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back to article And the winner of the most reliable disk drive award is ...

The folks at backup-as-a-service outfit Backblaze have again done something astounding: they've not only looked at log files but analysed them, this time to figure out which vendor's disk drives offer the longest working life. There's a scary-looking histogram in BackBlaze's post detailing the results that shows Seagate drives …

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  1. Eradicate all BB entrants

    Quite interesting .....

    ..... as I never used the low power eco WD's (always bet on black) until I threw a 2TB Red in the NAS box. The WD blacks in my main system have been hammered to hell over the years thanks to Steam but have only had an issue when they have been moved to older boxes as they were replaced. I just think WD's don't like being moved.

    Extremely surprising were the Hitachi results as in the early 2000's we simply referred to them as Deadstars when they were still IBM owned. No wonder WD snapped them up.

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    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Quite interesting .....

      Hitachi results as in the early 2000's

      That's 13 years ago, so probably not really relevant.

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  2. batfastad

    Consumer vs Enterprise

    I've always gone with consumer drives unless you need a small+quick array, in which case you probably go for SAS or flash these days. The I in RAID stands for inexpensive and using "enterprise" drives would double the cost.

    Generally there's no difference, apart from when WD infamously changed the TLER flag on their consumer drives mid-way through a batch of drives a few years ago and people wondered why half their arrays kept spontaneously re-building.

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    1. The First Dave
      Reply Icon

      Re: Consumer vs Enterprise

      Except for when the I stands for "Independent"...

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      1. Alan Brown Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Consumer vs Enterprise

        BEWARE: "Enterprise" on a drive's name means "intended for use in raid arrays".

        Specifically, they won't try to recover sectors as hard as a standalone drive does. (7 second timeout vs 180 second timeout).

        This is a good thing in a raid and a bad thing if flying solo (The TLER setting moves a drive from "standalone" to "enterprise" mode)

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  3. phuzz Silver badge

    I've personally seen the following types of drives fail within a week of being installed, with no warning:

    Seagate

    Western Digital

    Maxtor

    Hitachi

    ie, every manufacturer. I can also think of someone who will swear blind that X manufacturer is rubbish and that only Y can be trusted, for every combination of X and Y (or just read the comments above).

    The plural of anecdote is not data.

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    1. Captain Scarlet
      Reply Icon
      Paris Hilton

      Maxtors always puzzle me, mine have always failed but years later still randomly see some in machines that have just kept going and going.

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      1. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Except for those with manufacturing defects, drive failure falls on to a distribution curve, so of course you'd expect to see some still working just fine several years down the track.

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  4. Soruk
    Mushroom

    My home VM server has a Seagate ST1500DM003 1.5TB disc as its OS and VM-shared data drive, a Samsung HD154UI 1.5TB disc for my NFS/SMB file server and a 6TB RAID5 array across 3x WD30ERFX 3TB discs (that Backblaze highlighted as the type they wished they had a lot more of).

    Needless to say, it's the OS and VM-shared disc I'm most worried about...

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  5. Infernoz Bronze badge
    Meh

    Really

    I've seen Hitachis fail click of Death nasty, seen Seagate degrade in RAID 1, so I got WD everything for spinning storage:

    1 80GB WB Blue was used for years in a Netbook, now in an IODD; no problems still.

    1 250GB WB Blue on 24/7 in a Netbook for 2 to 3 years.

    Six 2TB Greens in a ZFS NAS, one died, after over a year, with heavy use, big deal.

    Six 3TB Reds in a ZFS NAS, one died in a month, replaced in warranty; no new failures in a year, with much heavier use!

    I won't touch anything Hitachi ever again, Seagate showed that they lost the plot, Samsung are not good enough for spinning disks, but I like their SSDs in RAID1.

    I expect all disks to fail, both spinning and SSD, so plan accordingly, preferably ZFS based, because you get more redundancy and much earlier warning of a failing disk.

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  6. {'-,_Ultron6_,-'}

    dont forget *everything* fails.

    Do people forget the electromechanical nature of drives?

    Do users treat them appropriately? In the correct environment? Cooling? (not too cool by the way!)

    Do they handle them correctly? ESD wise? Shock wise? Storage wise?

    Do they use the right drive in the right application?

    Based on the sob stories above (actually every time a HDD piece is published on el reg), the answer would have to be NO.

    HDD technology is pretty amazing and no wonder it sometimes fails, especially when they are mistreated/misused, but I suppose users would never blame themselves for any drive failures, ever.

    And that list in the article is very misleading - a useless statistically invalid dataset masquerading as useful information. You only have to look at the storageboxes the blogger is recommending and the inappropriate drives he is using for such chassis' to see the source is invalid.

    El Reg should have spotted how poor the article is a mile away.

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    1. Alan Brown Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: dont forget *everything* fails.

      Not just "everything fails"

      But also "a courier can kill even the most well-packaged device".

      Seriously: Just about every drive I've had prematurely fail, arrived with some indication on the box that it'd been handled roughly in transit(*). I reckon distributors would do themselves quite a few favours by applying shock sensors to the outside of the packaging.

      http://www.shockwatch.com/monitoring-devices/impact-sensor/

      (*) Sometimes it's the supplier's fault. The package which arrived with 20 drives clanking around loose inside the box was returned unopened.

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  7. Unicornpiss
    Meh

    WD and Seagate

    My observations over the last few years at work: (laptop drives mostly)

    -You couldn't pay me to use a WD "Blue Label" drive--we've had a ridiculous failure rate.

    -Seagate's "Momentus Thin" is a royal P.O.S. second in failures only to Seagate.

    -Hitachi and Toshiba have been pretty reliable.

    -We have very few Samsung drives, but I can only remember one ever failing--I was disappointed when Seagate bought their HD business.

    -As far as really primordial drives lasting, very old Maxtors seem to run forever. Not so much for newer Maxtors. (and the brand is gone now anyway, assimilated by Seagate)

    Glad to see Hitachi got their shit together--they used to be pretty bad.

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