HDD Reliability Figures

[mrapoc]

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-update-september-2014/

Interesting read

 

[brandonkick]

Interesting indeed.


For the record, I've used two western digital drives over the last 8 years and in those 8 years, neither failed me. I don't run the original WD drive but I'd assume it still runs like a champ.

The only real take away for me is to stay far far away from Seagate drives.

 

[seedubya]

Sticking with Hitachi for the foreseeable future so.

 

[anti]

The Seagate 1.5TB thing is nothing new.

 

[lcoughey]

My order of preference, as of right now, is as follows:

Toshiba
HGST
Western Digital
Seagate

However, sometimes we are limited to what we can get through our suppliers. One thing is for certain, Seagate purchases will be limited to part drives for the next year or so. Hopefully they will improve after that.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Odd how Hitachi is up top...formerly IBM....which, a few years ago...had a horrible...horrible reliability rate..almost as bad as Maxtor and Quantum. The "IBM DeskStar" drives earned the nickname "DeathStar" drives.

Still prefer WesternDigital drives for our choice. We don't do the blues or greens, just Reds, Blacks, and RE series.

I still chuckle at their "enterprise drives are a waste of money" claim. They're a true data center environment, groomed clean power, cool, low humidity, non moving, anti static...the perfect environment.

I've seen many years of clear examples of enterprise drives being well worth the up front cost.

 

[AndyM]

Odd how Hitachi is up top...formerly IBM....which, a few years ago...had a horrible...horrible reliability rate..almost as bad as Maxtor and Quantum. The "IBM DeskStar" drives earned the nickname "DeathStar" drives.

Still prefer WesternDigital drives for our choice. We don't do the blues or greens, just Reds, Blacks, and RE series.

I still chuckle at their "enterprise drives are a waste of money" claim. They're a true data center environment, groomed clean power, cool, low humidity, non moving, anti static...the perfect environment.

I've seen many years of clear examples of enterprise drives being well worth the up front cost.

Back in the day, when IBM drives were made by IBM, they were rock solid. Then IBM went through their transition from manufacturer to services provider, and the DeskStar series went over to Hitachi. As with the ThinkPads, the exercise was to continue the IBM brand, then gradually cross brand, before full integration within the third party product line.

As with all brands, we see them go through phases. At one point WDC were right at the top of the game, then they fell away. As did Seagate. But I do have to confess that I've seen more Seagate failures recently than any other brand.

As of 6 months ago, my preference for desktop drives has been the WD Black drives. For laptop drives, I'm tending to push Intel and Crucial SSD's.

I thought Toshiba were part HGST now?

And just to confuse matters, Samsung Spinrite drives are made by Seagate, but their SSD's are made in house.

Andy

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Back in the day, when IBM drives were made by IBM, they were rock solid.

They were fast as heck...I remember in the 6.4 and 8 gig days....building lots of gaming rigs with them.

While still IBM....when the 40, 60, 80 gig drives were out..that was the bad firmware days of massive failures and the nickname "deathstar" came out.

We had some huge contracts with school systems and Masonicare homes back at the place I worked then...was nearly a full time job just replacing HDDs.

 

[lcoughey]

We had some huge contracts with school systems and Masonicare homes back at the place I worked then...was nearly a full time job just replacing HDDs.

These days may be back soon, but with SSD drives.

 

[kjm_phd]

Well, at least I don't have buyers remorse about the new HGST drive I literally ordered a few seconds ago. :-D

 

[mrapoc]

Just had a 1tb WD black fail. Fitted it. New install. All OK or so I thought. User reported slow downs and slow boots etc.

Checked everything bar the new HDD. Turns out it was failing. Grr.

 

[Larry Sabo]

Well, at least I don't have buyers remorse about the new HGST drive I literally ordered a few seconds ago. :-D

Well, I would, given the 2.35 times price differential between an HGST and same sized (3TB) Toshiba. I don't know if the Tosh is really an HGST inside or not.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

These days may be back soon, but with SSD drives.

Oh no doubt...I'm sure you've heard me complain about them many times here....as I've seen far too many failures with them.

 

[lan101]

Oh no doubt...I'm sure you've heard me complain about them many times here....as I've seen far too many failures with them.

Are you seeing a lot of failures even with the better known brands like intel and samsung?

 

[DataMedics]

I agree with Luke, Toshiba is the way to go these days. And their externals are currently the least expensive of anyone.

As far as Seagate is concerned, they used to be good but suck now. I heard from a guy in China (who has a friend that works for SG) that they opened up new factories there with major quality control issues. Failure rates through the roof from those factories.