Word on the street about hard drives.
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Originally Posted By: Volvohead
The nickname for some of these are "Deathstars".
Have a look at how this particular Death Star failed:
http://www.astro.ufl.edu/~ken/crash/index.html
Clear platters??
The nickname for some of these are "Deathstars".
Have a look at how this particular Death Star failed:
http://www.astro.ufl.edu/~ken/crash/index.html
Clear platters??
In keeping with my dislike for Hitachi drives, another one bit the dust for me this week. It was replaced with a Seagate.
Originally Posted By: NJC
Originally Posted By: Volvohead
The nickname for some of these are "Deathstars".
Have a look at how this particular Death Star failed:
http://www.astro.ufl.edu/~ken/crash/index.html
Clear platters??
No data recovery on that one.
Originally Posted By: Volvohead
The nickname for some of these are "Deathstars".
Have a look at how this particular Death Star failed:
http://www.astro.ufl.edu/~ken/crash/index.html
Clear platters??
No data recovery on that one.
Like others have said, I've had drives of every brand fail on me at one time or another. Can't keep 7,200 RPM platters spinning forever.
FWIW I use Western Digital exclusively (unless I have to use a different brand); but not because they are better or worse than anyone else.
FWIW I use Western Digital exclusively (unless I have to use a different brand); but not because they are better or worse than anyone else.
Everyone has had different experiences, and I no longer deal with a lot of hardware like I used to a decade ago, but I can relate my record to add to the confusion:
Seagate: 50% chance of failure by one year of use. Pretty poor on my record for both 2.5" and 3.5" drives, but they are one of the biggest players now.
Maxtor: Haven't used them for many years because they were so flaky back then.
Western Digital: I haven't used their 2.5" drives but their older 3.5" Caviar drives were excellent except for a few bad models, and they were by far the easiest to get warranty replacements for when that happened.
Hitachi: Have had good reliability from their 2.5" (travelstar) and server drives. Never used their regular deskstar drives.
Samsung: Just started using their 2.5" drives a year ago and am very impressed so far.
Toshiba and Fujitsu: I've only experienced one or two of each of these in 2.5" size, seemed on par with their contemporaries, failed near three years.
Seagate: 50% chance of failure by one year of use. Pretty poor on my record for both 2.5" and 3.5" drives, but they are one of the biggest players now.
Maxtor: Haven't used them for many years because they were so flaky back then.
Western Digital: I haven't used their 2.5" drives but their older 3.5" Caviar drives were excellent except for a few bad models, and they were by far the easiest to get warranty replacements for when that happened.
Hitachi: Have had good reliability from their 2.5" (travelstar) and server drives. Never used their regular deskstar drives.
Samsung: Just started using their 2.5" drives a year ago and am very impressed so far.
Toshiba and Fujitsu: I've only experienced one or two of each of these in 2.5" size, seemed on par with their contemporaries, failed near three years.
I just took a Fujitsu drive out of service today. It's 11 years old. What's funny is that I remember Fujitsu drives failing left and right at my last job.
What's the difference? The Fujitsu drive I took out of service today is *MINE*. I remember paying something more than $200 for it and I handled and installed it like it was made of glass.
The Fujitsu drives that that failed left and right were handled by people who didn't know how to handle hard drives and couldn't be bothered to learn. They stacked them up 10 high without anything more than the anti-stat bag to protect them. They dropped them on the workbench and knocked them around before they installed them in the machines they were building.
Oddly enough, the drives that *I* handled and installed had a much lower failure rate. (When you're on call to replace them at 3am if they fail, you tend to do things so that won't happen).
So it is clear to me that if you want a drive to last, you'd best treat it gently before you install it in a machine, and you'd best make sure it's secured properly. One screw isn't going to do it.
Oh yea--not all of the places that sell hard drives are exactly clued up on the proper way to store and handle them, either. I'd prefer a hard drive still in the factory packaging for that reason.
What's the difference? The Fujitsu drive I took out of service today is *MINE*. I remember paying something more than $200 for it and I handled and installed it like it was made of glass.
The Fujitsu drives that that failed left and right were handled by people who didn't know how to handle hard drives and couldn't be bothered to learn. They stacked them up 10 high without anything more than the anti-stat bag to protect them. They dropped them on the workbench and knocked them around before they installed them in the machines they were building.
