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TECHNICAL TIP >>
Minimize the risk of HDD (hard disk drive)
failure.
HEAT APPROACHING...Cool those hard drives!
With the Summer months fast approaching, and the days getting warmer, it’s
time to start thinking about the maintenance programs you have in place
for your digital video recorders (DVRs).
Inside your DVR’s there is a hard disk drive (HDD) which stores digitally
encoded data on rapidly rotating platters with magnetic surfaces. This
information is written by a “head” that floats 12 nanometres off the
platter.
The power and accuracy of a HDD can be compared to a plane, flying at
eight million kilometres per hour at a height of 0.8 millimetres above the
grassland, simultaneously counting every single blade of grass. The plane
would miscalculate less than one blade of grass during a flight that lasts
for 1,250 flights around the Earth - an impressive performance. If this
device fails, you lose all your recorded data, and by Murphy’s Law, it’s
always when you need it. Hence, prevention is the best option.
The number one cause of HDD failure is heat, and in many DVR systems,
failure in cooling components (eg. clogged filters on fans) can go
undetected for an extended period of time. The temperature of a HDD should
not exceed 40 degrees Celsius and every degree of temperature above this
recommended level increases the chance of failure by 2 to 3 percent.
Further possible reasons for a shortened product life of a HDD include:
repeat power failures or fluctuations, damage through electrostatic
influences, magnetic fields, corrosion caused by too high humidity, high
temperature changes (condensing humidity), and air pollution.
At Net Security, we use Seagate SV35 Surveillance Edition HDD, which are
designed to better tolerate humidity, temperature, vibrations and other
factors that can cause HDD failure. However, your best option to help
prevent HDD failure is to ensure that you install your DVRs in
locations/conditions with optimum ventilation, and by ensuring that you
have a thorough maintenance program.
So...with the heat fast approaching, by keeping your hard drives cool, you
too can keep a cool head knowing that all your recorded data will be
available should the need arise.
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