Three years ago I installed a 1.5 TB WD Elements USB drive as an external backup for the “file server” in the Basement Laboratory. The log files show that the drive started spitting out “short reads” early in October, which means the rust has begun flaking off the platters.
Repeated fsck -fyv /dev/sda1 runs produce repeated failures at various spots, so it’s not in good condition:
e2fsck 1.41.14 (22-Dec-2010) Backup-1.5TB contains a file system with errors, check forced. Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes Error reading block 97649088 (Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read) while getting next inode from scan. Ignore error? yes ... snippage ... Pass 2: Checking directory structure Error reading block 104039017 (Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read) while reading directory block. Ignore error? yes Force rewrite? yes Directory inode 26009985, block #26, offset 0: directory corrupted Salvage? yes ... snippage ... Pass 4: Checking reference counts Inode 25903223 ref count is 41, should be 40. Fix? yes ... snippage ... Backup-1.5TB: ***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED ***** 736471 inodes used (0.80%) 10173 non-contiguous files (1.4%) 9367 non-contiguous directories (1.3%) # of inodes with ind/dind/tind blocks: 119655/12234/0 142996292 blocks used (39.04%) 0 bad blocks 3 large files 276772 regular files 459614 directories 0 character device files 0 block device files 0 fifos 10377447 links 76 symbolic links (72 fast symbolic links) 0 sockets -------- 11113909 files
Given that rsnapshot lashes the daily backups together with extensive hard links, so that there’s only one copy of a given file version on the drive, I don’t know what 76 symbolic links might mean.
It’s been spinning up once a day, every day, for about 40 months; call it 1200 power cycles and you’ll be close. The usual runtime is about 10 minutes, giving the poor thing barely enough time to warm up.
One data point does not a curve make.
The warranty on new WD Element drives seems to be a year; I have no idea what it was slightly over three years ago, although I’m pretty sure it wasn’t more than three years…
The various desktop boxes around here get powered up once a day, too, but I tend to replace them every few years and have never had a hard drive failure; a few system boards have crapped out, though. The boxes acting as controllers for the 3D printers and the Sherline CNC mill have a much lower duty cycle.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 