Study Finds That Humidity Has More Effect On Drive Failures Than Temperature

AmiMoJo writes: A study by Rutgers University and Microsoft has found that hard drives are more prone to failure due to high levels of humidity [PDF] than high temperature. With a view to 'free cooling' data centres (using low external air temperature for cooling to save power), the paper notes that humidity related malfunctions of the driver controller / adapter are the dominant cause of drive failure. The good news is that while the researchers found that high relative humidity was a significant factor in drive failures, "[S]oftware availability techniques can mask them and enable freecooled operation, resulting in significantly lower infrastructure and energy costs that far outweigh the cost of the extra component failures."

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[MobileTatsu-NJG]

suck my pines 256 colors whore

"Well if it isn't Mr. Look-at-me-I'm-in-VGA! What'sdis? 256 colors for a little bitmapped wimp? Whatta waste of VGA, har har har!"

Heh. Nerd elitism is a funny thing.

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[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe the average person does that, so I doubt it's the common thing to do. I don't know anyone that leaves their computer on 24/7

Re:The average person

[Tx]

Yeah, and that has a huge effect on the hard drives in those smartphones ... oh, wait.

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[Tx]

At least you're marginally more relevant talking about servers than you were with you smartphones comment. However the OP said "The average person and their drives would benefit more from just turning the computer off at night or when they leave home". I've highlighted the words that should give you a little clue that we're not talking about servers here.

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[Tx]

Would you like a shovel, so you can keep digging? Nobody is saying that there aren't plenty of computers that are on 24/7. The point that the OP made, which you seem determined to miss, was that those machines that are not on 24/7, would benefit from being so. It's a really simple point, and I can't really restate it using smaller words than that. We're all aware of the existence of smartphones, and servers; they just aren't relevant to the thread.

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[castionsosa]

With power suspend technology, SSDs, CPU cores shutting parts off when not in use, and other power management abilities, it really doesn't make that big a difference. For example, Macs and most laptops will suspend after a period of time idle by default. Even on, a machine doesn't take much power, especially with modern SSDs where it has no moving parts that need to be powered other than a fan or two.

In the past, with CRT monitors and 5.25" HDDs that sucked up a large amount of power spinning the disks, i

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[ihtoit]

my laptop uses 36 Watts at full tilt, 17 at idle. And that's with an external hard drive plugged in.

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[Hussman32]

I think this is very common. I have my music library (Sonos) and network drives running all the time.

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[Bengie]

I have 3 desktop computers running 24/7, and even when I turned them off at night, my $50 electric bill did not change by a statistically significant amount. My electric bill is more affected by the weather or my wife's cooking habits. All of my lights are 10watt LEDs or 12.5watt CFLs, and the 2-3 lights that we run over 80% of the time are the LEDs in our living room with the computers. 80% of my electric bill comes from the stove, clothes drier, and fridge.

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[MrLogic17]

That's odd. I don't know anyone who doesn't leave their devices on 24x7.

System defaults for power save settings make it a very, very minor thing in the overall household/business power bill.
For a business, compare the man-hours cost of waiting for computers vs the electrical costs of a low-power mode computer.

As for life-span, that debate has been going on for longer than the +25 years I've been in the industry. It's so close between the two that other factors take priority.

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[jafiwam]

This also depends on what type of heating you have.

I have electrical resistance heating. So leaving lights on, fan on, TV on, computer on doesn't make any difference in my bill at all. The heat generated by those items gets spread around anyway, and makes my resistance heater run a little less.

During heating season, a complete wash.

Summer on the other hand, I do turn stuff off more religiously.

I am using up the MTBF on the items I run though.

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[Bengie]

My wife gets pissed off if she has to reload Chrome. Screw OS up-time, she bases her system stability in Chrome up-time. She'll wait until Chrome's update icon color is red for a week before relaunching it. She used to go 2-3 months between rebooting her computer. Window's updates got mighty angry. Now Win10 reboots itselt at night, and I hear about it every time. "omg, my computer restarted! Now I gotta wait 15 seconds for Chrome to load my 50 tabs!". And I'm glad I have a low latency dedicated fiber conne

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[Rising Ape]

What were we talking about again? Ohh yeah. I don't know anyone who doesn't leave their computer on 24/7, even my mom. Computers are appliances and need to be ready at a moment's notice.

Standby mode achieves that, you don't need to actually leave the thing on burning tens of watts. With an SSD you don't even need to wait for the drive to spin up.

