Air conditioners kill hard drives?
posted May 11th 2007 1:29AM
We already knew that we had to sacrifice our precious holiday decorations in order to get maximum bandwidth and coverage from our WiFi routers, and now it looks like we may have to sweat out the summer months sans air conditioning if an anecdotal, single-source article in Associated Content proves accurate. According to sole interviewee Ben Carmichel of ESS Data Recovery, his company sees "a 20% increase in failed hard drives hitting our lab in the summer as [opposed to] the winter," and believes from surveying customers and the uptick in electronic-related issues that AC-triggered power surges are largely to blame. Of course, this alleged risk is easy enough to minimize by utilizing an uniterrupted power source for your PC and configuring your drives in a RAID 1 or 5, so it doesn't seem too difficult to have your cake and eat it too in this case. Or you could set up shop in Siberia and just avoid this nonsense altogether.
[Via The Inquirer, thanks John K.]
I wouldn't doubt this for a moment. When the microwave in my common room ticks off, the lights in here get brighter! I wonder what kind of interference that kind of flux could have on my system?
Could be worse... but these dumpy old dorms do not even have AC ^_^
Wow does nobody use a UPS around here?
No, we prefer using FedEx.
Yeah, I've had UPSs on my PCs since the 90s. Considering the low prices these days everyone should have one, even if it's just enough to let you ride out brownouts and few-second outages.
Maybe because they think they don't need one.... In the other hand when you live in a country where the power distribution is kinda unreliable(to say the least) like I do, you'll find that almost everyone have a ups or a generator....
Maybe there is a more obvious explanation...
Ambient temps are higher in the summer. Maybe more PCs just overheat.
Erm, I was kinda thinking my hard drive loves my AC unit. Case temp: 75ish. Without AC? 89ish.
But my UPS takes care of any over/undervoltage, so maybe I'm just good to my drives all around.
And here was me thinking that the cooler air was the problem. But in actual fact it is the power surges created by aircon that is the trouble. Power surges we can fix by using a UPS system. Cooler air, I would have thought this would be good to drive stop them from overheating.
I think its the heat, My hard drive actually stopped working temporarily yesterday because it was over 100 degrees in my room, I had to bring in the air conditioner and put a window fan next to my computer before it cooled enough to stop losing the hard drive.
Server rooms around the world would be in the deepest of s**t if it was the cool air that caused hard drives to crash ;P
Hummm ... let's see ... more failing hard drives during summmer? Who is to blame?
=> the HEAT? the more probable explanation, one of the major cause of HDD failures?
=> the embedded electronic running in air conditionning devices?
I don't know why, but I tend to prefer the more simple solution, the heat ... why the emebedded electronic in the computers themselves wouldn't increase the failure rate then?
a better explanatioon would be the fluctuation of hot/cold temperatures when you turn the AC on/off day after day.
After working in IT for quite a few years (Yeah I'm THAT guy) I also noticed this trend during the summer months. However, we attributed a lot of this to lightning strikes. It doesn't look like this is anything anyone has mentioned yet. I could see how a surge back into your house from the A/C could damage your computer. And yes, in an ideal world we would all use UPS's. However, I dont think the amount of fluctuation which that surge would give would be nearly enough to reach through the PS and still have enough juice to hit the hard drive. It's just my humble opinion...
Dale-Chuckx00, that isnt interference, that has to do with the microwave drawing more power than the supply can provide for all devices, so it uses some of the power that was going to the lights, thus they dim.
I am doubtful that an AC turning on would damage a harddrive, most people have surge protectors and computer power supplies are rugged enough to prevent spikes like this, they do infact convert and regulate the power (AC to DC, then DC to Pulsed DC), if an AC turning on would damage a harddrive, any high load devices would contribute, vacuums, microwaves, large stereo systems, space heaters, refridgerators, freezers. I would bet that its the heat and humidity.
A/C's, fridge's, etc, and even some laser printers all clearly state that they should be on a dedicated circuit. It's a good rule of thumb to keep the electronics you care about on their own circuit, if you can. But, basically anything that draws tons of sudden amps when they kick on can/will (though its debatable how much) do damage to electronics. The moral of the story is, if you care about your electronics slap a UPS on them, they're fairly inexpensive, and certainly worth it. If you can afford it get one of the "Pro" models that provide better line conditioning and a true sine wave when on battery. Stepped units can do damage if your in an area prone to power outages which require the unit to switch to battery frequently.
