"Who Makes The Best Hard Drives?"

http://www.zdnet.com/who-makes-the-b...es-7000025375/ from
http://www.hardocp.com/news/2014/01/...hard_drives63/
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Ant wrote:

http://www.zdnet.com/who-makes-the-b...es-7000025375/ from

"Annual failure rates are all over the map ranging from as low as 0.9%
to as high as 25.4% - and one drive hit 120%"

So the failure rate hit a percentage that was greater than the number of
existing drives (100%) and a future 20% would be bad immediately upon
delivery. Uh huh.

Be careful of their "Average Age in Years" (before failure). Some
brands have way too small a number in their population to have value as
a predictor of lifespan (e.g., Samsung at only 18 drives).

Since Western Digital acquired Hitachi GST (Global Storage
Technologies), or HGST, back in early 2012 for $4.8 billion, the results
showing "Hitachi" and "Western Digital" are for the same brand but
perhaps not [yet] for the same production facilities.

Interestingly the drives they don't like in RAID configs are the same
types I don't like in USB-attached external hard drives: those damned
"green" or low-power drives. You cannot reliably get a many-hours-long
backup to complete on them without them cycling off and interrupting a
backup to cause it to abort.

If they know the historical failure rates for the drives, why are they
still following the philosophy of buying the cheapest drives available
at the time of purchase? Expending more resources to replace drives
along with their lower ROI means the cheapest drives for price might not
be the cheapest cost to own. Would you want to buy the cheapest drive
knowing that it will last less than half the time of another drive that
you could've paid maybe all of $10 more?

On Tue, 21 Jan 2014 15:08:42 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:

Interestingly the drives they don't like in RAID configs are the same
types I don't like in USB-attached external hard drives: those damned
"green" or low-power drives. You cannot reliably get a many-hours-long
backup to complete on them without them cycling off and interrupting a
backup to cause it to abort.

I have one system with 15 green drives and another system with 24 green
drives, all of them mounted internally and NONE of them exhibiting the
behavior you describe. My conclusion is that your choice of external drive
enclosure is more responsible than the drives themselves.

On 1/21/2014 8:28 PM, Mark Perkins wrote:
On Tue, 21 Jan 2014 15:08:42 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:

Interestingly the drives they don't like in RAID configs are the same
types I don't like in USB-attached external hard drives: those damned
"green" or low-power drives. You cannot reliably get a many-hours-long
backup to complete on them without them cycling off and interrupting a
backup to cause it to abort.

I have one system with 15 green drives and another system with 24 green
drives, all of them mounted internally and NONE of them exhibiting the
behavior you describe. My conclusion is that your choice of external drive
enclosure is more responsible than the drives themselves.


Or, more to the point, that drives in external enclosures are subject to
more stresses since the cases themselves are not typically permanently
mounted and, most likely, are portable. In this situation, reliability
pays the price.

GR

Ghostrider " 00 wrote:
On 1/21/2014 8:28 PM, Mark Perkins wrote:
On Tue, 21 Jan 2014 15:08:42 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:

Interestingly the drives they don't like in RAID configs are the same
types I don't like in USB-attached external hard drives: those damned
"green" or low-power drives. You cannot reliably get a many-hours-long
backup to complete on them without them cycling off and interrupting a
backup to cause it to abort.

I have one system with 15 green drives and another system with 24 green
drives, all of them mounted internally and NONE of them exhibiting the
behavior you describe. My conclusion is that your choice of external drive
enclosure is more responsible than the drives themselves.


Or, more to the point, that drives in external enclosures are subject to
more stresses since the cases themselves are not typically permanently
mounted and, most likely, are portable. In this situation, reliability
pays the price.

GR

http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/01/21...-should-i-buy/

Arno

Franklin wrote
(Ant) wrote

http://www.zdnet.com/who-makes-the-b...es-7000025375/ from
http://www.hardocp.com/news/2014/01/...hard_drives63/

No Samsung drives at Blackblaze?

They did have just 18. Far too few to be of any statistical significance.

Would like to have seen how they stacked up.

Me too. Academic now tho since they have been bought by Seagate.

On 01/21/2014 02:18 PM, Ant wrote:
http://www.zdnet.com/who-makes-the-b...es-7000025375/ from
http://www.hardocp.com/news/2014/01/...hard_drives63/

I'm skeptical. My experience is that all the big names make drives that
will last a long time if they're treated well (in particular, kept cool
and not subjected to shock or vibration). About the only drives I've
ever had serious problems with were some IBM drives a decade or two ago.

In the last episode of , cjt
said:

On 01/21/2014 02:18 PM, Ant wrote:
http://www.zdnet.com/who-makes-the-b...es-7000025375/ from
http://www.hardocp.com/news/2014/01/...hard_drives63/

I'm skeptical. My experience is that all the big names make drives that
will last a long time if they're treated well (in particular, kept cool
and not subjected to shock or vibration). About the only drives I've
ever had serious problems with were some IBM drives a decade or two ago.

I'm less skeptical, since you can see exactly how Backblaze stores and
uses their drives if you read their posts on this topic.

More importantly, they treat their drives identical to each other, in a
reasonably ideal (but not perfect) environment, and probably a fairly
similar one to what you might have in a SMB or SOHO environment.

--
We have enough youth, how about a fountain of SMART?

VanguardLH wrote:

Since Western Digital acquired Hitachi GST (Global Storage
Technologies), or HGST, back in early 2012 for $4.8 billion, the results
showing "Hitachi" and "Western Digital" are for the same brand but
perhaps not [yet] for the same production facilities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HGST

On March 8, 2012, Western Digital (WD) acquired Hitachi Global
Storage Technologies [...] It was agreed that WD would operate with
WD Technologies and HGST as wholly owned subsidiaries and they would
compete in the marketplace with separate brands and product lines.

Regards.

cjt wrote
Ant wrote

http://www.zdnet.com/who-makes-the-b...es-7000025375/ from
http://www.hardocp.com/news/2014/01/...hard_drives63/

I'm skeptical. My experience is that all the big names
make drives that will last a long time if they're treated well (in
particular, kept cool and not subjected to shock or vibration).

And it is clear that their system subjects the drives to a significant
amount of vibration, because they are redesigning them to reduce that.

About the only drives I've ever had serious problems
with were some IBM drives a decade or two ago.

Which happen to be the drives that do best in their situation.