The Clear and Present Danger of Solid State Drive Failure
Like any clever IT hardware user, you limit yourself to the best components you can find. You strive to ensure that your data storage devices are up to the task of surviving everything from routine usage to power spikes and operator errors. All good things must pass, however. When your solid state drive hardware finally bites the bullet, will you be ready to bounce back?
MTBF is one of the world's most secretive, misunderstood reliability engineering characteristics. It denotes the arithmetic mean, or average, length of time that products typically function successfully between successive failure incidents. Although this seems pretty straightforward, people commonly interpret it to mean that they're guaranteed to get a certain amount of usage out of a unit. Since the MTBF is an average measure, however, it doesn't necessarily account for the fact that you might unknowingly purchase a faulty SSD that falls on the short end of the average.
The fact that you purchased a solid state drive with a long MTBF characteristic doesn't render it invulnerable to faults.
You may get many more years of uninterrupted operation out of your device, but you'll eventually need to repair or replace the hardware. Depending on the nature of your failure incident, your old MTBF stat might lose its accuracy. For instance, if a device experiences a serious electronic issue after a component burns out, then it could impact other systems and increase the likelihood, severity or frequency of subsequent problems.
Preparing for the Inescapable Failures
If MTBF factors are best-case scenarios, then how can you minimize the ill effects of faults that might strike at any instant? For instance, you may have to do some digging to discover the MTBF for a given piece of hardware because manufacturers guard such stats closely. Even if you find accurate stats, there's no telling how your particular device will behave.
Saving the life of the infamous rookie pirate, Captain Ruben Kirk, catapults Jessica Red into a sea of magic, jewel heists, and world-saving adventure.
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After years of watching pirates fighting with the king's navy off the coast of Harvest Island, Jessica Red saves the life of the infamous rookie pirate, Captain Ruben Kirk, and the two become fast friends. Little does she know, Ruben Kirk is only the first of three rookie pirates she'll meet during a whirlwind of sea-faring adventures - but when Jessica learns the corrupt King Mordred has plans to destroy her island home, can she convince them to help her save it?
("The Rookie Pirates" is Book 1 in "The Adventures of Jessica Red" trilogy.)
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