How Seagate Tests Its Hard Drives

[jimmysmitty]

Known failure rate of 40%? Where do you get these numbers? How are these numbers obtained? What scenarios are these numbers obtained in?

BTW, did you know consumer HDDs from most brands are not rated for 24x7 operation hence why they should not be used in any server environment? It is a server environment in that it is a server with multiple HDDs running 24x7. They may not be read from all the time but they are spinning all the time and most 7200RPM HDDs will spin at 7200RPM unless they have a power saving feature.

Running a consumer drive rated for normal use, i.e. that it will be powered on and off, will result in much different failure rates.

BTW, the majority of companies will not replace a product outside of the warranty unless it is an issue affecting a massive amount of people such as a recall.

This is not the first time Toms has gone into a company to see how they do things. They did not get paid anything nor did they sell advertising to Seagate.

Failure rate is from Backblaze - 3tb Seagate drive failures in 2014 - 43.1%.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/blog-fail-drives-manufacture-2015-june.jpg

Toms reported in 2009 that the 7200.11 drives had reported failure rates of 30-40%.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/seagate-7200.11-failing,6844.html

The 7200.11 issue effected 500gb, 1tb and 1.5tb drives, with Seagate deleting posts on there forums about the issue to cover it up. Eventually Seagate offered free data recovery for effected persons, but would not replace the drives outside of warranty.

I'd say with 40% defect rate, on a hard drive where important data is held, a recall should have been done and all faulty drives replaced upon request. Nope - seagate decided to deny the issue and refuse replacements.

BTW - did you know that Backblaze uses all the major brands consumer drives in a server environment. And Seagate 3tb are the only drive that has shown catastrophic failure rates.

Also - sure Toms would not have been paid for the article, as for advertising...well that information would be commercial in confidence. But Seagate has given VIP access for Toms to have an article. Anyone asking why, would be thinking it's to improve Seagates reputation, and has given an article to Toms on a platter. it's how the PR/Media industries work and IMO pretty dodgy.

I remember that article on thew 7200.11 drives. It affected only people in a certain region based on the region their drives were manufactured. It was not for the entire 7200.11 line, only drives manufactured in that specific manufacturing plant. It happens, no one brand has ever had a clean reputation.

And outside of the Backblaze data do you have any real proof of 40% failure rates for Seagates? You probably do not.

And yes I know that is what Backblaze does which is why I would never utilize their services. Any professional company that is offering online backup would utilize enterprise class drives, not consumer class.

And again, as an example, the Seagate 3TBs you are talking about were designed with consumers in mind and are rated at 2400 power on hours per year. The Enterprise solution is rated for 8760 power on hours per year, 24x7, operation. No consumer is going to run a desktop 24x7 in a "pod" where the drives are not even mounted properly, right next to each other, allowing for heat to build up due to minimal spacing.

Most people shut their PC off or let it sleep/hibernate. Even when on if the HDD detects no activity it will spin down to lower power draw. In the environment Backblaze decided to utilize these drives in they are on and spinning 24x7 which none of the consumer drives are rated for.

 

[I sometimes fix stuff]

How does Seagate test its hard drives? It sells them to customers. The ones that are bad come back, failing the test. The ones that don't come back pass.

 

[teahsr]

And outside of the Backblaze data do you have any real proof of 40% failure rates for Seagates? You probably do not.

And yes I know that is what Backblaze does which is why I would never utilize their services. Any professional company that is offering online backup would utilize enterprise class drives, not consumer class.

And again, as an example, the Seagate 3TBs you are talking about were designed with consumers in mind and are rated at 2400 power on hours per year. The Enterprise solution is rated for 8760 power on hours per year, 24x7, operation. No consumer is going to run a desktop 24x7 in a "pod" where the drives are not even mounted properly, right next to each other, allowing for heat to build up due to minimal spacing.

