Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Drive Fail Rate

This is topic Drive Fail Rate in forum Digital Cinema Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Ed Forth (Member # 5831) on 07-21-2011, 06:33 PM:

I manage a one screen subrun that just switched to digital

Tomorrow will be the fifth week and I just received my second non-working drive (out of 10 total features).

Is this normal, or am I just unlucky?

Posted by Jeremy Weigel (Member # 4208) on 07-21-2011, 08:09 PM:

Unlucky I suppose. I've never had a failed drive come in in the 2+ years we've had digital. I've had bad power supplies, but I was able to use one from another drive.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 07-21-2011, 09:10 PM:

Were the two failures from the original installation? There may have been a bad batch of drives.

What brand and model is it? What interface (SATA, SAS, or SCSI)?

For the most part, disks will either fail soon after installation or will last for many years.

Posted by Jeremy Weigel (Member # 4208) on 07-21-2011, 09:32 PM:

I think he's referring to "feature" drives from TES or DFS. At least that's the way I read it.

Posted by Phil Ranucci (Member # 3820) on 07-21-2011, 11:30 PM:

Only one totally dead drive in over 2 years(I'm probably jinxing myself).I've had some drives that won't mount as a CRU drive, but will load through the USB port. Much slower, but usable.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 07-22-2011, 12:43 AM:

I haven't had a bad drive yet, except I had one CRU type drive that I could NOT get out of the carrier. I tried everything I could think of but it was like the thing was glued together. Just ingested it via USB rather than bust something trying to get it apart. (It was a Deluxe drive.)

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 07-22-2011, 01:03 AM:

I just had one last week (one of the Trail Mix drives) that wouldn't slide into the CRU slot. There didn't appear to be anything obviously bent or wrong with it, but it would slide in about 2/3 of the way and get stuck. I set up the little power supply and hooked it up through the USB port and ingested it that way. First time I've had to do that.

Boy, USB transfer is ghawd-awful slow compared to directly copying it via the CRU slot. What takes maybe ten minutes to do via CRU took about 40 minutes via USB.

Posted by Edward Havens (Member # 4715) on 07-22-2011, 01:11 AM:

I've had one or two bad drives in the five years of dealing with digital cinema. Failure rate far below 1/5th of one percent.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 07-22-2011, 01:36 AM:

..Sounds like a Sony unit - they have fits with TECH drives at times and refuse to recognize the drive...and it's USB only on the local injest - no drive sled.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 07-22-2011, 08:54 AM:

USB 3.0 to the rescue...! That is at least if the drive caddys are also updated to USB 3.0.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 07-22-2011, 11:57 AM:

USB3 is a stupid, stupid feature to add to a server. The industry has standardized on CRU drives and they are NOT going to run out and buy new drives with a USB3 connector.

Talk about a complete waste of money on R&D.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 07-22-2011, 12:39 PM:

Evidently, I misinterpreted the original question.

Question: when a movie disk is returned to the depot, does someone verify that the contents are correct before the disk is shipped to another theatre? Or is it possible for a theatre that plays the movie after its opening date to get a wiped or otherwise corrupt copy?

[ 07-22-2011, 09:52 PM: Message edited by: Scott Norwood ]

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 07-22-2011, 01:59 PM:

quote: Scott Norwood
or otherwise corrupt copy?

I've had to request duplicate drives (or go to a location and borrow their HD copy until my duplicate arrives..) due to the injest manager program can't see the content on the drives - in either USB connected or CRU slot install.

Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 07-22-2011, 09:05 PM:

They haven't checked film prints in 30 years, I don't see any reason why they would start checking electronic devices

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 07-23-2011, 05:02 AM:

Depends I guess. One major posthouse I recently spoke to is formatting every drive they get back, because they regularly find weird stuff,alien data, viruses, etc. on these drives. Seems a lot of cinemas use intermediate storage on local machines with plain-vanilla operating systems and the usual candidates of possible issues with them.
So, even if they send out this drive with the same content later again, is has been wiped before.

Checking a whole drive for bad blocks takes considerable time. Though I guess that when they copy new content to it, they will usually perform at least a validation of the data they actually copied before the drive is sent out.

Of course, drives will fail sooner or later. This is the only business where so many magnetomechanical drives are shipped around on a regular schedule. Though this is not perfectly in line with drive specs, the amount of failures seems to be quite small. Once SSDs are becoming considerably cheaper, we will see even less issues. They will probably then ship them in cushion envelopes instead of boxes.

- Carsten

Posted by Ed Forth (Member # 5831) on 07-23-2011, 01:46 PM:

Yes, I meant the drives that the features/trailers shipped on.

