What is MTBF ?
| Mean Time Between Failure |
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MTBF is measured in hours and indicates the expected failure rate of computer hardware such as printer and server components (hard drives, floppy drives, etc.) If a device has an MTBF of 200k hours, this indicates that a failure occurred once every 200,000 hours during the manufacturer's testing of the product. MTBF is a measure of how reliable a product is. MTBF is usually given in units of hours; the higher the MTBF, the more reliable the product is. For electronic products, it is commonly assumed that during the useful operating life period the parts have constant failure rates, and part failure rates follow an exponential law of distribution. In this case, the MTBF of the product can be calculated as: MTBF = 1/(sum of all the part failure rates) and the probability that the product will work for some time T without failure is given by: R(T) = exp(-T/MTBF) Thus, for a product with an MTBF of 250,000 hours, and an operating time of interest of 5 years (43,800 hours): R = exp(-43800/250000) = 0.839289 which says that there is an 83.9% probability that the product will operate for the 5 years without a failure, or that 83.9% of the units in the field will still be working at the 5 year point. |
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