Most people shut their PC off or let it sleep/hibernate. Even when on if the HDD detects no activity it will spin down to lower power draw. In the environment Backblaze decided to utilize these drives in they are on and spinning 24x7 which none of the consumer drives are rated for.

Problem with failure rate data is it is hard to get - the information is simply not freely available. Thus everyone, myself and Tom's included is left dealing with a small amount of information to draw a conclusion. I assume that you know this, so your question is loaded towards getting an answer that suits your argument. Do you have data which suggests a failure rate lower than 40% ? Does Seagate release it's failure rates, and why not if they are so sure of their product?

Backblaze seems to be doing just fine with consumer drives, well all consumer drives except the Seagate 3tb. If they had been around in the 7200.11 days, they again would have had issues. Backblaze is open with their information, they have examined there pod design, heat, airflow etc. The conclusion is not that consumer drives are ill suited to their storage pods. The conclusion is that the Seagate 3tb drives are dodgy.

Sure consumer drives are not rated for 24/7 use, but all the other brands seem to be fine...this suggests something wrong with the 3tb Seagate drives. If it was Backblazes pods, why no issues for WD, Toshiba of HGSt?

Seagate's defenders keep saying it's the pods fault - but that does not explain why all other drives are fine.

The bigger problem with Seagate though is the woeful dealing with both the 7200.11 saga and now the 3tb saga. Wouldn't mind it happening if Seagate was open about it, admitted the error, didn't censor their forums, didn't try and cover issues up and replaced the drives that died outside of warranty.

An article which seeks to wax lyrical about '$2 billion of R&D spent', reliability blah blah, whilst ignoring Seagate's track record, well it's simply bad journalism.

 

[wussupi83]

This just looks like a PR attempt to cover Seagate's behind. Not to discredit the hard work put into writing it but to question the 'bias' of this article would not be out of place.

 

[kwa-e]

Here we go again. Seagate drives died when other brands didn't. I don't care if they were misused. I want drives that can be abused and still work. Not fragile drives.

Buy enterprise drives then, it's that simple.

 

[nekatreven]

Here we go again. Seagate drives died when other brands didn't. I don't care if they were misused. I want drives that can be abused and still work. Not fragile drives.

This.

Everything everyone is saying about the Backblaze data being inapplicable and unfair and anything else is 100% right. The vibration was terrible at first, power-on hours too high, all of it true. It is a completely flawed data set.

It doesn't change the fact that when comparing two drives **that are priced similarly and are similar in class, intended use, specs, etc.** the sane customer would purchase the one that got the everliving crap beat out of it and kept going. It would be a different story if the Seagate drive was always significantly cheaper, but that has not been my experience.

 

[firefoxx04]

Then buy enterprise drives? I do apparently, Western Digital and HGST Ultrastars. Low failure rates in the same environment that seagates failed.

The seagates are not faster or more power efficient in any way that makes them better than the competition, and they fail more in rough environment. Why would I not choose the stronger drive that is just as fast and power efficient?

I feel like seagate reached out to Toms to put out this BS article. I have personally used seagate drives with great successes, but that does not change the real numbers. I deploy 3 HGST ultrastars, 3 Seagate drives(two 1TB, one 2TB) and a WD Red 2TB. That does not include any drives I have used in customer builds, all of which are working fine (WD and Seagate). All are fast and have worked reliably. I am not a hater, but I see the data as it is. I will buy the other brands when the prices are the same.

 

[ctmk]

This is just another PR crap. I only believe in actual real life data.
which is the number of seagate drives failed me and cause me troubles plus real life proof by Backblaze's report.

 

[ej00807]

What a boring article that I can't honestly bring myself to do more than skim. What I'd rather read, is some kind of an open apology and recognition of quality and support issues of the past. Also to the folks posting about having had sea gate drives 24x7 for ten years now... I also have ancient SG that still work well. I think they are from the 80's and hold like 20gb or something. I'd say anyone running SG right now from ten years ago is very lucky to have got one of the good batches. I hope solid state overtakes these nasty old mechanical drives and I hope the manufacturers are brand new companies with kinder, less war-torn customer service personnel. I won't be interested in new technology with museum piece name plates like sg.. Western Digital, yes, but only because they used to sponsor public television.

