[Amps] MTBF Thread...

[Ian White G/GM3SEK]

David Kirkby wrote:
>Someone had a disk failure, and asked the question "how do they get 
>those huge MTBS's" or similar.
>
>I replied they (MTBF's which seem to vary between 500,00 and 1.4 
>million hours) assume you replace the device at the end of a service 
>life, which is typically 5 years. So it basically tells you the mean 
>time you will have to wait for a failure if you throw lots of usable 
>disks away.
>

It would be much better if they said: "Within the service life of this 
product, the average odds are 500,000 to 1 against it failing in any 
particular 1-hour period."

But even though this may be technically correct, it obviously takes no 
account of Murphy's Law...


-- 
73 from Ian G/GM3SEK