Patent ID: 6980381

Claim:
An article of manufacture comprising a computer usable medium having computer readable program code embodied therein for predicting failure of a disk drive, the computer readable program code comprising: program code for causing a calibration host to generate a test string including a plurality of performance sensitive reads, each performance sensitive read including one of a first and second read; program code for causing the calibration host to determine a probability of occurrence of a given ratio of first reads to second reads in the test string and for storing respective probabilities as calibration parameters for the test string; program code for causing a testing host to periodically apply the test string to a disk drive; program code for causing the testing host to monitor application of the test string to identify a number of first reads and a number of second reads performed during application of the test string and for establishing a ratio of first reads to second reads; program code for causing the testing host to compare the ratio of first to second reads to respective calibration parameters and for generating a comparison result; and program code for causing the testing host to predict a possibility of disk drive failure as a function of the comparison result.