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ATA Reliability: Seagate, WD, Maxtor



 
 
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  #11  
Old April 9th 05, 03:39 AM
Curious George
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On Fri, 08 Apr 2005 18:24:04 +0100, HVB wrote:

On Fri, 08 Apr 2005 16:51:44 -0000,
wrote:

In article ,
HVB wrote:
...
Generally speaking, ATA and SATA drives are intended for desktop use
and although they may be designed in a similar (or even the same) way,
they are not subjected to the same testing regime or manufacturing
tolerances as Enterprise-class products.
...


No, wrong. Desktop-class drives are DESIGNED radically different from
Enterprise-class drives.


I know that. In my defense... I did say *may be designed* not are
designed.

HVB


I think it's kinda funny how in other groups this would normally
quickly turn into a flame war spurred by some user(s) who say, "my
desktop ATA drive works fine. What are you talking about? All drives
are the same except SCSI is a rip-off!" with maybe 1 person
countering on the ES side. While in a group of basically storage
professionals like this the ES/PS distinction is barely contentious;
only its details are to a limited extent.

For the OP FWIW I have noticed greater infant mortality, higher
incidence of motors which turn noisy, and higher likelihood of
defective drives which allow wild writes as well as just general
inconsistency across the ES & PS product line with Maxtor drives over
the last decade as opposed to most other brands. The problem,
however, might be more related to my supplier & delivery route than
actually Maxtor's fault (I don't know). Careful handling, integration
& monitoring are probably more important for success than brand name.
Everyone occasionally makes a bum model. Your or my bad luck may not
be indicative of the overall brand.

There is an interesting somewhat anecdotal project over at
storagereview.com- their reliability database. I try to mention it
when I can because the more ppl that contribute the better chance we
have of it yielding accurate results. (Please not that I am not
affiliated in any way with storagereview.com or its sponsors)
  #12  
Old April 9th 05, 03:47 AM
Paul Rubin
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Curious George writes:
For the OP FWIW I have noticed greater infant mortality, higher
incidence of motors which turn noisy, and higher likelihood of
defective drives which allow wild writes as well as just general
inconsistency across the ES & PS product line with Maxtor drives over
the last decade as opposed to most other brands.


I had a weird and somewhat scary experience with a Maxtor 60gb drive.
I bought it about 4 years ago, mounted it in a PC, installed an OS on
it and did a couple things on it. That all worked fine. The machine
was then powered off and ended up being taken out of service. Three
years later I decided to use the drive for something else. The drive
had no more than a dozen or so power-on hours and had just been
sitting in an unused PC for 3 years. It spun up normally but I could
no longer read data from it and the connected host didn't recognize it.

This is a little bit disturbing since it makes using HD's as archive
media sound unreliable. I asked someone about it and as soon as I
said "60 GB drive" he immediately recognized the problem. He said
that there was some contamination problem in an ALPS factory that made
the heads for basically all 60GB drives of that era. And so the same
thing likey would have happened no matter what brand of drive I'd
bought, but wouldn't have happened with a 40gb drive or an 80gb drive.

Gack. I still don't know my long term archive strategy. I guess LTO
still looks best.
  #13  
Old April 9th 05, 05:51 AM
_firstname_@lr_dot_los-gatos_dot_ca.us
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In article ,
Curious George wrote:
On Fri, 08 Apr 2005 18:24:04 +0100, HVB wrote:

On Fri, 08 Apr 2005 16:51:44 -0000,
wrote:

No, wrong. Desktop-class drives are DESIGNED radically different from
Enterprise-class drives.


I know that. In my defense... I did say *may be designed* not are
designed.


I think it's kinda funny how in other groups this would normally
quickly turn into a flame war ...


In retrospect, my very terse "no, wrong" sentence was less than
polite. I apologize for being too curt.

