[vox-tech] Hard drive Reliability

[Tony Cratz]

On 07/22/2013 09:38 PM, Alex Mandel wrote:
> On 07/22/2013 09:02 PM, David Spencer wrote:
>> What brand are you buying and what rotational speed? I've had good luck with Seagate at 7200RPM. But that's just me. I always mirror whatever drives I get.
>>
>> -- Dave Spencer
>>
>> On Jul 22, 2013, at 7:58 PM, Peter Salzman <p at dirac.org> wrote:
>>
>>> For the past couple of years I've been buying 2TB drives because they're so cheap.
>>>
>>> But I think I've lost more drives in the last 5 years than I've ever lost in my entire life.  I haven't been keeping records, but I swear it feels like many of my drives last 2-3 years.  Are others finding the same thing?
>>>
>>> Are there any manufacturers known to be more reliable than others?   Less reliable than others?
> 
> If you read the reviews online, yes reliability is dismal the larger the
> drive in the consumer bracket. Quick viewing of newegg reviews for 2 TB
> drive from Seagate and WD shows about a 25% failure/unhappy rate, 3 TB
> drives approach 50% failure/unhappy, not enough reviews on 4 TB yet to
> say. Hitachi and Samsung got good review in the 2 TB range for a while
> but Toshiba bought the Hitachi drive brand and no one is sure about
> quality now.
> 
> The only suggestion I can make is to buy the Enterprise drives for ~
> double the price which are rated for longer hours, higher shock etc. or
> expect to swap drives every 2-3 years.
> 
> You may have noted that drives only come with 1-3 year warranty now, as
> opposed to 5 year which used to be the norm. So I think they may be
> taking a calculated risk and manufacturing drives that are actually
> highly likely to fail after 3 years. I'm sure someone has some graphs
> online of probability of failure rate for common drives over time.
> Wouldn't surprise me if it's much steeper decline than it used to be.
> 
> Enjoy,
> Alex
> 
> FYI, the brands I mentioned above are the only spinning disk ones known
> to be any good (depends on models) and according to some sources may be
> the only brands that exist now.


	I agree with Alex, and will add that this is a case of 'you
	mileage may vary' (tm).

	Depending on what you are doing, 3-5 years is about normal. Oh
	I have some older drives I have gotten 5+ years off of them. But
	about the 5 year mark they all start to show sings of needing to
	be replaced (depending on what your use of them are and how you
	have them partitioned).

	Good partitioning can help your drive last longer. Some
	partitions will be heaver used then others (swap, logs, OS).
	While others have much lessor usage. For example if you keep
	you swap, logs and OS on one drive and your /home on another,
	the drive with /home should last much longer then the drive
	with swap, logs and the OS.

	As for mirroring, good and bad news. Good news is you can
	recover your data easier (be careful of hardware raid). Bad
	news, now you are shorting the additional drives life span.


							Tony