Oddly enough, the drives that *I* handled and installed had a much lower failure rate. (When you're on call to replace them at 3am if they fail, you tend to do things so that won't happen).
So it is clear to me that if you want a drive to last, you'd best treat it gently before you install it in a machine, and you'd best make sure it's secured properly. One screw isn't going to do it.
Oh yea--not all of the places that sell hard drives are exactly clued up on the proper way to store and handle them, either. I'd prefer a hard drive still in the factory packaging for that reason.
I've never seen a more abused piece of electronic equipment, than my kids XBOX(original). Stepped on, dropped, involved in a bicycle accident, torn apart and rebuilt in an attempted unsuccessful mod, etc,... The thing still works! Don't ask me how I know.
Just realized it has a Seagate hard drive.
Just realized it has a Seagate hard drive.
I work on Hitachi storage arrays, (with the Sun badge on them) as well as other Sun storage.
They all fail. They all have firmware upgrades and we get FINs (Field Information Notices) and FCOs (Field Change Orders) on almost every manufacturers drives.
I'd say that Fujitsu drives have been the lowest incidence of replacement. Of course, they are also the smallest population, so I cannot say they are the most reliable.
I don't recall too many, if any FINs or FCOs on their drives.
I've been on some hairy problems dealing with the others, IBM, Seagate, and sometimes even Hitachi drives (both in HDS Lightning storage systems, and as drives in Sun badged storage.)
My most recent prolonged experience was with 73gb and 146gb Seagate Fiber Channel drives in one of our storage products that would have spindle failures that were not being detected until things were really bad. We had to do a drive firmware upgrade, but couldn't upgrade all the drives at once.
Why not?
Because this firmware would fail the drives sooner, and we didn't want more than one drive a week in each RAID5 parity group to fail. So once a week, we would upgrade a drive in each parity group.
I think the customer had 20 or so parity groups and there were 14 drives / group, so it took about three months to do the upgrade, give or take, figuring in time to replace failed drives and reconstruct the data on those failed drives.
If we had left things the same, the customer would keep experiencing double drive failures, which is bad in a RAID5 parity group.
Of course, this is much better than the issues we had 7+ years ago with GBICs in our A5x00 series storage. That stuff was FC-AL and not fabric, so one bad component could wipe out an entire loop.
They all fail. They all have firmware upgrades and we get FINs (Field Information Notices) and FCOs (Field Change Orders) on almost every manufacturers drives.
I'd say that Fujitsu drives have been the lowest incidence of replacement. Of course, they are also the smallest population, so I cannot say they are the most reliable.
I don't recall too many, if any FINs or FCOs on their drives.
I've been on some hairy problems dealing with the others, IBM, Seagate, and sometimes even Hitachi drives (both in HDS Lightning storage systems, and as drives in Sun badged storage.)
My most recent prolonged experience was with 73gb and 146gb Seagate Fiber Channel drives in one of our storage products that would have spindle failures that were not being detected until things were really bad. We had to do a drive firmware upgrade, but couldn't upgrade all the drives at once.
Why not?
Because this firmware would fail the drives sooner, and we didn't want more than one drive a week in each RAID5 parity group to fail. So once a week, we would upgrade a drive in each parity group.
I think the customer had 20 or so parity groups and there were 14 drives / group, so it took about three months to do the upgrade, give or take, figuring in time to replace failed drives and reconstruct the data on those failed drives.
If we had left things the same, the customer would keep experiencing double drive failures, which is bad in a RAID5 parity group.
Of course, this is much better than the issues we had 7+ years ago with GBICs in our A5x00 series storage. That stuff was FC-AL and not fabric, so one bad component could wipe out an entire loop.
I have yet to experience hard drive failure though it's just a matter of time... I think brian1703 hit the nail on the head- treat them gingerly and they will usually treat you well in return. I have built my own before and had both Seagate and Quantum drives in my Pentium 133 which ran trouble-free for seven years. And I was careful with handling them and usually left the machine on for months at a time which may be a factor as opposed to spin-up/spin-down on a daily basis.
I'll have to see how my new Seagate FreeAgent 750GB HD I bought at Costco holds up- it will spin-down after 15 minutes of nonactivity though it is possible somehow to force them to remain spinning continuously (there must be a way in Linux too). Yeah, I've heard some issues with these drives but we will see... The price was right!
