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An Empirical Analysis of Hardware Failures on a Million Consumer PCs

research.microsoft.com

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Re: An Empirical Analysis of Hardware Failures on a Million Consumer PCs

#41

Post by kyberias »

jseliger wrote: post #28
Zenst wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laptops also have in effect a cleaner power source with UPS built in so any power glitch's get filtered on a laptop as standard compared to a desktop. Least I have found desktop's with a good quality PSU and UPS noticable more reliable than those without.

Laptops also have in effect a cleaner power source with UPS built in so any power glitch's get filtered on a laptop as standard compared to a desktop. I've heard this theory before but never seen it substantiated. Do you have a link to any research or articles that explains how this works?

How it works? Laptops have a battery. Hence they are less likely to power off suddenly when mains voltage drops. And powering off suddenly increases the probability of some electronics in the system failing. No need to research, just simple electronics and logic.

Re: An Empirical Analysis of Hardware Failures on a Million Consumer PCs

#43

Post by osivertsson »

cs702 wrote: post #10

Very useful -- I will take this analysis into account when it's time to upgrade my current personal machine or configure the next one! Thank you for posting this here. The only thing I would have wanted to see but didn't in this analysis is how failure rates vary for different types of disk subsystem -- specifically, traditional hard drives versus the newer solid-state devices. I suspect, but don't know for sure, tha…

Since the database they used is from "a period of 8 months in 2008" (Section 4, "Measuring hardware failure rates") I doubt they had any significant number of solid-state disks in their data.

Re: An Empirical Analysis of Hardware Failures on a Million Consumer PCs

#44

Post by ArbitraryLimits »

wazoox wrote: post #12
cs702 wrote: post #10

Very useful -- I will take this analysis into account when it's time to upgrade my current personal machine or configure the next one! Thank you for posting this here. The only thing I would have wanted to see but didn't in this analysis is how failure rates vary for different types of disk subsystem -- specifically, traditional hard drives versus the newer solid-state devices. I suspect, but don't know for sure, tha…

So far numbers I've seen seem to acknowledge a failure rate of SSDs in the same ballpark as spinning rust but it's only been slightly over a year that most SSDs are actually reliable. Many, many old models were absolutely terrible. Hence I think it may be difficult yet to draw reliable conclusions.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy-solid...

Re: An Empirical Analysis of Hardware Failures on a Million Consumer PCs

#46

Post by ippisl »

scott_s wrote: post #25
ippisl wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> branded computers are more reliable than beige boxes. This is meaningless. The real question is how those compare to beige box that uses a decent parts. But Microsoft definitely has interest in helping manufacturers of brand computers because piracy is more prevalent in beige boxes.

This paper was written by researchers in Microsoft Research, and accepted in an academic conference. It is not marketing. To be clear, you are suggesting that the researchers were dishonest in order to help their company. I find this unlikely. Disclaimer: I am a researcher in a corporate lab.

I doesn't have to be dishonesty. It might just be bias(conscious or subconscious) not to waste time on this question.

Even doctors show this kind of biases when advising people on choosing treatments(which is a much bigger moral issue).

Re: An Empirical Analysis of Hardware Failures on a Million Consumer PCs

#47

Post by cs702 »

AngryParsley wrote: post #38
wazoox wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So far, the best source I can recall is this study: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-reliability-failure-...

That study is Intel-only, but it seems to jive with the return rates Anandtech mentioned: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4202/the-intel-ssd-510-review/... There are also numbers for hard drives: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2147063 Basically, Intel SSDs from a year ago are more reliable than all hard drives. And SSDs in general are more reliable than any 2TB hard drive. The data isn't ideal, but it's b…

AngryParsley: the Tom's Hardware article wazoox mentioned above also has those return-rate stats (page 3): "...returns can occur for a multitude of reasons. This presents a challenge because we don’t have any additional information on the returned drives—were they dead-on-arrival, did they stop working over time, or was there simply an incompatibility that prevented the customer from using the [device]? ... If online purchases account for the majority of hard drives sold, poor packaging and carrier mishandling can have a real effect on return rates. Furthermore, we also have no way of normalizing how customers used these drives. The large variance in hard drive return rates [between data sets] underlines this problem. For example, the Seagate Barracuda LP rises from 2.1% to 4.1%, while the Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EARS drops from 2.4% to 1.2%..."[1]

In short, the available return-rate data is too noisy and inconsistent to be a good proxy for failure rates.

[1] http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-reliability-failure-...

Re: An Empirical Analysis of Hardware Failures on a Million Consumer PCs

#48

Post by scott_s »

ippisl wrote: post #46
scott_s wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This paper was written by researchers in Microsoft Research, and accepted in an academic conference. It is not marketing. To be clear, you are suggesting that the researchers were dishonest in order to help their company. I find this unlikely. Disclaimer: I am a researcher in a corporate lab.

I doesn't have to be dishonesty. It might just be bias(conscious or subconscious) not to waste time on this question. Even doctors show this kind of biases when advising people on choosing treatments(which is a much bigger moral issue).

Their conclusions on "white boxes" are based on relatively straightforward statistical analysis of their data. In order for there to be bias against white boxes, one of the following has to be true:

1. Their data collection methods are biased against white boxes. Given the large sample size and the method of retrieving samples - automatically generated crash reports from users - I find this unlikely. They cover this point in section 3.2.1.

2. Their statistical analysis is flawed. I see no issues with it, nor did the reviewers. (Otherwise it wouldn't have been accepted.)

3. They lied. I am most skeptical on this one.

It's disingenuous to gesture at researchers and allege bias based on their employer without actually saying how they are biased. Doing so is not valid skepticism, but prejudice.

Re: An Empirical Analysis of Hardware Failures on a Million Consumer PCs

#49

Post by andreasvc »

latch wrote: post #3

Is there a compelling reason for this to be a PDF rather than HTML? I'm genuinely curious.

Mathematical formulas are a big reason; wikipedia uses images which look passable unless you start zooming in. Another reason is that with HTML you're never sure if you'll end up with the fonts as they were intended. Lastly, because HTML is not a page-oriented markup format, the presentation in general can differ from system to system; e.g., you can't say "on line 2 of page 3".

Re: An Empirical Analysis of Hardware Failures on a Million Consumer PCs

#50

Post by ippisl »

scott_s wrote: post #48
ippisl wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doesn't have to be dishonesty. It might just be bias(conscious or subconscious) not to waste time on this question. Even doctors show this kind of biases when advising people on choosing treatments(which is a much bigger moral issue).

Their conclusions on "white boxes" are based on relatively straightforward statistical analysis of their data. In order for there to be bias against white boxes, one of the following has to be true: 1. Their data collection methods are biased against white boxes. Given the large sample size and the method of retrieving samples - automatically generated crash reports from users - I find this unlikely. They cover this…

The problem is that they didn't wrote in their paper :"white boxes are known to have large variability in their level of reliability. We leave it to further study to compare the reliability of white boxes built with quality components to brand boxes".

Do you think they haven't known that ?

This kind of remarks of the incompleteness of research done is common in many research papers. And they definitely contribute to readers not getting the wrong impression.

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