...AC-triggered power surges are largely to blame. Of course, this alleged risk is easy enough to minimize by ... configuring your drives in a RAID 1 or 5..."
Using RAID configurations does not minimize the risk of drive failures due to power surges. In fact, they increase this risk. Sad that the standards of communication and understanding have become so low. Why this is gadget news I have no idea.
I had a server that kept crashing every time the building AC went on, resulting in drive damage. Finally, put a UPS between it and the wall and problem disappeared.
Yup, it happens. We've gone through an HDD, power supply, 2 microwaves and a dryer because of this. Granted, it's due to poor wiring and both of our A/C's turning on at the same time, but it sure as hell isn't a rare occurrence.
But there are two major types of UPSs, right?
Ones that simply output what's fed from the power outlet and ones that constantly discharges from the battery while charging it at the same time.
Of course there are many in between, but my understanding is that the cheaper models are basically giving you what it got off the wall outlet, and therefore not much better in terms of isolation than an extension cord with surge suppressor. No?
I can confirm that once I turned an AC unit OFF and that killed an external hard drive. Huge pain in the ass. Thankfully we were able to recover the data, but man, for a while I thought I had killed my client's entire data set just by trying to save some energy.
And yes, the hard drive unit and the AC were both plugged into one power strip. Now of course I realize it's common sense...
Anyone else kill a hard drive by turning an air conditioner OFF?
During the rolling blackouts in California in the summer of 2001, I was managing a computer shop and we saw a noticeable increase in the number of calls complaining of what are normally unpredictable hardware AND SOFTWARE failures. Failing power supplies, failing hard drives, BSODs, random reboots, etc. Instead of asking people to come into the shop, we'd send an onsite tech out with a hardware diagnostic kit and a UPS. If the hardware diaged OK, we'd sell the customer a UPS and - guess what? - no more problems.
So, yeah, "dirty" power can absolutely cause these kinds of problems... and more.
All computers contain a switched mode power supply with an inbuilt AC interference filter. The electronics design of the switched mode power supply, the high frequency transformer and filter capacitors will result in a clean DC power source. The switched mode power supply is tolerant to AC voltage fluctuation. The reason that hard drives are failing during summer is lack of air circulation in the computer box and around the hard drive. Computer cases contain no dust filtering. The amount of dust which accumulates in the case is enough to destroy fans, power supplies and overheat electronic components. I live in a city which experiences 35 to 40 degrees Celsius during the summer months. Computers are a good room heater. I use an air conditioner to cool the computer room otherwise the temperature in the room will rise to about 45 degrees Celsius. Try using temperature monitoring software and you will be surprised at the component temperatures inside the case on a cool day. On a hot day the temperatures will be around 75 degrees Celsius or higher. My advice is clean out the computer with compressed air every six months and install another fan around the hard drives.
Power surges are probably the #1 killer of hard drives, but #2 is heat. Everyone's quick to cool their processor, but the hard drives are often neglected. Those little buggers get crazy hot. The hotter the drive, the shorter its life. If you can burn your finger on the drive during operation, just imagine how hot it is on the inside right where the tiny heads are... it doesn't take much heat to warp such fine little devices.
I haven't had a single hard drive failure across my 20 or so drives in 6 years, ever since I started mounting a nice big quiet fan right in front of the drive bays in every system I build. I also don't risk my equipment to cheap power supplies. It's far cheaper to pay a little more for an oversized power supply that can handle spikes and dips, than to replace a board, hard drive or memory stick when the cheap PSU explodes (and of course then you need another power supply). The other thing to keep in mind is that a power supply's efficiency goes down as temperature goes up. In other words, that 450w PSU might only handle 350w at 25'C ambient, and less than 300'w at 30'C. When the heat wears out your PSU, the power fluctuations will hurt every component in your system.
Not sure why you didn't link to the actual article...
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/237648/air_conditioners_may_pose_threat_to.html
I've had one hard drive break and one NEW motherboard shutdown (which can luckily be easily reset) only after getting an air conditioner. Every time I turn on the AC, the lights flicker ... IE a mini "brown out". To avoid having to turn off an unplug my computer every time I want to tun the AC on, I think I shall aquire one of these "UPS" you speak of.
blork http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1819060&body=MAIN#productresources