Enterprise vs. Consumer HDDs

[Scipio Africanus]

So whats the big difference? I've been researching this and noticed a few things like much higher MTBF. But how do they do it? Is there any real difference in how they design/build these drives?

The only thing I've noticed is the addition of vibration sensors and methods to mitigate vibration for closely spaced drives in rack mounted systems. There's a lot of debate online it seems on various forums and blogs but no real definitive answer. Are they just "binned" drives or actually different?

 

[aigomorla]

totally depends on the drives and class.

For example.. SAS drives ONLY come in enterprise editions.
But a Western Digital Blk, and Raptors would be what i consider consumer branded Enterprise drives... so that should tell you about speed.

 

[Concillian]

Most of it is things done at the design level.

For example if the drive scan for defects finds a defect on a personal storage drive, it will map out that defect. On an enterprise class drive it will map out that defect... plus extra space in all directions... plus change track scanning algorithms to prevent wear and tear on the head by accidental interaction with a defect with height while moving to another track.

Also things like better sealing, adding desiccant materials to inhibit potential for corrosion of parts inside, etc...

The bottom line is that an enterprise class drives takes all the options that were stripped for cost and adds back them in. This is the case for individual components, testing methods, firmware, etc... The result is that failure rates are lower, but you're paying like 2x to have 99.9% of drives not fail in 5 years vs. maybe 99.2% or something.

When you're buying one to three drives, the difference in risk is negligible. When you'r ebuying 10 or 20 thousand drives, and paying people to maintain them, the difference in risk is more tangible.