Sensor to detect computer hard drive failures
A NEW heat-sensitive sensor to detect computer hard drive failures has been designed. The sensor, which attaches to a user's desk top computer, has been designed by Carnegie Mellon University researchers. This Critter Temperature Sensor, is being used to monitor the working environment of university computers, according to Michael Bigrigg, of the Institute for Complex Engineered Systems.
``Essentially what we are trying to do is save the life of the computer hard drive. Hard drives get hot and the sensor is designed to pick up the slightest temperature variation,'' Bigrigg said. Another advantage of the new sensor is that it will help researchers understand wasted energy.
The average lifespan of a computer hard drive is 600,000 hours or 3.1 years, industry analysts report. But the researchers predict that they may be able to extend the lifespan of a computer hard drive by sensing how much daily heat a hard drive endures. Carnegie Mellon researchers report that the amount of new words, sounds and pictures stored on computer hard rives has almost doubled in the past three years. In global-climate data storage alone, researchers estimate that the volume of recorded information is expected to soar — from 2 billion gigabytes in the year 2000 to 15 billion gigabytes in 2010. A gigabyte is a billion bytes — the equivalent of a billion English letters.
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