Study: A Look At Hard Drive Reliability In Russia

[tmc]

Back in the old days of HD manufacturing (hundreds of megabytes) drives routinely shipped with a sector defect mapping in the firmware. Virually no drives were sector/error free discs. Now we expect compeltely error free platters and for them to last 5 years. That's wishful thinking. What's more important to get from this study is that as the densities increase-- so do the necessity for rendudant backups, and quite a few of them for sensitive data. No dobut this will improve the demand for blu-ray burners and FLASH media. Hard drives are reasonably reliable, until they fail. Here's my experience:
I have a Maxtor 250gb sata drive, 200gb maxtor ide drive, 400gb wd drive. The 200, 250 are still working fine today- no errors. The 400gb wd drive seems to have blown it's partition.. about 3.5 years later... which confirms the study of the UPTO 500gb drives lifespan. I just bought a 1tb wd black drives w/ the 5 years warranty. This thing runs very cool & quiet compared with that noisy and hot 400gb drive. I havent' had the time to try & do a data recovery yet, because my life doesn't revolve around dealing with these problems quickly, it was less time consuming just to buy another drive (1tb wd black "fals" oem) & get back to it & see if it's a paperweight or not. Stay tuned. It's 2010, I'll let you know if I get 5 years from the manufacturing data of April 2010. That' April 2015....

 

[Guest]

I would like to note that these "average lifespan" statistics are for drives that FAILED. There are many many many drives from these manufacturers that are having no problems at all. so saying the "average lifespan" of a Seagate drive is 1.5 years, that's obviously if it's defective and dies prematurely.

 

[michaelahess]

Had three 320GB Seagate .11's fail on me just a few weeks back, all from builds I did about two years ago. I've had so many failed Seagate's it's not even funny, dozens of them. The WD and Samsungs I've used almost never fail. WD slightly more so than Sammy's.

 

[hangfirew8]

I ran a data center for almost 4 years, every brand represented failed. Not all failures were the same.

WD had the WD4000YS 400 GB RE & WD5000YS 500 GB RE drives with bad-for-RAID initial firmware; image my joy when I received two new RAID's fully populated with these bearing old-version firmware. The RAID h/w couldn't update the firmware so I had to dedicate a desktop with four SATA controllers just to do the job. Yes, this was a RAID qualified "Enterprise" HDD.

The standard refrain for Maxtors were the consumer drives were crap but the DiamondMax server drives were fine. I had a holiday A/C failure event and of thousands of hard drives, only two failed in the heat; the Maxtors. In the same RAID set, at the same time, of course.

The Seagates and WD's failed at a moderate rate that allowed replacement within the RAID before another went.

I used to say the Hitachi HDD populated RAID was the most reliable; then at 3 years two failed at once.

Enterprise drives get thrashed A LOT. Consumer drives have to deal with dust, heat, impacts, no UPS and cheap power supplies. Laptops even more so re the impact. One major PC mfg shipping cheap power supplies and one brand of HDD can really trash a vendor reputation.

Consumers return a lot of HDD due to malware damage, data recovery houses know the difference, but Joe User trashing vendor brand A on Forum B doesn't.

Bottom line, there are some Turkeys out there, particular models with particular problems, you have to be informed enough to avoid those. Beyond that, use (real h/w) RAID for mission critical, monitor their health, back up your data, prepare your bare metal recovery and expect it to fail at some inconvenient moment.

Oh, and to the ZFS guy who doesn't have a H/W RAID that informs him of the small errors- get a new RAID vendor, or learn how to use the monitor.

 

[Matthias99]

"Reguardless of the HD manufacutrer, I think all hard drives suffer from one common problem that can either shorten their life dramatically or give you a HD that lasts well over 3 years. And that is the packaging and shipping to your home. The "dropping" of the package at your door. The "tossing" around of the box in the truck. My personal belief is that most hard drives already have a lot of wear and tear before you even install them in your computer. Just my 2 cents."

Most drives these days can take a lot of abuse when powered off, especially if they're securely packed. If you're buying drives in retail packaging, and the shipper properly packed them, I wouldn't worry about this. A bare drive that's not well-padded may not fare as well.

All manufacturers will have some drives that fail early. You simply can't draw any real conclusions from a small number of personal samples.

 

[Matthias99]

"Hitachi manufactures the (ex IBM) Deskstar (aka DeathStar) Drives. ...I for one will never touch them again..."

