EGTBs and stress on harddrives

[Robert Allgeuer]

My 3 PCs run around the clock, 7 days a week and - as I am testing quite extensively - some of the harddisks are under permanent stress due to ongoing tablebase accesses.

I wanted to learn a bit more about the effects of this and have recently installed SMART-based harddisk monitoring software (HDD Health) on all my computers.

What I found:
- harddisks that are not used for tablebases (i.e. they are permanently on and spin 24 hours, but they do not have many accesses) have an internal temperature of around 42 degrees, which is fine.
- harddisks used for EGTBs have significantly higher drive-internal temperatures: temperatures float between 48 and 54 degrees.

Normally following rules apply:
- drive internal temperature should be under 45 degrees, when exceeding 45 degrees for extended periods additional cooling should be provided
- a temperature of 55 degrees is something like the maximum upper limit; beyond that one is outside of vendor specifications.

So it appears that there is a clear impact of the EGTBs on harddisk health; mine are currently operating at the "borderline". I am already curious when they will fail: I am pretty sure they will have a shorter life span than the ones not used for EGTBs.

Next time I set up a computer, I will put EGTBs on a seperate, dedicated disk and no other data will be on this disk that might get lost in the event of crash. Today I am not in that situation, although of course I do have backup in place.

Robert

[Dan Honeycutt]

I am already curious when they will fail: I am pretty sure they will have a shorter life span than the ones not used for EGTBs.

If the failure is due to insulation (very common) the rule of thumb is 1/2 the expected life for each 10 degrees C increase in temperature. You are seeing about 10 deg C so expect your tablebase drives to have about half normal life.

Dan H.