 

[thor220]

Some other interesting information would be when Seagate started their testing process in the form it is today. There were some families of drives which were almost guaranteed to fail. I had a couple of the 1.5TB drives, both of which failed in less than one year. The warranty replacements have lasted 5+ years. Talking about some of the less reliable drives, the problems they had, and the processes they put in place to ensure those failures would not happen again would do wonders to improve their reputation. Making drives that run 24x7 for 5 years for the consumer market would also help their reputation. Most consumers buying a 4+ TB hard drive aren't turning their machines off when they are done, although they may sleep. Maybe they have to spend an extra dollar to make the drive better, and won't have enough differentiation with their more expensive drives. But, that's what they need to get both the commercial and home users who specify brand to have more consumer confidence.

So Seagate needs to make their consumer drives rate for 24x7 operation but no other company does? No other companies consumer HDDs are rated for 24x7. Just because you might keep yours on 24x7 does not mean that that drive is rated for it.

To top it off even if a consumer keeps their system on 24x7 the HDD has sleep states and is not being accessed or written to constantly like in an enterprise solution.

No HDD line is guaranteed to fail. It is just luck of the draw and the situation you put it in. If you let it get dusty and run warm it sure as hell will die a lot faster than if you kept it cool and dust free.

Not going to jump into thew whole fight you got going here but Western Digital does produce consumer hard drives designed to be on 24/7. The red AV drives are designed to be used 24/7 for things like live video recording. WD Black are also designed for this but are more expensive drives with higher performance.

 

[whassup]

Is this an article meant for Marketing the Seagate brand by Toms Hardware ?? Everyone knows the poor reliability of Seagate HDD these days and these ads wont help.

 

[Inferno83]

Maybe things changed... but all of my old SGI machines always had Seagate drives in them and the 20+ year old drives all still work. Hell look at what these drives *sell* for on eBay:
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_sc=1&_udlo=0&_fln=1&_udhi=200&LH_Complete=1&_ssov=1&_mPrRngCbx=1&LH_Sold=1&_from=R40&_sacat=0&_nkw=%28st31200N%2C+st32171N%2C+st32272N%2C+ST34371N%2C+st34520N%2C+st34573n%2C+st39173N%2C+st318417N%2C+st52160N%29&_sop=16


4.5 GB drives *selling* for $150+ I see a 2Gb for $120.

They must have been pretty decent at some point if SGI was putting them in their $5000-20000 workstations and people are spending $40+ per GB to get these now...

what's going on there? i don't get it? why would someone buy it for that money? someone please explain

 

[jimmysmitty]

Some other interesting information would be when Seagate started their testing process in the form it is today. There were some families of drives which were almost guaranteed to fail. I had a couple of the 1.5TB drives, both of which failed in less than one year. The warranty replacements have lasted 5+ years. Talking about some of the less reliable drives, the problems they had, and the processes they put in place to ensure those failures would not happen again would do wonders to improve their reputation. Making drives that run 24x7 for 5 years for the consumer market would also help their reputation. Most consumers buying a 4+ TB hard drive aren't turning their machines off when they are done, although they may sleep. Maybe they have to spend an extra dollar to make the drive better, and won't have enough differentiation with their more expensive drives. But, that's what they need to get both the commercial and home users who specify brand to have more consumer confidence.

So Seagate needs to make their consumer drives rate for 24x7 operation but no other company does? No other companies consumer HDDs are rated for 24x7. Just because you might keep yours on 24x7 does not mean that that drive is rated for it.

To top it off even if a consumer keeps their system on 24x7 the HDD has sleep states and is not being accessed or written to constantly like in an enterprise solution.

