Hard drives

[buck91]

So I have a probable 10-15 year old WD external hard drive that is still going strong. A few years back a Seagate model failed me miserably and even the manufacture could not solve the problem while it was still under warranty. This has made me a little nervous of off brand HDDs. Looking primarily for a second HDD for my laptop as it only came with a fairly small SSD. My goal would be economy and reliablity for this as it would be used for storage and my main files left on SSD for speed. Also, very open to discussion on HDD vs SSD for long term durability. Thanks!

 

[JohnnyJohnson]

Well I think in some cases the old analogy they don't build them like they used to comes into play. My older WD drives used to live over 7 years. Now the newer drive HP seems to be using probably have an expected life of 3 years. Its way past time to move to the solid state memory drives. I see some movement in that direction. But they are charging more for them in most cases than demand will pay for. They should be able to build one that will last twenty years standing on its head at a reasonable cost. But that doesn't sell new PC's does it.

 

[Triple_Se7en]

Originally Posted By: buck91

So I have a probable 10-15 year old WD external hard drive that is still going strong. A few years back a Seagate model failed me miserably and even the manufacture could not solve the problem while it was still under warranty. This has made me a little nervous of off brand HDDs. Looking primarily for a second HDD for my laptop as it only came with a fairly small SSD. My goal would be economy and reliablity for this as it would be used for storage and my main files left on SSD for speed. Also, very open to discussion on HDD vs SSD for long term durability.

Seagate is not off-brand. Probably more Seagates and Westerns sold, than any other brand names. I have toyed with going in the Cloud direction, like IDrive, for example. But what happens after the introductory one year membership expires and the price rises like 900% to continue coverage?

 

[knerml]

Why not consider a flash drive?

 

[krismoriah72]

I have 2 or 3 WD hard drives about 5 years old.. I keep all my movies and tv shows on them. I am subbing to this thread.. would like something with less moving parts as I accidently dropped one of the older WD hard drives a couple of years ago and lost everything on it.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: Triple_Se7en

I have toyed with going in the Cloud direction, like IDrive, for example.

For what it's worth I strongly counsel anyone who asks me that cloud storage and local HDD/ SSD backup are *not* either/ or. HDD/ SSD will fail you and cloud providers will go out of business or will be unavailable due to internet outages or other SNAFU (or, as you have mentioned and most of us have experienced, they raise their rates to ridiculous highs!) It is becoming more and more common for users to to abide by the "3-2-1" rule: (At least) THREE copies, on TWO different media with ONE of those copies off-site. So for example I will have a "working copy" of a file on my device, regular backups to an external HDD and really important stuff in the cloud. I don't sink a lot of money into any three of those technologies as their redundancy mitigates most disaster.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: knerml

Why not consider a flash drive?

OP did not state what size drive he is looking for, but realistically, anything higher than about 256GB, flash is going to be a lot more expensive than traditional HDD.

 

[spackard]

Samsung 860 Pro is a good SSD. But, if you really want to get into the weeds with respect to encryption you have to look at Micron, as the info available from Samsung isn't enough for satisfying my questions about FIPS 140-2. (But, I've seen some public comments that the implementation isn't that great, and I expect NIST will be going to a different one in the next few years.) HDD vs SDD quality - SSD can be good, or can be very bad. In my past the HDDs have been more consistent than SSDs. They've had a few decades head start. From what I see the money and research are flowing into SSD, away from HDD. HDD will still be around for a long time, but I wouldn't buy a HDD for a laptop.

 

[CourierDriver]

I getting old,, thought it would have been a story about driving across country,,,,I need a nap

 

[buck91]

Originally Posted By: CourierDriver

I getting old,, thought it would have been a story about driving across country,,,,I need a nap

 

[Rolla07]

Samsung SSD drive. The reality is that any drive can fail, anytime for any reason. Redundancy is key

 

[JustinH]

Originally Posted By: uc50ic4more

Originally Posted By: Triple_Se7en

I have toyed with going in the Cloud direction, like IDrive, for example.

For what it's worth I strongly counsel anyone who asks me that cloud storage and local HDD/ SSD backup are *not* either/ or. HDD/ SSD will fail you and cloud providers will go out of business or will be unavailable due to internet outages or other SNAFU (or, as you have mentioned and most of us have experienced, they raise their rates to ridiculous highs!) It is becoming more and more common for users to to abide by the "3-2-1" rule: (At least) THREE copies, on TWO different media with ONE of those copies off-site. So for example I will have a "working copy" of a file on my device, regular backups to an external HDD and really important stuff in the cloud. I don't sink a lot of money into any three of those technologies as their redundancy mitigates most disaster.

Sounds like too much work to me. I don't think google or amazon are going out of business. Setup a free google account and be done with it. You can encrypt your backup set if you want to go that route.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: JustinH

Sounds like too much work to me. I don't think google or amazon are going out of business. Setup a free google account and be done with it. You can encrypt your backup set if you want to go that route.

