Efficient Reliability Predictions of Particle-Induced Failures in HDDs

In this paper, an experimental set-up as well as the modeling framework for efficient prediction of hard disks (HDD) reliability due to particle-induced failure within the product development process (PDP) is proposed. An alternative response using the cumulative particle counts (CPC), whose failure distribution can be modeled by the lognormal distribution, is introduced in the modeling framework. By using a model to describe the growth of CPC in prime HDDs based on data from the same vintage, the lifetime distribution of particle-induced failure for the HDDs can be obtained. Prime HDDs are fully functional drives within a typical HDD product development process. For illustration, five prime HDDs from a same vintage of a HDD family are used to determine the baseline CPC growth over a certain period of time. The lifetime distribution is then derived for that vintage of HDDs