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#1
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Enterprise versus "consumer" grade drives
I haven't built a PC with hard drives in a few years and I have to say I
am amazed at the hard drive market. [Note I have bought a few USB drives, so I am referring to internal drives here.] First of all, it seems everyone bought everyone else. Samsung went to Seagate. Hitachi went to WD. Fujitsu went to Toshiba, which is presume is waiting to go elsewhere. Well now I can see why the hard drive market never fell back to the pre-Thailand flood prices. There are three, no make that 2.5 suppliers. I always had the best luck with Seagate. So I do the usual market survey (translation: read Newegg reviews) and it seems Seagate now sucks. Also the 5 year warranty is 3 years, and that is on a good day. Seagate has some drive with 1 year warranties. OK, so check out WD. Hmmh, they seem to suck now too. So is there any advantage to buying a Seagate Constellation versus a Baracuda? Or Ultrastar versus Deskstar? Have you noticed some vendors selling new drives without warranties? When did that start happening? FWIW, the system I plan on building will use intel SSD for the OS. I've done two systems with intel SSD and no headaches, well other than having to pay top dollar for the SSD. [I had a Corsair SSD arrive DOA. That is my only non-intel experience.] I plan on getting two large hard drives (normal, not SSD) and running RAID0. [Raid can be a pain if the controller dies. Raid 0 may be inefficient, but at least the drives are readable without RAID. I had a mobo fail that had a RAID 10 and a Raid 5 array on it. I got the RAID 10 going on another PC, but the RAID 5 just refused to load. I had to go to the backup.] Given that the OS with be on SSD and the magnetic media is on RAID 0, would it still make sense to go with enterprise grade drives, presuming they are more reliable that the consumer grade? Incidentally, I noticed WD now has a 4Tbyte drive whose description is similar to the Hitachi 4Tbyte. I'm leading towards using 3Tbyte since they are substantially cheaper, though Fry's occasionally discount the Hitachi 4Tbyte drives. |
#2
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Enterprise versus "consumer" grade drives
"miso" wrote:
snipped - just addressed the Subject topic in my reply http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...te,2923-2.html Section labelled "Enterprise Drive Reliability" |
#3
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Enterprise versus "consumer" grade drives
On 10/7/2012 7:34 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
"miso" wrote: snipped - just addressed the Subject topic in my reply http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...te,2923-2.html Section labelled "Enterprise Drive Reliability" Your reply here is a bit cryptic. Did you post a comment in this article, or did you just want me to look at the "Enterprise Drive Reliability" section. I recall reading that Google paper when it came out and cursed them for just not freakin' saying which drives were good. The line "enterprise and consumer drives are made up of largely the same components" was stated about 5 years ago, and may not be relevant today. I see Anandtech has an article on drive for NAS, which glosses over enterprise versus consumer. http://www.anandtech.com/show/6157/w...-the-premium/5 |
#4
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Enterprise versus "consumer" grade drives
"miso" wrote:
On 10/7/2012 7:34 PM, VanguardLH wrote: "miso" wrote: snipped - just addressed the Subject topic in my reply http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...te,2923-2.html Section labelled "Enterprise Drive Reliability" Your reply here is a bit cryptic. Did you post a comment in this article, or did you just want me to look at the "Enterprise Drive Reliability" section. I recall reading that Google paper when it came out and cursed them for just not freakin' saying which drives were good. The line "enterprise and consumer drives are made up of largely the same components" was stated about 5 years ago, and may not be relevant today. My reading of the Tom Hardware (1.25 years, not 5 years ago) is that enterprise and consumer HDDs use the same mechanicals which means there is no difference in their "grade" (per your Subject header). The significant difference is in the firmware code in the interface to the enterprise HDDs. What in the last 5 years do you think has been significant in the technology changes in HDDs? Yeah, now they're thinking of filling them with helium but that's an incremental change, not a major change, and you weren't asking about getting one of those. An article ONE year ago is just as applicable as if written today. If you know of an article 5 years old that said the same thing, well, then you've further proof that there has been little difference in quality or durability of enterprise versus consumer drives over that last 5 years. "´enterpriseˇ and ´consumerˇ drives have pretty much the same annualized failure rate". How does that not address your 1-line query "make sense to go with enterprise grade drives, presuming they are more reliable that the consumer grade?" You didn't ask for some white paper that showed exhaustive testing and analysis to come to the same or different conclusion. You asked a general question. I gave an article with a general (conclusionally) answer. I see Anandtech has an article on drive for NAS, which glosses over enterprise versus consumer. http://www.anandtech.com/show/6157/w...-the-premium/5 Where did you mention in your planned config on using a NAS drive? The HDD isn't what makes the difference in the NAS device. You're paying for the extra logic encoded into the interface that the Tom's article also mentioned. If you want to spend the money, figure it is for your own peace of mind. You paid more so it must be better. Nothing in your proposed hardware config can make use of the enterprise-level firmware features so you're paying for something you won't use and ending up with the same quality mechanicals. |