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[Anonymous Coward]

and their drives would benefit more from just turning the computer off at night or when they leave home, instead of letting it run 24/7 which is the common thing to do.

The average person and their drives would benefit more from just letting their computer run 24/7, instead of turning it off at night or when they leave home which is the common thing to do. Disk defragmenting, software updates, and the like are nice to do when the computer has idle time. And drives spin down when not in use anyway. The constant warmer temperature reduces heating/cooling stresses and prevents condensation.

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[Anonymous Coward]

I do both. On even days, I leave it running 24/7. On odd days, I shut it off when not using it. Best of both worlds.

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[Coisiche]

On even days, I leave it running 24/7.

Er... surely just 24? If it's shut down on odd days then that's not even 24/2.

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[toddestan]

How many modern OSes actually let the drive spin down? It seems there's always a constant level of some activity going to the drive which keeps the drive always spun up. I suppose in Linux you might be able to put a stop to it with some effort, but in Windows you have no hope. Yes, I know the setting is still there, but I haven't seen it be useful since Windows 3.1.

You Insensitive clod!

[PPH]

That would ruin my uptime statistics.

In Florida...

[RabidReindeer]

You're screwed, either way.

Gobi Desert

[Flavianoep]

On the other hard, on the Gobi Desert you get the best of both worlds (as long you don't want to live there). It's a cold desert, so you get low temperatures and low humidity.

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[wonkey_monkey]

on the Gobi Desert you get the best of both worlds (as long you don't want to live there). It's a cold desert

So's Antarctica.

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[Flavianoep]

But politics of building in Antarctica for anything other than research is too complicate. To build in the Gobi Desert, one has only to deal either with China or with Mongolia.

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[Flavianoep]

*complicated

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[Tablizer]

Isn't Louisiana considered the most humid US state? (Although, I imagine there's a lot of local variation.)

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[Mr D from 63]

So, what they are saying is, its not so much the heat..........

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[Coren22]

Yeah, brought to you by the company that has to replace those drives under warranty...sure...

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[Coren22]

Where can I order that Jerk Seagate?

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[bosef1]

I know this is a little off-topic, but for years I've been braising my magtapes at 375 for about an hour per pound. Do the new recommendations mean I really should be doing a high-heat / low-heat type cooking (like for DVDs), or would reducing the temperature and just planning to cook it longer give a more succulent cartridge?

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[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

Based on the recent finding, the IEEE has issued new guideline

FFS - my company has just spent the last year designing and rolling out Drive Marination Process (TM), and now you're saying that's out of date?!!!

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[twmcneil]

It's only 96% relative humidity right now. Not so bad by Florida standards.

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[EvilSS]

A good chunk of the US east of the Rockies is pretty humid in the summer months.

My experience this is true

[Anonymous Coward]

I run a server in my basement and have more trouble with its drives then any other computer I have ever owned. I have left notebooks in hot cars, outside in the sun, exposed them to extreme cold too. But my basement always maintains at least a 50% humidity level even with dehumidifier. Its temp remains between 60F in Winter and 70F in Summer. I noticed one day my router was failing and decided to tear in down, and also realized its soldered board was oxidizing badly which most likely caused the failure. I then wondered if that was the same issues with my server? I do think too little humidity can also cause spurious static charges too so you don't want to not have some. maybe its time to rethink what acceptable is in humidity? I always thought below 50% was OK? But maybe below 40% is the sweet spot?

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[jafiwam]

Basements are also where a lot of noxious stuff is stored. A poorly sealed bottle of bleach will mess up a whole lot of metals over time.

Getting rid of old chemicals or sealing them up better may help a lot. (Also, better air flow might help too.)

That's actually pretty surprising.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

What I find rather unexpected about this paper's findings is that higher humidity caused more controller failure, rather than causing more mechanical issues. Yes, the mechanical bits are inside the enclosure with a filter to keep out dust; but they aren't fully sealed(unless new enough to be the helium filled ones) and water vapor will go right through a dust filter. The driver board is outside; but a bunch of solid-state components on a circuit board usually behave pretty well unless they are literally dripping or showing signs of corrosion. Am I just overestimating the reliability of PCBs?

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[drinkypoo]

Am I just overestimating the reliability of PCBs?

I'm really surprised too, because the drive electronics should be kept plenty warm by the spinning disc, and therefore there should be little or no condensation.

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[swb]

I would think that the slightly increased local temperature of the drive would actually keep moisture away.