Just FYI, the whole "DeathStar" thing was with one particular series of drives that they only produced for about a year back in 2000-2001. There were several design/manufacturing defects that weren't being caught in testing. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitachi_Deskstar for some details.

It certainly hurt their reputation for years, but their new drives are fine.

 

[nforce4max]

Personally never ever keep all your data on one device. It will be pure foolishness to do so. I got 5 drives in my workstation, no optical and don't need it.

 

[HavoCnMe]

I have had my Maxtor 300GB for 10 years and it still is my everyday download hdd. Don't get me wrong any day could be its last, but that is where backing your data up to another drive is key. Never ever, have only one copy. That is a recipe for disaster.

 

[warezme]

Yea! Seagate drives are the cheapest drives you can buy!

BOO! Seagate drives are the CHEAPEST drives you can buy.

It should make sense people.

 

[False_Dmitry_II]

Where the crap can you sell broken hard drives?

 

[DSpider]

What the... I've got a 7 year old Maxtor (40 GB) still working but had to replace a WD Caviar Blue 500 GB (WD5000AAKS) this January. Only lasted about 3 months or so. Lost everything on it.

And since Maxtor merged with Seagate I'm guessing it's good. Hmph.

 

[rexter]

Got 4 Seagate 1.5T 7200.11 for server, 2 Seagate 500G 7200.11 raid-1, 1 Seagate 250 7200.11, 2 160G 7200.7 on raid-0(All Barracuda) and 1 WD 1T 10EAS; All of it still working.

1 Momentus ST9200420ASG on my laptop for gaming, 1 I swap for work programs is ST9120822AS, 1 Toshiba MK8052GSX external used to have all my drivers and programs for service/installation. And all of them still work.

I had my fair share of failed hard drives but more WD than Seagate. That's why most of my hard drives are Seagate’s.

I believe that if you work with your hard drive with prolong heat then failure is Imminent, so all my hard drives are properly cooled or ventilated.

 

[nforce4max]

Well today I found another ewaste dump and out of all the hard drives along with other crap only one was still working. 15x dead WD drives with every thing from bad spindle to bad pre amp and the one drive that worked was a little 10gb conner CT210 that properly booted win95 :lol: The conditions they faced was 40c+ daily heat in the sun. Rain and the intrusion of organics such as rat feces to dog urine. In on machine snails had taken residence The boards out lived both the ram and power supplies. The cases had rotted out while the cards still worked even with rusted connectors :lol: One of the Ethernet cards housed a dead beetle. Well at least I know that WD drives don't fair well in the open elements.

Inner redneck had much fun today.

 

[rooket]

I wouldn't exactly trust communist block to test reliability of drives for various reasons. It's an interesting read, but for all intents and purposes, hard drive reliability is virtually the same for each manufacturer. And trying to make people believe that Samsung is a more reliable drive than a Seagate is simply laughable.

I was going ot buy a bunch of seagate drives for home, but I always end up buying WD. this review here shows me that I really haven't been doing myself any wrong. I secure the drives and give them proper cooling although they don't appear to need any.

As far as reliability and cost goes, what do you really expect for $100 if you are purchasing a 2TB drive? the drive isn't going to last long. Plus if you find one of those enterprise western digital black drives, it is very debatable if those will last any longer than a consumer desktop drive. I've been through enterprise grade and consumer grade Maxtor hard drives in the past. They seem to last about the same.

 

[Guest]

Have had alot of Western Digitals fail as well as well in our Dell PC's at work. All drives fail its just a matter of time and your environement. Segate has a 5 yr warranty but you much more likely to need it! Westerndigital has had a couple periods with bad batches but all in all has had a great track record over the years. No matter what vendor you choose or if you just go with the bargin bin drives on special make sure you back up and image you system, Acronis and Norton Ghost are excellent products. That will save you time and effort. Frys in our area has had 2TB drives for less then 100$ so space is cheap these days.

 

[fteoOpty64]

I swear by WD and is willing to give the new Samsungs a try. Recently, I did give Seagate a chance by buying three 500GB 7200.12 drives. Sure enough one of them developed unrecoverable errors after just 1 day and I returned it and swapped for a WD 1TB green. I still have the two 7200.12 but they are getting tremendous seek errors yet operating well. I doubt if they can outrun their warranty. We shall see. I had 4 Seagates die on me, one Hitachi, not a single Maxtor. Had 3 Maxtor disks > 8 years old and still operating...