No HDD line is guaranteed to fail. It is just luck of the draw and the situation you put it in. If you let it get dusty and run warm it sure as hell will die a lot faster than if you kept it cool and dust free.

Not going to jump into thew whole fight you got going here but Western Digital does produce consumer hard drives designed to be on 24/7. The red AV drives are designed to be used 24/7 for things like live video recording. WD Black are also designed for this but are more expensive drives with higher performance.

There is no fight but people keep spewing the Backblaze data as gospel when it has been shown to be flawed data. No HDD manufacture in that data has good numbers, they all have much higher failure rates from Backblaze than their actually AFR, even in enterprise solutions.

And Seagate makes consumer drives that are rated for 24x7 use as well, they are their NAS grade drives (pretty much equal to the WD Reds). If you look at the normal consumer WD drives, the Greens and Blues which are more common, they are not rated for 24x7 use. The Reds also cost more than the normal consumer drives.

The funny thing is that when I worked in a repair shop we sold a lot of WDs and Seagates and had very equal number of failure rates across all sizes. In fact I don;t think we ever had a 3TB Seagate die, only a few Samsung 3TBs did.

 

[jimmysmitty]

There is no fight but people keep spewing the Backblaze data as gospel when it has been shown to be flawed data. No HDD manufacture in that data has good numbers, they all have much higher failure rates from Backblaze than their actually AFR, even in enterprise solutions.

And Seagate makes consumer drives that are rated for 24x7 use as well, they are their NAS grade drives (pretty much equal to the WD Reds). If you look at the normal consumer WD drives, the Greens and Blues which are more common, they are not rated for 24x7 use. The Reds also cost more than the normal consumer drives.

The funny thing is that when I worked in a repair shop we sold a lot of WDs and Seagates and had very equal number of failure rates across all sizes. In fact I don;t think we ever had a 3TB Seagate die, only a few Samsung 3TBs did.

There is a simple way to solve this debate. An open Q&A with someone from a hard drive data recovery service who has technical knowledge that manufacturers' PR teams wouldn't be willing to give us. Let the readers ask some questions and let Tom's ask some questions.

However, this would probably take quite some time to "put together" as Seagate wouldn't be too happy if negative information, confirmed by a third party, came to light so shortly after a puff piece.

The biggest problem is in determining what qualifies as a failed drive vs natural failures, i.e. fire, water, drop damage etc. Those would have to be discounted.

As well it wouldn't be able to determine if the drive was mounted improperly (be it no screws/holder or to a weak case) or if say it was never kept at its proper temperature etc (run outside of its operating range).

That is why it is impossible to just take Backblazes data as gospel, there is no way to 100% say what a drive will do based on one situation.

 

[jimmysmitty]

The biggest problem is in determining what qualifies as a failed drive vs natural failures, i.e. fire, water, drop damage etc. Those would have to be discounted.

As well it wouldn't be able to determine if the drive was mounted improperly (be it no screws/holder or to a weak case) or if say it was never kept at its proper temperature etc (run outside of its operating range).

That is why it is impossible to just take Backblazes data as gospel, there is no way to 100% say what a drive will do based on one situation.

I guess this is your way of saying that there are no winners or losers that everyone should get a participation trophy? I'm not sure how you can get a better idea of what is going on than by referencing impartial 3rd party empirical data and an impartial 3rd party expert.

This is like someone defending a tire company whose tires explode at 85 MPH, but are rated to have a normal failure rate at or below the speed limit.

Your vehement over-defense of Seagate certainly raises questions about Tom's impartiality when it comes to computer hardware. The readers ask to dig further to find out "why" only to have you tell us it wouldn't matter because it is an immeasurable, foregone conclusion.

I do not believe in participation trophies, I never said anything of the sort.

My point is that there would be a lot of work in determining if the fault was due to the hard drive manufacture or the end user/natural disaster. Unless it is obvious, most of these places do not have that information which would skew the results.

I am not saying it would be a bad idea just that it will be hard to make sure the data is legitimate data.