Seagate has been pretty good for me; my laptop though has a pair of Fujitsu 120GB drives that aren't the fastest but they have been reliable FWIW.
I'll have to see how my new Seagate FreeAgent 750GB HD I bought at Costco holds up- it will spin-down after 15 minutes of nonactivity though it is possible somehow to force them to remain spinning continuously (there must be a way in Linux too). Yeah, I've heard some issues with these drives but we will see... The price was right!
Seagate has been pretty good for me; my laptop though has a pair of Fujitsu 120GB drives that aren't the fastest but they have been reliable FWIW.
I wonder how long it will be before solid state drives become a viable option. They're already available in some laptops. I think 64GB is about the limit right now but that will surely grow in the future.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/08/samsungs-64gb-sata-ii-ssd-drive-hands-on/
I guess they already have grown. Just he cost factor needs to come down.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/04/stec-announces-cheap-32gb-to-512gb-mlc-nand-based-ssds/
http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/08/samsungs-64gb-sata-ii-ssd-drive-hands-on/
I guess they already have grown. Just he cost factor needs to come down.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/04/stec-announces-cheap-32gb-to-512gb-mlc-nand-based-ssds/
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Here's my two cents.
Coming from a IT Network Admin, who has worked with thousands of hard drives.
When I was in college I would work for a place that would resell bestbuy and circuit city returned items, and we would get pallets of computer equipment. It would be my job to test the stuff for resale on the internet.
We would get boatloads of hard drives.
Here are my findings.
Hard drives are disposable. You need to swap them out every few years, or they will die on you.
Hard drives are very sensitive to heat. Especially the 7200RPM SATA drives. They get super hot. Install a 80mm case fan blowing air across your hard drive array, and that will keep them alive. If you monitor the temp, you want the drive to be under 100F all the time. If it gets too hot, it will eat itself.
I really like samsung drives, they last a long time, and are dead silent.
Seagates are very noisy.
Maxtor and Western Digital, I have seen so many of these drives dead within a few months of operation, i'm not real big on them.
Keep em cool fellas, a 80mm case fan is like 4 bucks, and will work fine. I rigged mine up in my dell workstation using some zip strips, and it has been cooling the drives for over 2 years.
Coming from a IT Network Admin, who has worked with thousands of hard drives.
When I was in college I would work for a place that would resell bestbuy and circuit city returned items, and we would get pallets of computer equipment. It would be my job to test the stuff for resale on the internet.
We would get boatloads of hard drives.
Here are my findings.
Hard drives are disposable. You need to swap them out every few years, or they will die on you.
Hard drives are very sensitive to heat. Especially the 7200RPM SATA drives. They get super hot. Install a 80mm case fan blowing air across your hard drive array, and that will keep them alive. If you monitor the temp, you want the drive to be under 100F all the time. If it gets too hot, it will eat itself.
I really like samsung drives, they last a long time, and are dead silent.
Seagates are very noisy.
Maxtor and Western Digital, I have seen so many of these drives dead within a few months of operation, i'm not real big on them.
Keep em cool fellas, a 80mm case fan is like 4 bucks, and will work fine. I rigged mine up in my dell workstation using some zip strips, and it has been cooling the drives for over 2 years.
Where to buy a Samsung in Canada. Anyone? I live in the Vancouver (BC)area and some of the major computer shops don't even carry a PATA Samsung drive ... but they happily offer Seagate or Western Digital. I don't mind paying more for a good drive.
OK, according to forums at NCIX.com (large local computer vendor), Samsung is presently not shipping drives to Canada! Erg.
Originally Posted By: JustinH
Hard drives are very sensitive to heat. Especially the 7200RPM SATA drives. They get super hot.
The 7200RPM SCSI drives from 10 years ago get super, super hot. Hot enough to burn you.
Hard drives are very sensitive to heat. Especially the 7200RPM SATA drives. They get super hot.
The 7200RPM SCSI drives from 10 years ago get super, super hot. Hot enough to burn you.
Originally Posted By: NJC
Where to buy a Samsung in Canada. Anyone? I live in the Vancouver (BC)area and some of the major computer shops don't even carry a PATA Samsung drive ... but they happily offer Seagate or Western Digital. I don't mind paying more for a good drive.
