Test case for hard disk reliability

Hi all, We have got a consumer electronics product and got a hard disk to save some of the customers preferred content.The hard disk stores it and could be retireved at any time according to customer's will.We would like to test the reliability of the data stored in the hard disk.In cases like power failure while writing to the disk,we would like to gauge how much data gets corrupted and also determine the proper recovery strategy if any. One idea which stuck me would be have the debugger run with the code writing to hard disk and remove the power .But I am not really sure if this could be close to real usage case since debugging involves delays. I also came to know that some of the hard disks used to buffer the data written and later store it physically.How to test such cases?

I searched around net to find some utilities but none of them seem to gauge the data reliability. I would appreciate if experts here could share some of their thoughts on how we could test this.

Looking farward for your replies and advanced thanks,

Regards, s.subbarayan

Reply to
ssubbarayan
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Ask the HD manufacturers. Really. This is a big issue for PVRs and other video devices, where the drives are on 24x7 and often thrashed within an inch of their lives while recording two programs and playing another. The manufacturers of those boxes have been closely involved in extensive and active quality programs with the HD makers. You should be able to get very well-substantiated and reliable information on the drive's reliability - worth a thousand times the value of any testing you can do yourselves.

If you're not satisfied, get server-grade drives, their MTBF is about 3 orders of magnitude better than consumer devices.

Reply to
Clifford Heath

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