And I may be a moderator but I have no affiliation with Toms and how they feel. I am still entitled to my opinion and my opinion is that the Backblaze data, for any manufacture, is flawed data due to the multiple reasons I have stated. It just so happens it is being brought up when Seagate articles come up because people hold it as Gospel.

 

[SEAGATEISRELIABLE]

People who ONLY give a product or brand one chance need to get a grip on reality! HDD's have on average of 400 parts and are not 100% fault proof! Seagate drives had a few issues over the years with specific models but have since eradicated the issues from the manufacturing process.

Drives being made today are bigger and better than ever and dont kid yourself thinking WD has better technology! WD is a few years behind Seagate and will continue to be the worlds largest drive maker regardless of a few blemishes!

 

[Bossyfins]

People who ONLY give a product or brand one chance need to get a grip on reality! HDD's have on average of 400 parts and are not 100% fault proof! Seagate drives had a few issues over the years with specific models but have since eradicated the issues from the manufacturing process.

Drives being made today are bigger and better than ever and dont kid yourself thinking WD has better technology! WD is a few years behind Seagate and will continue to be the worlds largest drive maker regardless of a few blemishes!

Why do I feel like this account was made just for this thread...

 

[SEAGATEISRELIABLE]

People who ONLY give a product or brand one chance need to get a grip on reality! HDD's have on average of 400 parts and are not 100% fault proof! Seagate drives had a few issues over the years with specific models but have since eradicated the issues from the manufacturing process.

Drives being made today are bigger and better than ever and dont kid yourself thinking WD has better technology! WD is a few years behind Seagate and will continue to be the worlds largest drive maker regardless of a few blemishes!

Why do I feel like this account was made just for this thread...

 

[SEAGATEISRELIABLE]

Why does it matter why the account was made? This was the first time I felt like posting here, is that a problem? People are clueless as to how much goes into a Seagate Hard Drive! If it was so easy there would be more than 3-5 TOTAL companies making them! Over 150 million drives go out the door per year at Seagate of course there is going to be some failures! WD is debt laden and using older technology in comparison not to mention late to the party on larger drives for Enterprise! Seagates reliability has gone up ever year since the 7200 series was found to be problematic.

 

[thelastdonut]

Well if anything useful was gained out of this comment section, its that I learned the infamous 3TB drives (as well as other brands/sizes) were not rated for 24/7 use.

And not that it matters but I also haven't had the Seagate problems everyone keeps mentioning, though that Backblaze piece did a lot to scare me. Regardless, seeing these tests is interesting, I'd love to try out that shock test but I'm sure as hell not doing it on one of my drives haha

 

[littleleo]

Some people will buy consumer drives instead of the enterprise versions to reduce the price of a system. It has always been an issue but it's gotten much better over the years as people become more knowledgeable. Now the issue is popping up in SSD channel with many buying the consumer version of SSDs instead of the enterprise versions. They will last about a year then die, but people aren't as educated about consumer and enterprise SSDs yet.

Backblaze reporting on the Seagate 3 TB problem just brings to light a problem many re-sellers already knew. Saying that the issue is because it is a consumer drive instead of an enterprise drive is misleading. Many of the 3TB drives were sold in external units used for backup so they weren't used in a 24/7 cycle. They were used at lower then a normal desktop rate and yet continued to fail. That shows a real problem for the consumer and Seagate.

I worked at a Hard Drive manufacturer and one time they received a component part that did look like the regular part that was used in the assemble of the drive. The assembly manager refused to use them and wanted to return them but the head MIS guy got his bosses to over rule him and use them. They had a 75% failure rate and were sued out of business. Perhaps the issues with these 3TB drives are also a component supply issue that slipped by their QC.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Well if anything useful was gained out of this comment section, its that I learned the infamous 3TB drives (as well as other brands/sizes) were not rated for 24/7 use.

