Reliability of 7200rpm HDDs

[Boomhowler]

Hello!

I'm planning on buying a couple of drives for a raid5-set for an off-site backup solution. Is there somewhere you can read about the difference in longevity between for example an

2TB Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 (HDS723020BLA642)

and an

2TB Western Digital RE4 ?

 

[tulx]

I still have a working 1,5 GB Seagate (I think it was) HDD bought about 15-17 years ago. I've never seen a HDD fail for reasons other than dropped from a desk. I'm pretty sure you can buy any HDD from any respectable manufacturer and not worry about reliability.
If you're unlucky enough to experience a HDD failing, you'll probably also be unlucky enough to be struck by a falling clown who accidentally fell out of an airplane and you won't live to care much about the HDD.

 

[greenhawk]

generally the spin speed does not effect ware on a raid array that much as the drive is designed to run at that speed. The issue with using normal drives and not ones configured for raid is that some drives when issues start to occur like bad clusters will re-try a few times, which will tell a raid controller the drive is bad and drop it from the array when it is only a few KB it is having trouble with. Secondly, some green drives spin down when not in use so the spin up can trick some raid controllers into thinking the drive has died as well.

if going software raid 5 then these issues might not effect you, but if going to all the trouble of offsite raid setup, then I am guessing you want to protect the data. Going lots of raid 1 can be easier and not have any issues with raid 5, just takes a lot more drives instead.

 

[nenforcer]

I've never seen a HDD fail for reasons other than dropped from a desk. I'm pretty sure you can buy any HDD from any respectable manufacturer and not worry about reliability.

Clearly you never saw, used or knew of anyone who purchased an IBM Deskstar aka IBM Deathstar in the late 90's / early 2000's.

They were so bad they sold the disk drive division to Hitachi so people would forget about them.

 

[Cerb]

Hello!

I'm planning on buying a couple of drives for a raid5-set for an off-site backup solution. Is there somewhere you can read about the difference in longevity between for example an

2TB Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 (HDS723020BLA642)

and an

2TB Western Digital RE4 ?

StorageReview still has their DB, if you join, IIRC. By the time the data is relevant, however, your drives will be old anyway, and your sample size is too small to matter. If you are going HW RAID, then you need to get the WD RE drives. For software RAID, either will do, or even plain old desktop WDs.

If you're unlucky enough to experience a HDD failing, you'll probably also be unlucky enough to be struck by a falling clown who accidentally fell out of an airplane and you won't live to care much about the HDD.

I've never been hit by a falling clown, and I've had several HDDs fail on me over the years. All it takes is having enough drives running at any given time.

 

[Revolution 11]

All hard drives will fail eventually. You should always backup your data and data is never safe unless you have two backups of it. Words of wisdom from someone here I can't remember at this time.

Just buy the cheapest drive at whatever size and features you want and call it a day. With the money saved, invest it wisely and buy the replacement drive for the day when your newly bought drive fails!

Misc: 'Backup' is a funny word, now that I think about it.

 

[rsutoratosu]

All hard drives will fail eventually. You should always backup your data and data is never safe unless you have two backups of it. Words of wisdom from someone here I can't remember at this time.

Just buy the cheapest drive at whatever size and features you want and call it a day. With the money saved, invest it wisely and buy the replacement drive for the day when your newly bought drive fails!

Misc: 'Backup' is a funny word, now that I think about it.

This is so true, if you know the amount of enterprise 15k sas I returned on a yearly basis. They're all reliable, but because they fail, we raid them. I would trust the RE more but looks like they're almost double or triple the cost of the hitachi

Also 3yr vs 5yr warranty.

You can hardware raid desktop drives, it doesn't have to be RE drives. Its just what your controller supports

 

[Boomhowler]

This is so true, if you know the amount of enterprise 15k sas I returned on a yearly basis. They're all reliable, but because they fail, we raid them. I would trust the RE more but looks like they're almost double or triple the cost of the hitachi

Also 3yr vs 5yr warranty.

You can hardware raid desktop drives, it doesn't have to be RE drives. Its just what your controller supports

Yes, I got a good deal on the hitachis from two separate dealers so I went with them. I reckon I could just buy updated drives in three years when the warranty of those drives run out. A raid 5 will give me some safety at least.

Thanks for the comments everyone, very appreciated! I'll give you some updates later when the drives arrive

 

[Hugo Drax]

When you have a bunch of drives running in a cage, you want the RE4

 

[Boomhowler]

All hard drives will fail eventually. You should always backup your data and data is never safe unless you have two backups of it. Words of wisdom from someone here I can't remember at this time.

Just buy the cheapest drive at whatever size and features you want and call it a day. With the money saved, invest it wisely and buy the replacement drive for the day when your newly bought drive fails!

Misc: 'Backup' is a funny word, now that I think about it.

Yup, that's why this is my "offsite" backup. I already have the originals and one backup at home. This will be a daily/weekly mirror of the @home-backup.

 

[Boomhowler]

When you have a bunch of drives running in a cage, you want the RE4

Vibrations?

