In a data dependent world, ULINK DA Drive Analyzer’s AI algorithms disrupt drive failure prediction with 7-8 times more effectiveness than traditional systems.

Large enterprises, small scale businesses, cloud service providers and datacenter operators are all seeing the unabashed demand for data storage capacity as the world continues to create and store more and more data.

Worldwide HDD industry petabyte shipments are expected to grow at 18.5% CAGR over the 2020–2025 forecast period and average capacity per drive is forecast to increase at a five-year CAGR of 25.5%. As the world leans more on digital data, the health of the data drive becomes crucial. Using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms to predict drive failure is a much more effective and sophisticated way to safeguard the health and reliability of data.

The predominant monitoring system to determine drive reliability and imminent drive failures is Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART) reports. Drive manufacturers define the threshold levels of SMART attributes or drive health indicators such as disk temperature, remapped sector count, and uncorrectable error count. If a SMART attribute falls below its threshold or acceptable range, an alert condition is written into the SMART status register to warn about problems with the drive.

A dismal 3-10% of drive failures can be prevented by the SMART system.

This calls for a more reliable system to prevent drive failures. AI algorithms are a breakthrough solution. For example, the AI algorithm in ULINK DA Drive Analyzer analyzes various drive health parameters and looks for patterns in a drive’s health indicators over time, rather than applying a simple threshold to each health indicator. When a drive displays certain patterns, it is flagged as unhealthy or at risk of failure.

These AI algorithms are shown to be 7-8 times more effective in predicting drive failures than the traditional SMART system.

We have seen AI disrupting manufacturing reliability, energy efficiency, and autonomous driving. It is now set to disrupt the disk drive health sector. The era of AI disruption is upon us and businesses that adopt AI breakthroughs will reach new heights.

 

QNAP and ULINK Release DA Drive Analyzer, AI-powered Drive Failure Prediction Tool for NAS

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