A new method of hard disk drive MTTF projection using data from an early life test
Shaohsin Chen, Feng-Biu Sun, Jun Yang · 1999
Traditionally, the exponential and the Weibull distribution approaches have been mainly used in the hard disk drive (HDD) industry to evaluate mean time to failure (MTTF) from a life test in which only early failures may be observed. This paper proposes an approach for projecting disk drive field MTTF using a two-phase bathtub curve failure rate function. Based on this 2-phase bathtub curve failure rate function, the MTTF expression is derived and turns out to be a weighted sum of the mean lives of the early failure and useful life distributions. Numerical simulations indicate that the proposed method is superior than the traditional ones.