 

[lott11]

I am a power user, I go through at least 4 hard drives per year.
and it is true I do replace more of the WD And Seagate then that Samsung or Hitachi Drives.
Seagate and WD drives only last at most 18 to 28 months wild Sansung last 32 to 42 months and Hitachi last 47 to 62 months.
the drives are on servers and PC's that work 24/7, I am talking of 500 GB drives.
and most are use in large I O involvements, so they get a considerable use.
the temp on this units are 22 C at most they never reach 30 c they have climate control.
I drop WD and Seagate well over 2 years for that reason alone.
and for large cluster I only use Hitachi and Samsung drives.
and it is the same results weather it is pata, sata or scsi.

 

[lott11]

Ho!
not to be mis quoted, this where not OEM Drives.
box Drive have a longer live span.
the OEM drives just get more of bashing,just from shipping then anything els.
so do your self a favor get them in the box not OEM.
cost verses durability is great factor in live span.
think of that next time you buy any drive.

 

[lott11]

And for a LOL.
I do have a Quantum Bigfoot 4 GB still running the other 2 have died.
I can only thrust it to A BSD firewall now days.
It has been running 17.5 years.

 

[Guest]

This is based on which drives people send in for data recovery.
You send in a drive if you have insufficient backups.

So this proves seagate owners have less backups than hitachi,
nothing more.

 

[Guest]

Yes I know, this is just personal experience. I remember the IBM Deathstar-episode. Funny that one And it also scared me away from Hitachi when it bought IBMs hdd-devision. I've stayed away since.

I've been through a couple of Maxtors in the earlier 2000's, failed miserably then. Been through Quantum drives even earlier.. weird 5 1/4 sizes some of them had - It lasted my expected pc-upgrading-cycle (3-years between). Western Digital - Hmm.. never had one, might buy one someday. I've had 4-5 Samsung Spinpoints 160GB... and they ran fine, and probably still would, but I wanted faster drives after 3 years.

In 2007 I didn't do enough research and I switched to Seagate again - Now and then I see eventlog-errors in Windows loads of times.. SeaTools also finds them failing, but yet, some of them (I have 4 atm) keep going, albeit a bit slow when it reaches the "wrong place" on the platter(s) ^^ I had hoped Seagates newer drives where more reliable. This study by Storelab makes me think twice about buying Seagate again before at least a couple of generation og hdd-products has gone buy. Off to Hitachi I again, I think.

www.madsd.dk

 

[Guest]

Get to work you bunch of dumb trucks!!!

 

[Guest]

I need to get a new HDD real soon, between Hitachi/Seagate/Western Digital/Samsung.

My problem was years ago I had several Maxtor failed roughly same time, then I switch to IBM no problem there after they sold it to Hitachi I never bought another from them. Turned to Western Digital alls well back then most of their HDD can last up to 2 years before dying on me but problem is nowadays they failed on me within roughly slightly over a year some even less than a year. One RMAed from Western Digital even died on me less than 24 hours after I received it WTH!

Now my WD My Book is giving SMART Errors within 7 months. I think I may have lost faith with WD, the My Book wasn't even switch on most of the time as its used for critial files backup, within that 7 months I very rarely switch it on, now its giving me bad sectors, IMO very poor reliability.


So any advise should I try Hitachi/Samsung? Or just stick with WD? No way I am trying Seagate.

 

[nebun]

[citation][nom]b2man[/nom]Reguardless of the HD manufacutrer, I think all hard drives suffer from one common problem that can either shorten their life dramatically or give you a HD that lasts well over 3 years. And that is the packaging and shipping to your home. The "dropping" of the package at your door. The "tossing" around of the box in the truck. My personal belief is that most hard drives already have a lot of wear and tear before you even install them in your computer. Just my 2 cents.[/citation]
not true...hdd heads park themselves therefore your statement is not true at all. have you see how powerful the parking magnets are?

 

[Guest]

I've been recovering data for over 25 years.
Every brand of hard drive has failed. Many times.
I find that it is really a cyclic thing.
Different production runs, factories, etc., etc.
I tried recommending certain brands at certain points oin time only to be proven wrong.
I keep my mouth shut now to maintain my credibility.