HDX Hard Drive failure rate

Posted by: crackie on 25 July 2013

Just had Phil Harris run some checks on my HDX 2TB HDD version which I had been having issues with. All in his own time mind you, when on holiday, thank you Phil !

 

Looks like my HDD needs to be replaced (under warranty so no issue there), the question I have is this common for a unit only 18 months old ? Have others have similar issues ? Naim obviously do not make the HDD, so these things happen,  my HDX is on a fraim shelf between other naim units, and summer in Perth is brutal and the room is very hot until I turn on my A/C after work , is heat an issue here or do HDD's just fail randomly & that is just the way it is ? I cant' recall the HDX ever shutting down because it is to hot and I leave all my naim gear on 24/7 if that helps.

 

Cheers, Peter

Posted on: 25 July 2013 by J Saville

Unfortunately HDD failure is common in any device, sometimes the failure rate can be higher if there's a bad batch from the factory. Sometimes they fail slowly, other times it is sudden. I have had a couple of PC's that I have built with 2 different brands of HDD and each of them failed differently.

 

I always recommend having your HDX/Serve set to automatically back up on a weekly basis to a NAS drive, that way if the data on your HDD is completely unable to be recovered you don't have to start ripping again. 

Posted on: 26 July 2013 by Harry

It is unusual for one to go so young but they can fail at any time. When using any HDD based system one must (from day one) have a contingency plan in place for disaster recovery because it is a question of when your HDD will fail, not if. Past that it is impossible to predict when it will fail.

Posted on: 26 July 2013 by maze

I suspect my hard drive has gone on my unitiserve, while phil was working remotely on my pc the only titles I could see were the ones off the USB. It's now at naim for repair. My userve is also about 18 months of age.

Posted on: 28 July 2013 by crackie
Cheers for the suggestions guys. Just thinking, I have had the HDX on 24/7 and never on standby. Should I have had the unit on but on standby when not in use to save hard drive usage / heat, this would cut out excessive heat in the unit at the very least.
Posted on: 28 July 2013 by rjstaines
Originally Posted by crackie:
 Should I have had the unit on but on standby when not in use to save hard drive usage / heat, this would cut out excessive heat in the unit at the very least.

 

No !

 

The only way out of "standby" is via powerdown & restart.

More damage is done to HDDs during power cycle than is done if kept running  (but the HDD will spin down when not in use anyway).

 

The HDX wasn't built to be frequently power cycled, so leave it on 24/7 - great source of heat in the winter... bit of a shame all this hot weather we're having in the UK though.  

(mine's up to 50 something degrees inside its case)

Posted on: 29 July 2013 by crackie
OK, cheers for the tip.