And not that it matters but I also haven't had the Seagate problems everyone keeps mentioning, though that Backblaze piece did a lot to scare me. Regardless, seeing these tests is interesting, I'd love to try out that shock test but I'm sure as hell not doing it on one of my drives haha

Most consumer drives are not rated for 24x7 operation unless designed for it, such as WD Reds or Seagate NAS drives.

Some people will buy consumer drives instead of the enterprise versions to reduce the price of a system. It has always been an issue but it's gotten much better over the years as people become more knowledgeable. Now the issue is popping up in SSD channel with many buying the consumer version of SSDs instead of the enterprise versions. They will last about a year then die, but people aren't as educated about consumer and enterprise SSDs yet.

Backblaze reporting on the Seagate 3 TB problem just brings to light a problem many re-sellers already knew. Saying that the issue is because it is a consumer drive instead of an enterprise drive is misleading. Many of the 3TB drives were sold in external units used for backup so they weren't used in a 24/7 cycle. They were used at lower then a normal desktop rate and yet continued to fail. That shows a real problem for the consumer and Seagate.

I worked at a Hard Drive manufacturer and one time they received a component part that did look like the regular part that was used in the assemble of the drive. The assembly manager refused to use them and wanted to return them but the head MIS guy got his bosses to over rule him and use them. They had a 75% failure rate and were sued out of business. Perhaps the issues with these 3TB drives are also a component supply issue that slipped by their QC.

The reason it matters to me is because the situations and environments are different. I am not sure if you have ever been in a big server room but you have a hot and cold side along with tons of vibration from all the fans and HDDs. That environment can be much more torturous than a persons desktop, well than most lets say as I have seen some desktops that should not be alive.

Without a solid test in the environment it was designed for we can't say that results in a much different environment, especially one where the drives were not properly mounted, are 100%. Hell the issue could be due to the design and the fact that the drives are not mounted properly cause it to damage the platters. 7200RPM is pretty fast and I have felt the amount of power they have if you let them move even slightly.

As for external drives, there is again a lot of different environments. These sit next to people desks and get dropped or moved while still on all the time. I had to do data recovery on tons of eHDDs, mostly the 2.5" ones because people toss them around like they are indestructible. The problem is that no HDD company can prove the eHDD was dropped if there is nothing but signs of normal wear and tear and do you think most people will be honest or try to get a drive replaced for free?

 

[DotNetMaster777]

I have external seagate hard drive over 5 years : )) and it work excellent !!!


Are there free tools which can be used for testing of Seagate discs ??

 

[littleleo]

I don't think NAS Boxes are used 24/7, they may be connected and on 24/7 but I don't think they would be used that way continuously, for heavier use WD would recommend the SE enterprise drive, like for cloud, and for real constant heavy duty usage they would tell you to go to the RE drives..

That is the beauty of SSDs no moving parts so they don't have the heat or vibration issue to the extent a hard drive does. They can save hundreds if not thousands of dollars for data centers in A/C costs alone. They are the wave of the future the HDD is going to be replaced by the SSD it is only a mater of time before the majority don't use HDDs any more. Why do you think WD bought SanDisk they see the writing on the wall.

If you are asking me if all people are honest about the whether the drive failed because of misuse or it really just died I think that depends on the person, don't you. I like to think I'd do the right think its not like drives are that expensive like in the old days. You can get a 1TB drive for around $50, in the old days I sold 20MB hard drives for $500, so it is cheaper now to be honest now then it used to be.

I don't know if you can build a testing center to emulate every possible condition the drives will experience, so most use very similar test suites and test conditions. The consumer has to be rational with how they use and treat their hard drives. Otherwise mfrs would have to encase their drives in bubble-wrap and cement, lol. Most inspect the drive and if they see signs of physical damage usually it is rejected.

 

[littleleo]

I have external seagate hard drive over 5 years : )) and it work excellent !!!


Are there free tools which can be used for testing of Seagate discs ??

Seatools suite from the Seagate website
http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/