There is an interesting somewhat anecdotal project over at
storagereview.com- their reliability database. I try to mention it
when I can because the more ppl that contribute the better chance we
have of it yielding accurate results. (Please not that I am not
affiliated in any way with storagereview.com or its sponsors)


Most certainly all systems integrators that use large quantities of
disks (ranging from Dell at the consumer end to HDS at the enterprise
end) carefully evaluate the data on reliability of drives, and keep
tabs on failures rates in the field. Certainly the data is correlated
not just with manufacturer info, but also model, age, serial number
range, and (where known) environmental conditions. And I'm also sure
that all these companies keep that data closely guarded; not only is
it a useful trade secret, but if leaked out it could also be lawsuit
material.

Think about it this way. If it weren't for Consumer Reports, how
would you ever find out whether Ford's or Chevy's are more reliable?
You could call both companies headquarters and ask for statistics -
good luck! You could ask your beer-drinking buddies, and all you'd
get were religiously held opinions, and a few anecdotes. Getting real
information on such an important question is just very hard.

--
The address in the header is invalid for obvious reasons. Please
reconstruct the address from the information below (look for _).
Ralph Becker-Szendy
  #14  
Old April 9th 05, 06:02 AM
_firstname_@lr_dot_los-gatos_dot_ca.us
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In article ,
Paul Rubin wrote:
Curious George writes:
I had a weird and somewhat scary experience with a Maxtor 60gb drive.
I bought it about 4 years ago, mounted it in a PC, installed an OS on
it and did a couple things on it. That all worked fine. The machine
was then powered off and ended up being taken out of service. Three
years later I decided to use the drive for something else. The drive
had no more than a dozen or so power-on hours and had just been
sitting in an unused PC for 3 years. It spun up normally but I could
no longer read data from it and the connected host didn't recognize it.

This is a little bit disturbing since it makes using HD's as archive
media sound unreliable. I asked someone about it and as soon as I
said "60 GB drive" he immediately recognized the problem. He said
that there was some contamination problem in an ALPS factory that made
the heads for basically all 60GB drives of that era. And so the same
thing likey would have happened no matter what brand of drive I'd
bought, but wouldn't have happened with a 40gb drive or an 80gb drive.


It seems unlikely that all manufacturers of that era (Seagate,
IBM/Hitachi, Maxtor=Quantum, WD, plus the Korean ones that make ATA
only) would all use ALPS heads. ALPS has a high market share, but I
can't really imagine it being near 100%.

Gack. I still don't know my long term archive strategy. I guess LTO
still looks best.


There are persistent rumors around that the lubrication in the
bearings (both spindle and actuator) will do something nasty like turn
into tar, if you store a drive for a long time without running it. So
relying on non-spinning drives for long-term archive seems dangerous.
At least not without asking the manufacturer of the drive whether they
support this mode.

For my stuff at home, I have two disk copies of everything that's in
use, plus one copy of all the archival stuff on a single disk. So far
increasing disk capacity has made using a single disk as an archive
viable (it is currently a 200GB ATA disk). Plus one extra copy of
everything (most importantly the archive) on writeable CDs.
Obviously, things that can be easily recreated (like tracks ripped
from audio CDs) are exempt from the archive and backup. But it is
quite amazing: For a home computer, including digital pictures (but
not digital video), the increase in disk capacity over the last 10
years has meant that I never have to delete anything.


--
The address in the header is invalid for obvious reasons. Please
reconstruct the address from the information below (look for _).
Ralph Becker-Szendy
  #16  
Old April 9th 05, 07:22 AM
flux
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In article ,
HVB wrote:

On Fri, 08 Apr 2005 04:11:11 GMT, flux wrote:

Faeandar wrote:

Point is that reliability of ATA is nowhere near
that of Scsi or FC. Once you get down into the desktop class drives


This statement is just fiction. Drives today are roughly the same in reliability, marketing claims notwithstanding.


No - I think Faeandar has a point. It all comes down to cost.

FC and SCSI drives are intended for Enterprise-class use; they are
manufactured, tested and priced accordingly.


But manufacturers sell few FC/SCSI drives compared to ATA drives, so it
makes sense for there to be cost difference.

Generally speaking, ATA and SATA drives are intended for desktop use
and although they may be designed in a similar (or even the same) way,
they are not subjected to the same testing regime or manufacturing
tolerances as Enterprise-class products.