#5
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Enterprise versus "consumer" grade drives
On 10/8/2012 1:00 AM, VanguardLH wrote:
"miso" wrote: On 10/7/2012 7:34 PM, VanguardLH wrote: "miso" wrote: snipped - just addressed the Subject topic in my reply http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...te,2923-2.html Section labelled "Enterprise Drive Reliability" Your reply here is a bit cryptic. Did you post a comment in this article, or did you just want me to look at the "Enterprise Drive Reliability" section. I recall reading that Google paper when it came out and cursed them for just not freakin' saying which drives were good. The line "enterprise and consumer drives are made up of largely the same components" was stated about 5 years ago, and may not be relevant today. My reading of the Tom Hardware (1.25 years, not 5 years ago) is that enterprise and consumer HDDs use the same mechanicals which means there is no difference in their "grade" (per your Subject header). The significant difference is in the firmware code in the interface to the enterprise HDDs. What in the last 5 years do you think has been significant in the technology changes in HDDs? Yeah, now they're thinking of filling them with helium but that's an incremental change, not a major change, and you weren't asking about getting one of those. An article ONE year ago is just as applicable as if written today. If you know of an article 5 years old that said the same thing, well, then you've further proof that there has been little difference in quality or durability of enterprise versus consumer drives over that last 5 years. "´enterpriseˇ and ´consumerˇ drives have pretty much the same annualized failure rate". How does that not address your 1-line query "make sense to go with enterprise grade drives, presuming they are more reliable that the consumer grade?" You didn't ask for some white paper that showed exhaustive testing and analysis to come to the same or different conclusion. You asked a general question. I gave an article with a general (conclusionally) answer. I see Anandtech has an article on drive for NAS, which glosses over enterprise versus consumer. http://www.anandtech.com/show/6157/w...-the-premium/5 Where did you mention in your planned config on using a NAS drive? The HDD isn't what makes the difference in the NAS device. You're paying for the extra logic encoded into the interface that the Tom's article also mentioned. If you want to spend the money, figure it is for your own peace of mind. You paid more so it must be better. Nothing in your proposed hardware config can make use of the enterprise-level firmware features so you're paying for something you won't use and ending up with the same quality mechanicals. If you carefully read the google paper, the quote about consumer drives and enterprise drives being similar was made five years ago. Now you are correct that the google paper is quite recent, but the reference in the paper is old. As an example, if I write "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." on October 8th, 2012, one would say the actual quote goes back to November 19th, 1863. |
#6
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Enterprise versus "consumer" grade drives
The only thing I could find was this 2008 paper for the general public from Intel:
http://download.intel.com/support/mo..._drives_ .pdf It says enterprise class HDs have better head positioning mechanisms, ECC for their RAM, bigger head positioning magnets, anchoring for the spindle bearings at both ends of the shaft, air turbulance control, and better mechanisms for handling vibration and head misalignment, including separate processors for servo information and data. Do the extra features apply only to 10,000+ RPM Enterprise HD or also to 7200 RPM models? Because don't many 7200 RPM and 6000 RPM consumer HDs have air turbulence control, including fixed plastic rods that out over the platters or covers between the platters? |
#7
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Enterprise versus "consumer" grade drives
Thanks. Interesting paper. Note that the magnet size may not be
significant since there are different magnetic materials. That is, a smaller magnet can be more powerful than a larger magnet. It is hard to say these days due to rare earth shortages, especially neodymium. The shortage has lead to some loudspeaker redesigns. For a static magnet, you can more or less size it as need be, but for a moving magnet, the rare earth shortage is a big deal. Much of what is in the intel paper could be seen from a tear down of the drives. That is, you would see the ECC memory, spindle bears on top and bottom, etc. Variable sector size on a drive is news to me, but if an enterprise drive has that, it would be in the datasheet. Regarding vibration, I've been using Antec cases which mount the drive in grommets. I have 5 years on this RAID 10 array, so I assume the grommet scheme doesn't hurt. They are Seagate drives with (you guess it) the 5 year warranty. Reading the Seagate literature, they are no longer at One Disk Drive but have a Cupertino address. I know the company went private. It seems like the changes have been for the worse. |
