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Reviews of Hard Drive Reliability?

Posted by Cliff on from the things-hardware-reviews-shouldn't-miss dept.

ewhac asks: "After having three 18G drives go toes-up on me in the last two months, all of them done so after about 40 days of use, I want the replacement drives to be rock-solid. While Tom's Hardware and AnandTech review individual drives and their performance, I haven't yet been able to locate any comprehensive or cohesive review of drive reliability and longevity. Does such a resource exist?"

6 of 44 comments (clear)

  1. resist anecdotal evidence by Lepruhkawn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I commend the request for asking for real data.

    Anecdotal evidence from people who have had drives of a certain brand fail on them and then say "never use this drive" is basically worthless. Even if you hear 5 or 10 people say that, ignore them.

    What you need to know is if there are enough anecdotes to show that the mfgr's MTBF rate is inaccurate and the real rate is a lot lower than what they report (or a lot lower than other mfgr's). Or maybe if there is a certain batch of drives that are anomalous.

    The question is: is the mfg's MTBF rate good enough for you and is it accurate?

    www.storagereview.com has started a reliability database but I don't know if their data is statistcally valuable yet.

    --
    Jesus saves....And takes 1/2 damage.
  2. Point of failure by ArcticChicken · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you've had 3 hard disks die on you in 2 months, the problem may not have been with the disks themselves. The first thing to check is if you're getting adequate ventilation to the area where the hard disks are at. You might also want to test the voltage your power supply is putting out.

    Questions like this about hard disks are really better answered here.

    1. Re:Point of failure by martyb · · Score: 4, Informative

      You might also want to test the voltage your power supply is putting out.

      Couldn't agree more; and not only in a static situation, but especially when you are booting the system.

      Here's a strange but true experience. I was working at a small company which was making custom PBXs. We had a few prototypes which were supposed to be identical. Most of them would boot up fine, but one exhibited strange behavior and would fail to boot cleanly. We saw many different modes of failure. We swapped out boards, power supply, etc. between the "good" and the "strange" PBX, but to no avail.

      Finally, I noticed that the power strips for the "good systems" had a 16-gauge wire to plug into the wall; the "strange" one had 18-gauge (i.e. a smaller gauge wire). Swapped in a new power strip and it worked like a charm.
      The voltage drop over the smaller wire was significant enough at boot time (when there was the greatest demand for power) to cause the system to fail!

  3. storagereview.com by zoombah · · Score: 5, Informative

    the storage review reliability index should serve you well. Unfortunately the site itself may be taken down soon (due to financial reasons), so get there quick.

  4. All Drives Suck -- Go Redundant by InitZero · · Score: 5, Informative

    Four 36 gig drives on 16 in our array blew out last week. (Probably heat-related. We had some AC problems in the computer room but the room never exceeded rated temperature.) Two weeks before that, two 18-gig drives in separate machines died for unknown reasons. The 36-gig drives were IBM. The 18-gig drives were Segate (who, at one time, made the IBM drives). In the last two months, we've also lost a few Maxtor drives.

    Except for the batch of drives in one array, the above is fairly typical. We have thousands of drives from many vendors and I can't swear one is any better or worse than the other. Hard drives all pretty much suck.

    Sure, we all read about MTBF being 500,000 hours for new drives but that's a pipe dream. Drives burn out every single day.

    If you have the money, buy a pair of top quality drives and mirror them. If you can't afford that, buy a couple of cheap drives and mirror them. Don't put important data on a single drive and expect it to be there when you get back from lunch.

    InitZero

  5. What's the real problem? by uslinux.net · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I have several 9 and 18 GB drives in a mid size desktop, and they've been running for ages. I've used IBM, Maxtor, Seagate, Quantum, Western Digital, etc, and what I generally find is drives last about 3 years, which is really their useful life anyway. Some go longer, but in general, you should be able to count on 3 years.

    So, if you're finding your drives die in 30-60 days, there's likely another problem you're missing. If you're using SCSI, I'd guess they're probably 7200 or 10k RPM drives, which means LOTS of heat, especially if you have several. So, first of all, go buy a few 60 or 80mm fans, and stick them in front of the drives, if you can. Get some air flow across them (remember, air pushed across the drives does much more than air pulled/sucked across them). Heat will quickly kill a drive.

    Barring that, you haven't said how the drives have died (won't spin up, unusual read errors, etc), but a poor power supply, especially one running at capacity could burn out a drive. Finally, any sort of shock (case constantly being moved, bounced around, kicked, etc) could do a drive in, though that is probably less likely.

    As with anything else, it's all IMO, YMMV, etc.