 

[bononos]

Clearly you never saw, used or knew of anyone who purchased an IBM Deskstar aka IBM Deathstar in the late 90's / early 2000's.

They were so bad they sold the disk drive division to Hitachi so people would forget about them.

Apart from the deathstars IBMs were a leading harddrive manufacturer for a long time. Given IBM's overall track record and the unique feature of the deathstars, I don't think its fair to use deathstars to make imputations on Hitachi's quality.

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

Apart from the deathstars IBMs were a leading harddrive manufacturer for a long time. Given IBM's overall track record and the unique feature of the deathstars, I don't think its fair to use deathstars to make imputations on Hitachi's quality.

Oh yes it is. Hitachi hard drive suck. I've got a stack of them on my desk. Our Laptop and Desktop vendors use a range of Hitatchi, Seagate, Samsung, and WD drives and the only drives I see die are Hitachi drives. I have yet seen a Samsung or Seagate go out yet. I've been here for about 3 years now. I will never put a Hitachi hard drive in any of my personal computers. I go so far as to opening personal laptops and checking to see if they have Hitachi drives. If they do they get sold on ebay for dirt cheap.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

^ Suit yourself. I still have 1st gen 1TB (industry's first) Hitachis running fine 24/7/365.
Hell, both of my 30TB fileservers are built with newer Hitachis (15x 7K2000s in one, 15x 5K3000s in the other).

Seagate? Hello 7200.11 firmware crapfest, although I'm not well acquainted with their newer drives and do have a bunch of 7200.7s and 7200.10s (made in Singapores, not China!) that are ticking along just fine.

Samsung? Love them as well (can't beat the Spinpoint F3), but there were (are?) firmware problems with the F4.

 

[icanhascpu2]

This is like basing the reliability of a CPU on its stock clock-rate. This doesn't have a relevent effect on reliability. Cool the drive cool and not smacked around, and choose a drive that has a lot of positive reviews that generally say how reliable it is.

 

[GoStumpy]

I've had the Seagate 7200.11 firmware problem, I have two Seagate HDD's that are making a lot more clicking / searching noise than they did originally... I have a WD Green 1TB drive that is starting to make more noise.. Every Maxtor drive I've ever had has died...

However this has made me realize that all HDD's die eventually... within 5 years is when there is a problem!

 

[Rifter]

Clearly you never saw, used or knew of anyone who purchased an IBM Deskstar aka IBM Deathstar in the late 90's / early 2000's.

They were so bad they sold the disk drive division to Hitachi so people would forget about them.

I still own a 7200rpm IBM Deskstar(deathstar) that is still in use as a boot drive for my server/firewall/router PC. Its probably the only one still functioning but it still wotks great with less than 100 bad sectors. I consider this a small miracle.

 

[Vegemeister]

Use 5400 RPM for a file server/backup/etc. A RAID 5 array will usually be faster than whatever you're backing up even with 5400 RPM drives. The extra cost of 7200 RPM and enterprise RAID drives is not worth it (unless you are using a hardware RAID controller, which would be dumb).

 

[wetech]

Just had my 3rd Samsung Spinpoint die in a 3 year period. Ironically, this one was a warranty replacement of the prior failure.

 

[JohnnyChuttz]

Life Lesson:

Don't buy a refurb hard drive.

A refurb Seagate 7200.11 took my entire music collection and movies with it.

 

[Cerb]

Life Lesson:

Don't buy a refurb hard drive.

A refurb Seagate 7200.11 took my entire music collection and movies with it.

Life lesson: make copies. Having it all on one drive is asking for it to be lost.

 

[corkyg]

Nothing stays the same forever. Today, current Hitachi drives are quite good.

 

[Magic Carpet]

I have plenty of Hitachi (from 2003) drives still functioning. Some with bad blocks but still runnning fine. Hitachi recovery software is good.

Bought a dozen of 7K1000.D last month, so far, no issues. Single platter disks are feather-light. Okay, they are not as fast as Caviar Black but... you can't hear them at all. Power consumption is a tad lower as well.

 

[Soundmanred]

Seagate hard drives suck. I've got a stack of them on my desk. Our Laptop and Desktop vendors use a range of Hitachi, Seagate, Samsung, and WD drives and the only drives I see die are Seagate drives. I have yet seen a Samsung or Hitachi go out yet. I've been here for about 3 years now. I will never put a Seagate hard drive in any of my personal computers. I go so far as to opening personal laptops and checking to see if they have Seagate drives. If they do they get sold on ebay for dirt cheap.

 

[Soundmanred]

Samsung hard drives suck. I've got a stack of them on my desk. Our Laptop and Desktop vendors use a range of Hitachi, Seagate, Samsung, and WD drives and the only drives I see die are Samsung drives. I have yet seen a Samsung or Hitachi go out yet. I've been here for about 3 years now. I will never put a Samsung hard drive in any of my personal computers. I go so far as to opening personal laptops and checking to see if they have Samsung drives. If they do they get sold on ebay for dirt cheap.