Gas fire suppression is bad for hard disks...
Especially since the shift to PMR hard disk recording, the gas release can be very very bad for hard disk drives.
Gas fire suppression tends to impact equipment in two ways, especially if over sized. First is it causes a very very quick cooling of the room (over 30C drop can happen). While equipment tends to do well with cold temps, it does NOT do well with a very quick drop in temp. The second is that the gas release is VERY loud (over 200 decibels is not uncommon), combined with the required VERY loud (over 60 decibels) alarms that must go off prior to the gas release.
Please review your fire suppression plans, IMHO dry pipe water may actually be safer in the DC vs any of the gas options. In most systems sprinklers only go off over the "heat" and not the entire room.
Anon, as I work in the storage industry.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
