HDD sudden death syndrome?

Conundrum, Thu Jul 12 2018, 09:40AM

Hi all.
Noticed an interesting reference to certain SMD parts such as resistors inexplicably failing.


The reason I mention it is that sometimes a hard disk just stops working with no warning and this applies to SSDs as well.
Could the problem be sulfur getting into the interconnects on resistors, crystals etc and causing an open circuit?
If the crystal that controls the main IC breaks then the entire drive will stop working!

Also relevant, drives use pull-up resistors on SATA ports so if they break down then it might work fine on one chipset and not another.
In something like a server environment heat makes things worse and exposure to fumes from UPS's might accelerate failures.

This would also affect phones as well, especially more recent ones where the case is factory sealed so anything emitting fumes has nowhere to go.