is appreciated.

Edit: Says 14day trial, that is all, checked everything.
Paul

Discuss it there