Seagate 3TB high failure rate --Backblaze

[Red Squirrel]

To me if any drive can't work 24/7 it's garbage. Who turns off a NAS? I have mine on a 400ah worth of battery backup to avoid shutting it down. If that gets turned off, EVERYTHING needs to go down including all my VMs. Typically that is harder on the drives too. Most of the times that I've had to turn it off I lost a couple drives. I actually expect it. If I need to do a planned power shutdown in my server room I make sure to have spare drives on hand for each size that I have. With redundant PSUs on the new NAS it should no longer be needed to shut it down though unless the power goes out for more than 4 hours. (about the time I get on my batteries). After 2-3 hours I start to shut down stuff though to try to squeeze a bit more time out of the batteries. It's rare we get such outages though.

 

[lehtv]

The Backblaze graph is garbage. They're pitting Seagate's desktop drive (7200.14) against Western Digital's NAS drive (WD Red). As a desktop drive, 7200.14 isn't even designed for the heavy workloads that you get in datacenters. There are no reasonable conclusions you can draw from these numbers as a home user.

 

[redzo]

So, the other HDs that they are using also have similar specs. Why is it only 3 TB seagates that have such a high failure rate ? Are they using cheaper parts, and it shows ?

Then, why is it the 4TB ones are doing better ?

Seems the answer is pretty obvious...

If the manufacturer specifically points out that it is guaranteed for only 2400hours of service what do you do? You drop it in a 24/7 nas storage. That's plain stupid.
Also, check the other 4TB drive from the same series(ST4000DM000)! oops, it's less than one year in service. Imminent failure about to happen. Stay tuned for their next 2016 graph!

ST and WD offer products with mechanics specifically designed for 24/7 NAS operation/loads. Those WD RED's are screaming at you to drop them in that storage pod.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Speaking of these models, why are the 4TB drives 5900 rpm? Surely that would make them slower

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148844

 

[Binky]

A 4tb 5900rpm drive can read data at 100mb+. Many people don't need more speed if the most likely use of that drive is in a server/NAS. Put two drives in a raid or even drive duplication setup and the speed are even higher.

 

[B-Riz]

Anyone read the Backblaze blog about how they shucked externals because of the flooding?

There is going to be an update post about the 3TB Seagate failures from them, I am guessing it was large majority shucked drives.

I have two of these drives in RAID 0, for games and non-critical stuff, no issues. One Thailand version and one Chinese version; I did update the Thailand firmware before creating the RAID array.

 

[Ketchup]

Are there any 3 TB drives that are reliable? I was looking at a good price on a WD Red today. Lots of dead drives in a year or less according to Newegg reviews.

Maybe it's just a bad size for some reason.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I have 4 3TB drives (3 toshiba, 1 Hitachi, I think they're same drives physically) in raid 10, so far so good after about 9000 hours on each (which seems kind of low... not sure if smart data rolls back after a while). I did have to RMA one though because it was DOA... that's where the Hitachi came from. That one shows 5 power on cycles the others in 20's, probably from when I was building the server they were basically used to test that each slot works so that's why it's so high.

 

[Ketchup]

That's good to hear. Thanks for sharing Red Squirrel. I am not super concerned because it is going to be a backup drive (or the existing drives will be my backup, haven't decided yet) and 3 TB would fit my needs with ample room to grow. But who wants to pay good money for a drive that dies in a year or less?

 

[KentState]

Another one of my Seagates died today. Replaced it with a spare WD Red I had.

 

[Z15CAM]

Can't say if this means anything but I bought numerous Maxtor 7200rpm IDE Diamond 80GB's long ago with a few SATA counterparts. All my SATA 80GB's died with in 2 years where as my IDE Maxtor's are still healthy after some 10 years plus. I contribute the failure of the SATA Maxtor's to High Heat due to the design of the Maxtor SATA PCB's. To bad, I have more use for IDE

 

[Ramses]

As soon as I say this, they'll die, but.. I've had three running 24/7 since October of 2013.
Two in a NAS(mirror), one in my box for storage that was on 18hrs a day. It just migrated to an external enclosure on top of the NAS backing it up. It's also backed up online.
I do plan to replace them with 4's or larger but so far so good.

 

[brandonb]

After my Seagate HD crashed in my work laptop. My boss told me that his brother in law works for Seagate. He mentioned that even his brother in law who works for the company says: "Don't buy Seagate. Right now." His brother in law also said that they do take quality very seriously though. (Not that I see it) It seems like they are struggling in that regard.

 

[Danyune]

Oh damn I have a Seagate 3tb in my main PC as a storage drive, perhaps I should change that to a WD