Magnetic Wobbles Cause Hard Drive Failure

An anonymous reader writes "According to this report by IT PRO, scientists working at the University of California have discovered the main reason of hard drive failure. According to researchers, some materials used in hard drives are better at damping spin precession than others. Spin precession of magnetic material effects its neighbors' polarity and this can spread and cause sections of hard drives to spontaneously change polarity and lose data. This is known as a magnetic avalanche. So next time Windows fails to start, you'll know why!"

Re:Sigh

[larry bagina]

yes, but the gpl v3 fixes this limitation.

I've had this problem before...

[commlinx]

But I'd put the wobbly boots down to being pissed.

Re:Question

[untaken_name]

It doesn't effect Windows at all, actually. It might, however, affect Windows.

As my high school music teacher always said...

[RealGrouchy]

"So next time Windows fails to start, you'll know why!"

It's a bad carpenter who blames his tools.

- RG>

Re:Question

[thanatos_x]

Because this is Slashdot. Everyone knows open source transcended hardware ages ago. Also it cannot affect OS X systems, as Apple is never to blame for anything going wrong with their computers. That leaves Windows as the only logical choice. You like logic, don't you?

Re:It "effects" it's neighbors...

[Refenestrator]

You mean "its" there, not "it's." Certain possessives don't have apostrophes in ou'r language.

Windows won't start??

[suv4x4]

So next time Windows fails to start, you'll know why!

Because... I didn't install it?

I'm disappointed.

[Khaed]

This has been up at least an hour.

So next time Windows fails to start, you'll know why!

Where are all the jokes about this? Seriously! A bad hard drive is not the only reason Windows won't start. It's not even in the top ten. I've had Windows not start maybe once in ten years over a hard drive. I've had it not start for a variety of other reasons... well the number is greater than one, but I don't keep count (I bet twitter did, though).

C'mon you slackers, it was a slow day, where are my +5 funny posts about the ineptitude of Microsoft?

Mac OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

Luckily Mac OS X is safe, as it is pretected by a global reality distortion field.

Re:Windows won't start??

[MikeBabcock]

Congrats, you've figured out the key to enjoying your new PC :-)

Re:Which University of California?!

[background image]

I heard that they discovered how to "fix" vampires at UC Sunnydale.

Well I, for one, welcome our new, neutered vampire overlords...

Re:Question

[nocomment]

Replace the HD or hand in your geek card please.

Re:Sigh

[martin-boundary]

Only if you're making the assumption that Linux is running from a hard disk installation. Plenty of linuxes are actually run from a cd drive, in which case the poster is correct: this is really mainly a Windows issue.

This could explain where my files go....

[sssssss27]

I backup all of my DVDs to my computer because I have a notorious habit of losing them. Every once in a while I'll go to watch a movie that I swear I've backed up and can't find on my computer. So at least now I can blame it on some science thing and not just my failing memory. Every day science makes one less thing your fault, lol.

How about a bewolf cluster of failed drives!...

[Cafe Alpha]

No that's not it. In Soviet Russia, you fail hard drive... No. Where's that goatse link?

Looks like a precession hit the article

[noidentity]

During that brief time, each magnetic field contributes forces that affect the precession of neighbouring fields. Each of these spins Combining all those wobbles adds up to a lot of energy that changes the polarity of neighbouring bits and spreads across the surface, causing sections of disk drive to be wiped out.

That's what they get for using a hard drive!

Re:Sigh

[jd]

The tracks can wobble on independent threads under BeOS.

Re:As usual the slashdot summary is wrong

[martin_henry]

Your memory is faulty.

good case of the magnetic wobbles...

Re:Interesting but WRONG conclusion.

[Max Littlemore]

I would not call this a mechanism for "hard disk failure."

I sure as hell wouldn't call it a "hard disk success"

dab oot ton

[Anonymous Coward]

degnahc ytiralop retfa

Re:Buy lots of ram

[LoztInSpace]

I think you mean 640K. (Sorry if I missed a sarcasm tag there).

Re:SOME types of failures...

[Fweeky]

No, that's the disk throwing a tantrum because it can't find the data it wants.

You can demonstrate this yourself; open up a running hard disk and remove the platter - in pretty much all cases a rather physically violent ending will occur. That's because the disk is *upset*; you took away its data!

It's hoped that, once we have disks who's lifetimes can be measured in decades instead of a handful of years, the devices will be mature enough to take such failures in their stride.

Reversing the polarity

[Catastrophator]

I though reversing the polarity solved problems, not caused them. Guess it only works on isolinear storage...

Re:Sigh

[somersault]

Work?

Re:Sigh

[bhiestand]

I've always liked you, but I have to recommend that you be permanently banned from slashdot for suggesting such a thing.

BOFH

[JudeanPeople'sFront]

Magnetic wobbles? I thought it was static electricity from nylon underwear :) [tux-power.dk]

I don't get it - magnetic wobbling?

[suv4x4]

But I'm sure it must be free energy in there somewhere! Man, imo gonna start a company based on this.

- Sean McCarthy, Steorn CEO

Re:Sigh

[LiquidCoooled]

How is that any different to full windows?

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

You can actually get a full 24 hours out of WinPE.