A Google Drive account, though, like many others, are not backups - They are synchronization applications. If you mess up your data locally or in the cloud it gets reflected everywhere else as well! Having said that, I do exactly that - I have several Google accounts syncing as well as some Microsoft OneDrive accounts on a Windows system I use. I even have Dropbox going. It is more for accessing that data from a phone or remotely than it is for backup; but it mitigates my "working" system crashing affecting my data too much. Once a day I have my systems perform their OS's built-in backup routine.

 

[mazdamonky]

I have various drives of all ages and have worked with hundreds of drives over the years as an IT guy. I have found that a drive either failes in its first year or two, after around 5 years, or seems to last infinitely. I have hard drives of various brands still in use aged anywhere from months old to 20 years in age. In fact, I have a commodore 64 with its original drive still functioning. I think it is all about luck of the draw. I personally have never had a hard drive have a serious failure outside of ones in prebuilt PCs from companies such as Dell, Toshiba, and HP.

 

[JMJNet]

In a laptop environment, the heat generated cannot be vented out properly (usually only 1 fan). That is probably why the laptop HD failed more often than in a desktop (bigger case). The heat problem is probably similar to a smaller size desktop although we can put a better fan in a desktop case no matter how small. As far as HD, for Western Digital, the Black is their top of the line. It is a little bit more price than the regular Blue. The Hitachi Travelstar for laptop comes in 1TB at 7200 rpm, it is very popular around $50. I have not had a chance to try it but that is the one I will try if I need one. Since it is faster, not sure if it gets hotter than usual or not.

 

[JustinH]

Originally Posted By: uc50ic4more

Originally Posted By: JustinH

Sounds like too much work to me. I don't think google or amazon are going out of business. Setup a free google account and be done with it. You can encrypt your backup set if you want to go that route.

A Google Drive account, though, like many others, are not backups - They are synchronization applications. If you mess up your data locally or in the cloud it gets reflected everywhere else as well! Having said that, I do exactly that - I have several Google accounts syncing as well as some Microsoft OneDrive accounts on a Windows system I use. I even have Dropbox going. It is more for accessing that data from a phone or remotely than it is for backup; but it mitigates my "working" system crashing affecting my data too much. Once a day I have my systems perform their OS's built-in backup routine.

This is an optional feature. I do not synchronize anything, I just use the google drive app to show an extra drive on my computer, or the web app to upload directly to. I do not store files on my local computers whatsoever.

 

[raytseng]

Originally Posted By: JMJNet

In a laptop environment, the heat generated cannot be vented out properly (usually only 1 fan). That is probably why the laptop HD failed more often than in a desktop (bigger case). The heat problem

or its the fact that a laptop is shaken around and physically moved around several times a day often while operating....

 

[PandaBear]

There are only 3 hard drive manufacturers left in the world: WD, Seagate, Toshiba. They own a few brands that they merged with but fundamentally only 3 manufacturers. No off brand left. Reliability wise like mazdamonkey said, infant mortality of 1-2 years, just enough design life of 5 years, or over engineered last forever. Some generations of certain brand do better than the others in the same generation, because they made break through with some improvement (i.e. read heads that let them not fly as low, media that easily handle higher density), or screwed up the design that they cannot fix. The only way to tell is either user review after some time (newegg) or OEM qualification test. I'm still using a Seagate 7200.7 in my PC for photo storage, it was made in 2003, and it is one of the most reliable drive ever made, although only 120GB. Laptop drive has much less mass so it is a lot more sensitive to shock, stay with 3.5" if you can and want reliability. SSD these days have a lot less data retention than HDD if you plan to turn it off most of the time (design is 1 year with no power on at most), I'd not use it for cold storage. Most SSD problem is bad chips (drive manufacturers do not know how to screen out bad blocks, or buy cheap low quality chips from manufacturers, or did not have good relationship with vendor and couldn't get the top quality chips), or bad design (firmware bug).

 

[emg]

Originally Posted By: PandaBear

Most SSD problem is bad chips (drive manufacturers do not know how to screen out bad blocks, or buy cheap low quality chips from manufacturers, or did not have good relationship with vendor and couldn't get the top quality chips), or bad design (firmware bug).

Bad chips can be worked around, though. The first SSD I used many years ago was built from a complete RAM chip wafer, and they wired up all the good chips and ignored the bad ones. It had zero data retention because all the data was lost if the power went out . I believe some modern SSD manufacturers do something similar, by installing more flash than they need and testing to see which blocks are good and which are bad, then only using the good ones. We shipped about 200 enterprise SSDs to customers in the last year and have only had one fail so far (sudden death, so probably a firmware bug). At home, I upgrade the SSD in my laptop to a new one of double the size every couple of years, then use it to replace the SSD in my Windows desktop, and use that one to replace the SSD in my Linux desktop (which has no essential files). Haven't had any problems so far, though this 1TB Kingston is the first non-Intel SSD I've used. Back more on topic, I've never had problems with laptop HDDs other than the Toshiba drive that came in the last laptop, which failed a couple of weeks after the warranty expired. But, even though there was a rapidly-increasing number of bad blocks, I was still able to get all the data off it.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: PandaBear

SSD these days have a lot less data retention than HDD if you plan to turn it off most of the time (design is 1 year with no power on at most),

Oh darn! I've got a desktop with SSD sitting in storage for 3 years now.