Buy one on the internet of course.
I forget the last time I've bought any electronics in a store.
Where to buy a Samsung in Canada. Anyone? I live in the Vancouver (BC)area and some of the major computer shops don't even carry a PATA Samsung drive ... but they happily offer Seagate or Western Digital. I don't mind paying more for a good drive.
Buy one on the internet of course.
I forget the last time I've bought any electronics in a store.
I just installed a 80mm fan on my SATA hard drive and it's running much cooler now. I just about burned my hand removing the hard drive. It was that hot.
I use a Panasonic Panaflo 92mm fan on a Seagate hard drive. Really cools it down. Hard drive is 4 years and would agree the fan helps a lot. I also use an air compressor 3 times a year to get the dust out of the PC. A cool running PC just makes more sense.
I do the HomePc thing in No. Va. and I can tell you the crossover point in development between durable drives and the steady increase in failure rates in year 1 through year 3. That point was the simple act of increasing drive speed from 5400 RPM to 7200 RPM with no corresponding increase in the quality of the component parts and case ventilation. It was a disastrous development for the end user. They didn't want to go SCCI (required cooling), and they never built a better drive accessing method, so instead, they just spun the drive faster. Awesome genius, eh? They went from ATA 66 to 100 and then to ATA 133. Meanwhile, there was little if any noticeable increase in the access speed. Profitable for us fixer-uppers, awful for the end user.
I'm here to tell ya the MTBF was cut in half, hands down, not debatable. Drives of all brands in the 5400RPM operating speed routinely ran five years and more in workstation/desktop usage. These days, 7200 RPM IDE and SATA drives suck. And, the worse the air management inside the case, the shorter the projected lifespan. But the real issue is drive speed, which makes a hotter drive. Whatever the brand, if you aren't running a mirrored array of at least two drives, you're simply asking to get your data killed. As Mamala said, cool is very important, and not to cast skepticism on anyone's assertions regarding brands, without some info as to the SMART data from any given drive, the air management is a far larger factor than brand in a 7200 RPM HD, IMHO.
My present drives, in service just about 10 months now, are 2 (stacked 1" apart) 7200 rpm WD 200Gig in a mirrored RAID with a 4 inch fan pushing air in at one end and another pulling out at the other. My previous rig was a pair of 80 GIG 5400 RPM WD drives in a striped RAID without the extra fans. Lasted over 5 years, and the one that failed, failed slowly enough to get my stuff not backed up to disk and Ghost the image. I rarely get the opportunity to rescue a customer anymore. These drives today simply die.
In my telecom/voice mail days, we had real troubles with Seagate. Thankfully, lots of them came out later in WD and Deskstar. The voice mails I deal with these days come with a basic 20 Gig Fujitsu notebook drive, and they seem to be, simply, a rock.
I'm here to tell ya the MTBF was cut in half, hands down, not debatable. Drives of all brands in the 5400RPM operating speed routinely ran five years and more in workstation/desktop usage. These days, 7200 RPM IDE and SATA drives suck. And, the worse the air management inside the case, the shorter the projected lifespan. But the real issue is drive speed, which makes a hotter drive. Whatever the brand, if you aren't running a mirrored array of at least two drives, you're simply asking to get your data killed. As Mamala said, cool is very important, and not to cast skepticism on anyone's assertions regarding brands, without some info as to the SMART data from any given drive, the air management is a far larger factor than brand in a 7200 RPM HD, IMHO.
My present drives, in service just about 10 months now, are 2 (stacked 1" apart) 7200 rpm WD 200Gig in a mirrored RAID with a 4 inch fan pushing air in at one end and another pulling out at the other. My previous rig was a pair of 80 GIG 5400 RPM WD drives in a striped RAID without the extra fans. Lasted over 5 years, and the one that failed, failed slowly enough to get my stuff not backed up to disk and Ghost the image. I rarely get the opportunity to rescue a customer anymore. These drives today simply die.
In my telecom/voice mail days, we had real troubles with Seagate. Thankfully, lots of them came out later in WD and Deskstar. The voice mails I deal with these days come with a basic 20 Gig Fujitsu notebook drive, and they seem to be, simply, a rock.
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