They sell small heaters (which get no more than warm to the touch) for use in gun safes to keep the inside warm enough to ward off humidity. I have on in my safe and haven't seen any spotting problems on anything.

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[Anonymous Coward]

The relative humidity is a little less meaningful that everyone thinks. What matters is the availability of moisture to contribute to the corrosion process.

Put another way, for a given starting point of temperature and humidity, raising the temperature decreases the relative humidity, but not the absolute humidity. It is not true that warmer air that is less saturated will "suck" moisture from an area with a lower *relative* humidity if the *absolute* humidity is the same. Osmotic influences work on absolut

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[AmiMoJo]

Am I just overestimating the reliability of PCBs?

Yes. I design products that are permanently submerged for a living. Moisture always gets in slowly, even with a metal enclosure and rubber seals. It's a question of how long your PCB can survive before it starts to malfunction.

The malfunctions due to humidity are quite subtle sometimes. Strange readings, data corruption, things taking longer than expected because some data line is now capacitively coupled to something else. You spend ages looking for the fault and find a tiny spec of corrosion between two I

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[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Very interesting, thanks, I always appreciate stumbling across someone who actually knows what I'm speculating about.

Out of curiosity: since you doing arduous troubleshooting of a failed part is presumably not the ideal outcome, I imagine that the answer is 'no'; but are the various conformal coatings and adhesives/potting materials helpful against moisture? Less so than I imagine? Would be very helpful; but cause their own problems with thermal dissipation or wonky capacitance changes?

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[AmiMoJo]

Conformal coating works wondering against moisture. We don't do it for a few reasons. Cost and the fact that boards become very difficult to repair or even diagnose (can't get on test points easily). Having said that, we have kinda decided that the boards are so small and sensitive now it's not worth even trying trying to fix them, so after testing is done we might start using a cheap coating.

A metal case, desiccant and good seals is usually enough to get to the 5 year mark without issue though, and that's

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[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Interesting, thanks. This would probably blow the BoM in a lot of cases; but now I'm curious to try a 'test point extender' to see if I could preserve the test points and us a conformal coating. I'm thinking a gold-plated copper cylinder, same diameter as the test point and slightly taller than the expected thickness of the conformal coating; possibly with a textured indentation located partway up the cylinder(similar to the indentation used in a pulley or belt drive to keep the rope/belt from leaving the c

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[AmiMoJo]

The best option is usually to do the testing before applying the coating. Then have some self-diagnostic capability to tell you that the board has failed and needs to be replaced. Forget repairing the board once the coating is on, you just need to know that it requires replacement.

Lead-Free Solder and Humidity

[Anonymous Coward]

They do not get along. Corrosion in such a high silver material is easy to accomplish, especially in the presence of a high concentration of water vapor. Fine pitch BGAs are already a fucking nightmare of solderability. Add humidity and the resultant corrosion and you're begging for failures.

I didn't even need a university study to know that. It has been known in manufacturing for years.

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[thegarbz]

I didn't even need a university study to know that.

A quick google search will show many university studies done show that lead-free solder has BETTER CORROSION RESISTANCE than the old lead solder. Even wikipedia said alloys containing copper or lead promote corrosion on the joints.

Also solder isn't a "fucking nightmare of solderability". In fact lead free solder only needs a slightly different temperature profile during the baking process and a change in the flux used and any manufacturer who doesn't have an army of small immigrants in the basement hand sol

Desiccant?

[Anonymous Coward]

So should I take those silica gel sachets that come with everything, dry them in the oven and put them in my external HDD cases?

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[Khyber]

The controllers are typically not sealed, which means that inherent atmospheric moisture, which would include corrosive stuff like sweat from humans that has evaporated into the atmosphere, etc., would kill those.

I suspect (without RTFA) that the platters are fine, it's the controller boards, or rather, the solder joints/traces, or poorly-sealed IC packaging, that died over time due to corrosion.

This just in!

[Khyber]

Conductive atmospheric material is bad for electronics.

Welcome to the EARLY 1990s, where we had already determined this before. Humidity kills most EVERYTHING.

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[1u3hr]

1990s?

Welcome to 1800. As soon as people made machines out of metal, humidity was fucking them up.

I live in Hong Kong where for half the year we have humidity over 90% every day.

Everything either rusts, corrodes or goes mouldy. Bicycles turn to piles of rust in a few months. Fungus grows in your crotch. The many and various colours of corroded metals on electronics are marvellous to behold.

Conformal Coating

[flyingfsck]

This is very well known in military circles. They should conformally coat the drive controllers to protect them against moisture.