568B 0 Posted December 4, 2006 We have been installing stand alone DVR's for just over 3 years and now we are starting to see more and more failures on the hard drives. Some drives have only lasted 2 years. Most of my customers are recording 24x7. I have called the manufactures and they are basically stating that this is normal. Now my problem is relaying this info back to the customer that they will have to replace the hard drives every 2 or 3 years. I understand that the drive is writing constantly, but I thought they would last longer. Is this normal for the standard DVR's? Are there better manufactures? Last item - Is there an article that I can present to my present and future customers regarding the hard drive life span? I need to let my customers know IF these hard drive failures are common. Thank you. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Thomas in BP 0 Posted December 4, 2006 I think it sounds relatively expectable that the drives start failing at some point after around 3 years when you consider that it is the single component with the most mechanical motion in any PC or DVR. Especially if your clients are running their systems 24x7. When the HDD writes information on the platters it will write a certain amount of info before it moves the read/write head to update the file allocation table around the center of the platter. With continuous recording you have the read/write head moving back and forth an incredible amount of times every hour, so it is only natural that the HDD will be worn out at some point before most of the other components of the PC/DVR. If you read previously stored data at the same time as you write new data then the read/write head will be even more busy. Of course there may be some variations in the life-time of HDDs from different manufacturers, but unless your DVR uses some obscure brand of HDD, I don't think you should judge the quality of the DVR based on the survival of the HDD. I cannot give you a good article, but the following link may be interesting for you: http://ssdirect.com/ca/news/2005/05.htm Thomas Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
rory 0 Posted December 4, 2006 Also be sure to use Voltage Regulation or for certain the hard drives will stand a much higher chance of failure earlier than normal. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
568B 0 Posted December 4, 2006 Thanks for the reply's Thomas and Rory. Thomas - That article was helpful. What do you guys think of Dedicated Micros ? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
