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And what is the safer way to regularly remove large (500-3500 Mb) files if yes? I'm talking about file storage service. What if i don't need to free space right NOW, what if i would keep files marked for removal and when the whole disk will be filled with such files - just format this disk (or etc) - would it safer for HDD?
I spoke with 2 admins:
first is the owner of file storage service. anyone can upload file, this file will be removed after 7 days. his project was very popular = huge amount of files should be removed everyday. he told me that his HDDs crashing regularly, at least 1 disk a month. Average file size was 500-3500 Mb
second is the owner of picture hosting service. huge amount of small files (0.3-5MB), a lot of visitors. he didn't care about this project, his 1TB+ disks were almost full for a very long time (regularly), atop showed red values regularly, the project got more visits every day and no one disk crashed for a few years. the owner never physically remove any picture.
both admins had servers in 1 datacenter. i know it's stupid to compare these situations but...
pyAndy
Posted 2019-02-07T16:51:15.970
Reputation: 9
The most accurate answer is "It depends...", and it depends on a LOT of factors. The general rules to start with are the drives are made differently with different strengths and weaknesses, that environment plays a part, and that in general HDD are designed for storage, access, and removal of files and so it's not something worth worrying about. – music2myear – 2019-02-07T17:02:22.710
When you say "removing files", are you referring to simply deleting them, or securely wiping the platter areas where they were stored? Is your concern that removing files might be especially hard on a drive, or that it is simply additional usage contributing to the drive's wear and tear? How do you envision the size of the content comparing to the capacity of the drive (how fast would you fill it up and how often would you need to free up space)? (cont'd) – fixer1234 – 2019-02-08T00:25:42.103
Are you referring to a few drives or large banks of drives where you're concerned about statistical failure rates? Will this require extreme reliability, where drives will be replaced at the first sign of any kind of issue? Under "normal" conditions, removing files is just routine activity for a hard drive, it's what they're designed to do. File size is irrelevant. – fixer1234 – 2019-02-08T00:25:47.993