Some vendors offer Enterprise type SATA drives - generally with faster
RPM speeds and higher prices. I would expect these drives to have had
more thorough testing than a standard desktop item.

The vendors that are using ATA/SATA in products aimed at Enterprise
use, like NetApp, have taken additional steps to ensure reliability.
This could be stricter use of SMART data, probes on the data path or
additional parity, specifically intended to improve the reliability of
ATA/SATA subsystems.


I don't know how much of it is true, but I do know that ATA drives are a
lot faster and a lot more reliable than some here think they are.
  #18  
Old April 9th 05, 01:46 PM
Bill Todd
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flux wrote:

....

I'm not sure I believe you.


Then you might benefit from actually looking at the material he cited
rather than pulling opinions directly out of your ass.

- bill
  #19  
Old April 9th 05, 02:00 PM
Bill Todd
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flux wrote:

....

I don't know how much of it is true,


Rather obviously.

but I do know that ATA drives are a
lot faster and a lot more reliable than some here think they are.


Since I don't recall anyone yet having actually quantified either value,
your confidence in that statement seems rather unfounded.

Fact: ATA drives max out at 7200 rpm, while SCSI/FC drives max out at
15,000 rpm. That gives SCSI drives a 2+:1 advantage in rotational
latency right off the bat.

(Yes, WD's Raptor spins at 10,000 rpm, which reduces the SCSI/FC
advantage to 1.5:1. But you referred to 'ATA', not 'SATA', above.)

Fact: ATA drives have average seek latencies in the 8 - 9+ ms. range
(there may be one in the 7s somewhere), while the fastest SCSI/FC drives
have average seek times less than half that (I haven't bothered to check
out the WD Raptor in this regard). Another 2+:1 speed advantage for
SCSI/FC.

Fact: Unlike SCSI/FC drives, ATA drives do not typically support
command queuing that allows seek optimization at the drive to further
reduce average access latencies (and even those ATA drives that do often
lack drivers that support this feature). Advantage: varies with the
queue depth, but typically quite significant in enterprise use (i.e.,
when parallel rather than serial access predominates) and always at
least noticeable as long as the queue depth exceeds 1.

As for reliability, I'll let you read the paper that you previously
neglected to: it's quite thorough in its assessment of the differences.

- bill
  #20  
Old April 9th 05, 02:46 PM
_R
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On Sat, 09 Apr 2005 05:02:58 -0000,
wrote:

There are persistent rumors around that the lubrication in the
bearings (both spindle and actuator) will do something nasty like turn
into tar, if you store a drive for a long time without running it. So
relying on non-spinning drives for long-term archive seems dangerous.


That was known as 'stiction.' Some drives, like Connor, made in
someone's garage, used to have that problem consistently. (The
lady with the oil can chewed gum?) When UPS *fixes* your
drives enroute there's a problem.

For Connor drives we used to tap the top of the drive to free the
spindle. Later it was a sharp knock. I fixed a stubborn one by
slamming it on a table top. When that didn't work I kicked it
about 15 feet. That didn't work but it felt like the right thing to do
at the time.

At least not without asking the manufacturer of the drive whether they
support this mode.


Do you support stiction? Connor: Why yes, we do, sir!

For my stuff at home, I have two disk copies of everything that's in
use, plus one copy of all the archival stuff on a single disk. So far
increasing disk capacity has made using a single disk as an archive
viable (it is currently a 200GB ATA disk). Plus one extra copy of
everything (most importantly the archive) on writeable CDs.


I used to use magneto-optical for backup. A bad investment, as
the capacities were outdistanced by drive capacities within a few
months. MO was also much more expensive than the drive that it
was backing up. Very persistant storage though, when you could
get the drives themselves to work.

Some things still go to M.O. Recording studios often use them for
master track backup. I bet the data on my M.O. disks will far outlast
my oxide, CD, or DVD backups, but the last gen of MO that I dealt
with was only 4gigs per disk. Fine for certain things but not for
general backup.

For large volumes of data, I guess the best strategy is to keep it in
at least two places and to constantly get new drives and refresh it.

_R
 




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