And yes, it's a Sony Projector. (Since we're one screen, I don't even have a server, just the projector's RAID for storage)

So hopefully it was just a fluke (although I think I'll just blame all you snooty first-run guys for breaking the drives. It wasn't enough to scratch up all my prints when we were doing film??? [Smile]

)

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 07-23-2011, 02:36 PM:

(...gee, that was a bit uncouth to post...) - we know better than to drop drives..

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 07-23-2011, 03:25 PM:

quote: Carsten Kurz
They will probably then ship them in cushion envelopes instead of boxes.

Here in the US Deluxe has actually shipped drives in generic UPS document boxes. Yeah they placed a piece of bubble wrap in there, but that in no way will protect the drive. That was a TERRIBLE idea, but from a bean counter's perspective I see why they tried it. If UPS would pay for their shipping boxes, then that would be another dollar they could save. In the end though, the math is there that in no way would that actually save money due to the replacement drives they would have to buy and the panic "same day" freight shipments required for drives damaged in transit.

Deluxe is also the only company that still ships those HORRIBLE USB only antique drives. Until they all die, they will keep re-using them and re-using them. I wouldn't cry if those drives got accidentally dropped down a flight of stairs, then accidentally got dropped down a flight of stairs again. Those really should be taken out of circulation and CRU only drives shipped.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 07-23-2011, 03:37 PM:

Yea, those "Addonics" units - totally horrible...looks like they're still using "hot swapping" sled units of a decade ago..

Cinedigm used to have a horrible USB one as well (the round edged blue ones..), but they got smart and eliminated those

Posted by Ed Forth (Member # 5831) on 07-23-2011, 06:16 PM:

quote: Monte L Fullmer
(...gee, that was a bit uncouth to post...) - we know better than to drop drives..

Just some friendly ribbing from the tail end of the distribution chain

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 07-24-2011, 09:45 AM:

Yea Brad... those bubble packed drives... I couldn't believe it the forst time I saw one. I thought they had just run out of shipping cases or something... but then another one arrived. Thankfully all but one fo the the drives I've seen arrive have worked. USB has to be kept an option and the switch to USB3 at the dcp level needs to start now. I don't think USB3 will be a bad way to ingest. You still will need USB just in case a drive case is bent and won't slide into the CRU bay.

Mark

Posted by Adam Fraser (Member # 1074) on 07-24-2011, 10:10 AM:

A bit off topic, but is Sony the only brand that you can run without a server for a single screen install?

Any disadvantages to running without a server or is it built into the Sony projectors?

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 07-24-2011, 11:11 AM:

and going a little further off topic:

quote: Carsten Kurz
because they regularly find weird stuff,alien data, viruses, etc.

Does this mean there is potential for digital attacks on theatres?

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 07-24-2011, 11:13 AM:

quote: Mark Gulbrandsen
I don't think USB3 will be a bad way to ingest. You still will need USB just in case a drive case is bent and won't slide into the CRU bay.

Devil's Advocate:
The people who are still using the USB-only drives Brad's complaining about are gonna take forever to use USB3... so it's all moot. [Smile]

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 07-24-2011, 12:13 PM:

Thank you Chris.

And also Mark, the cost to upgrade to cru drives to a USB3 connector...not going to happen.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 07-25-2011, 12:50 AM:

quote: Adam Fraser
Any disadvantages to running without a server or is it built into the Sony projectors?

It's called a "media block", and it's located in the lower section of the unit below the light engine assembly.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 07-25-2011, 04:49 AM:

quote: Martin McCaffery
Does this mean there is potential for digital attacks on theatres?

Depends. So far, this kind of alien data would only be transferred to the drives when they are connected to a Windows machine, or in general, a machine with a popular OS with potential for virus spreading.
As most DCI servers run under Linux, there is little potential for any general viruses to have an effect on a server.
Also, these drives are usually mounted on the servers in a special way for ingest only, that is, usually only dedicated DCP content will be copied from it. Of course, if these drives automount, there could always be some remaining risks for contamination by the usual methods like buffer overflows in the mount mechanism, etc.

Anyway - to contaminate a cinema server, a virus would probably have to be tailored to the software that runs on the server. Not impossible to do, but I see no reason why anyone would invest this effort for the relative small number of potential targets and distribution methods.

Servers like the Doremi run from a write-protected flash disc, so there is even less risk that an infection would survive the next reboot.

There are some servers running under Windows, and there is a potential drive automount vulnerability that has been exploited widely by contaminated USB sticks. Don't know if that ever happened to a DCI server in the field. I would think that the server manufacturers will apply the necessary security fixes in these cases.

I would think that an online connection of the server is a higher risk, since from the network side, it just looks as another Linux machine with the usual set of network protocols - and potentially 24/7 vulnerability. Even if no specific attacks can contaminate the server, they could still cause some stirr on the network and interrupt a show. So a good firewall is mandatory.

I heard of cinemas having the servers connected to a plain-vanilla ADSL router with an open or badly protected WIFI. Not a good idea I guess.

- Carsten