#8
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Enterprise versus "consumer" grade drives
On Tuesday, October 9, 2012 1:18:58 AM UTC-7, miso wrote:
Regarding vibration, I've been using Antec cases which mount the drive in grommets. I have 5 years on this RAID 10 array, so I assume the grommet scheme doesn't hurt. They are Seagate drives with (you guess it) the 5 year warranty. Seagate once released a paper that said shock mounting a hard drive can increase seek time a lot, at least for small strokes. I can't find it at their website any more; all the technical papers there seem to have disappeared.. A friend of mine used grommets on his hard drives, but instead of those special screws with shafts wider than the threads, he used regular screws, and eventually vibration made some of them work out completely from the drives.. None of the drives fell out, but one drive was held in place only by friction against the grommets. |
#9
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Enterprise versus "consumer" grade drives
"miso" wrote:
On 10/8/2012 1:00 AM, VanguardLH wrote: "miso" wrote: On 10/7/2012 7:34 PM, VanguardLH wrote: "miso" wrote: snipped - just addressed the Subject topic in my reply http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...te,2923-2.html Section labelled "Enterprise Drive Reliability" Your reply here is a bit cryptic. Did you post a comment in this article, or did you just want me to look at the "Enterprise Drive Reliability" section. I recall reading that Google paper when it came out and cursed them for just not freakin' saying which drives were good. The line "enterprise and consumer drives are made up of largely the same components" was stated about 5 years ago, and may not be relevant today. My reading of the Tom Hardware (1.25 years, not 5 years ago) is that enterprise and consumer HDDs use the same mechanicals which means there is no difference in their "grade" (per your Subject header). The significant difference is in the firmware code in the interface to the enterprise HDDs. What in the last 5 years do you think has been significant in the technology changes in HDDs? Yeah, now they're thinking of filling them with helium but that's an incremental change, not a major change, and you weren't asking about getting one of those. An article ONE year ago is just as applicable as if written today. If you know of an article 5 years old that said the same thing, well, then you've further proof that there has been little difference in quality or durability of enterprise versus consumer drives over that last 5 years. "´enterpriseˇ and ´consumerˇ drives have pretty much the same annualized failure rate". How does that not address your 1-line query "make sense to go with enterprise grade drives, presuming they are more reliable that the consumer grade?" You didn't ask for some white paper that showed exhaustive testing and analysis to come to the same or different conclusion. You asked a general question. I gave an article with a general (conclusionally) answer. I see Anandtech has an article on drive for NAS, which glosses over enterprise versus consumer. http://www.anandtech.com/show/6157/w...-the-premium/5 Where did you mention in your planned config on using a NAS drive? The HDD isn't what makes the difference in the NAS device. You're paying for the extra logic encoded into the interface that the Tom's article also mentioned. If you want to spend the money, figure it is for your own peace of mind. You paid more so it must be better. Nothing in your proposed hardware config can make use of the enterprise-level firmware features so you're paying for something you won't use and ending up with the same quality mechanicals. If you carefully read the google paper, the quote about consumer drives and enterprise drives being similar was made five years ago. Now you are correct that the google paper is quite recent, but the reference in the paper is old. As an example, if I write "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." on October 8th, 2012, one would say the actual quote goes back to November 19th, 1863. Guess you missed my statement "What in the last 5 years do you think has been significant in the technology changes in HDDs?" |
#10
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Enterprise versus "consumer" grade drives
I thought I posted this to the list last night. Anyway, here are some
of the innovations in the last five years of features incorporated in enterprise drives. Comparing a Deskstar to Ultrastar datasheet, in this case the 7k4000, the Ultrastar has "adaptive error correction", "dual stage actuator", and "rotational vibration safeguard (RVS). RVS apparently isn't very new (2006 to 2007 time frame). http://storagemojo.com/2006/04/24/ro...-wet-in-water/ In WD own line, they call it RAFF. It is in the RE and Raptorline. http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/librar...579-001079.pdf |
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