Heat doesn't kill hard drives. Here's what does

georgeks · 14 Mar 2016

If anyone is interested in facts, here's the Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population report published by Google back in 2007.
http://static.googleusercontent.com/...k_failures.pdf
Additional link I have found useful:S.M.A.R.T. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Just the fact that Google's server infrastructure is estimated in excess of 450.000 systems, and used consumer-grade Hard Disks ranging between 80 to 400 GB capacities, makes the report -at least -interesting.

More than 100,000 drives were covered, manufactured from 2001 on-wards. Rotational speeds ranged from 5400 to 72000rpm, and were various (9) models from different well-known and established manufacturers.

Google claims that collection and storage of “vital information" about all of its systems occurs every few minutes.

mjf · 14 Mar 2016

Interesting but the negative impact of humidity and electronics isn't a surprise. In Asia/Pacific regions of high relative humidity are common. Where I live it tends to be a dry heat but evaporative air conditioners are common resulting in cool air but higher humidity.
I think the solution is fans and good ventilation for your HDDs and your PC in general.

themorus · 15 Mar 2016

ThrashZone said:

It doesn't rain in Ireland

I should have clarified, we have low humidity even though it rains most days of the year, we have a temperate climate, it's never too cold or warm.

tinmar49 · 21 Mar 2016

Helium filled drives have been available for years, they have to be hermetically sealed so they are proof against humidity changes. Their price must have come down by now.

mjf · 21 Mar 2016

The study stated:
"High relative humidity causes disk failures largely due to controller/adapter malfunction."
Not platter failure.
On standard drives this electronics is open to the environment. Maybe there is for it to be sealed to some extent as well.